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Page 8 Commentary Street Roots • Dec. 30, 2016-Jan. 5, 2017 Street Roots • Dec. 30, 2016-Jan. 5, 2017 Commentary Page 9 NO MORE DEATHS Border diary: A moral imperative to save lives No More Deaths is a Bjmanitarian-aid organization based in Southern Arizona. It formed in 2004 as a coalition of ■im m unity and faith groups, dedicated to ending death and suffering in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands through civil initiative. The members deliver water, food and medical aid to those crossing through the most deadly areas of the Sonoran Desert; conduct community search and rescue for border crossers in distress: provide phone services to those who have been recently deported to Mexican border cities: and offer legal support for those in the city of Tucson who qualify for DACA {Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) or DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans) status. No More Deaths provides direct aid to desert travelers along the Mexico border, often operating outside o f the official system — because 'hum anitarian aid is never a crim e' BY COLLEEN SINSKY C O N T R IB U T IN G C O L U M N IS T r I Water jugs and cans of beans lie vandalized along the Arizona-Mexico border. Water is driven through the desert during a No More Deaths aid mission. Signs from No More Deaths invite desert travelers to help themselves to supplies. prevent us from doing our work. We take the higher road every time. It’s showing fearlessness.” We brought the slashed bottles with us back to the old four-wheel-drive pickup we’d parked in a sandy wash a few miles away. We unwrapped bean and cheese burritos, slung our empty backpacks into the bed of the truck, and Madison navigated along the darkening dirt roads back to our desert aid station. first time I came across vandalized humanitarian supplies in a remote JL part of the Sonoran Desert, I felt devastated. We’d been hiking all day to place lifesaving caches of water and beans in a corridor along the Arizona-Mexico border where hundreds of migrants die of dehydration and exposure each year. The gallons of water had been angrily slashed and kicked around, Colleen Sinsky is a former retention worker and a dozen cans of beans Hiking home punctured and left to rot and stink. at JO IN and is currently Several miles from the working along the U.S. It looked like a tiny massacre site small bordertown of Arivaca, border with Mexico nestled between gnarled mesquite Ariz., the No More Deaths aid helping provide relief to trees. I set down my backpack, immigrants. station is a ramshackle oasis heavy with four new gallons, and built by volunteers on a mourned quietly for this homage to shoestring budget. There’s humanity lost. The messages of love and almost no cell service, and aside from a few hope we’d written in Spanish on the plastic broken RVs for office space and a geodesic jugs were cut off by jagged knife dome that houses the medical clinic, life at wounds - a conflicting message to “Byrd Camp” is entirely outdoors. whoever came across them. The Desert aid station kitchen: slashed gallons clashed with my propane tanks and ice chests. r-r-; rosy, optimistic worldview and Daily chores for the handful of . ||y| reminded me that my organization, volunteers staying there at any No More Deaths, was not the only given time involved hauling well group acting in this desolate water, cooking outdoors over borderzone. propane burners, harvesting I was two weeks into the month I vegetables from a local farm, and would spend as a desert aid purifying and refilling water jugs volunteer with No More Deaths, a for the desert Behind the picnic Southern Arizona-based tables where we share family- humanitarian organization that has style meals, a spray-painted sign provided medical assistance, abuse reads “Humanitarian Aid Is . documentation, legal aid and desert Never A Crime” - the rallying water drops for the past 12 years. cry of No More Deaths that had The other, more experienced initially attracted me to their volunteers on my team hardly work. Medical treatment of paused at the vandalized site. This patients who have become area was frequented by roving injured or sick while crossing Border Patrol units who, despite the desert is legal; all of the aid efforts to rebrand themselves in a provided by NMD is legally more positive light, are the most protected, and the handful of likely culprits of humanitarian aid charges that have been filed destruction, according to the just-released against volunteers have all been “The Disappeared Report,” compiled by No successfully beaten in court - or More Deaths. at least the charges dropped. Over the years, the organizations “Humanitarian Aid logbooks have recorded hundreds of Is Never A Crime.” vandalized caches like this. But for each instance of heartless vandalism, there are It’s difficult to exactly track the number several victorious entries of “CTFO!”- of migrant deaths in the desert each year, shorthand for “Cleared The F— Out!” - but the increasing deaths in this corridor when all of the water appeared to have been are largely credited to the Border Patrol used by desert travelers. We wanted to policy of “prevention through deterrence” quickly replenish the cache and get moving that pushes migration towards the least back toward our waiting pickup truck. hospitable stretches of desert and employs We take the time to write bendigas, or tactics such as “dusting” with helicopters to “blessings,” on the jugs of water. “May scatter groups and cause them to lose their destinations be reached safely.” way and each other. “We’ll always keep putting out water, and A shrine created by years of migrants not let hateful people and hateful actions praying for a safe journey is tucked away prevent us from doing our work,” said into a rocky alcove. Madison, 26, who moved to Tucson to be A patient recuperating from a few days of able to volunteer consistently with No More being lost in the desert helped me chop Deaths. “We don’t let destructive actions onions for dinner, and we chatted about Online: www.nomoredeaths.org A volunteer with No More Deaths writes a kind message on a water jug for desert travelers. PHOTOS BY COLLEEN SINSKY A shrine has been created by migrants praying for a safe journey. where he was hoping to go. “Oregon,” he said, surprising me. He had worked construction outside Portland for 15 years before going to stay with his mother while she was dying back in Nicaragua. His family still lived in Oregon, and he had been walking for several days to rejoin them. He and I shared the same awe of the Pacific Northwest and eagerness to return home. It’s impossible to think about the hordes of “rapists” and “criminals,” as characterized by Donald Trump, when you’re singing along to Latin pop and arguing over the best way to make a soup. He left the aid station sometime during the night to continue walking north in the bright moonlight. Some nights after the dinner plates are cleared, we were left to finish card games Rosary beads hang from a tree branch along theArizona-Mexico border. and to journal around the table by headlamps. The solar panels and series of car batteries can’t quite keep up with the demand from a refrigerator, a few light bulbs and an array of satellite phones, GPS units and volunteers’ iPhones being charged. In October, the temperature dropped soon after the sun did, and the threat of nighttime hypothermia became an additional danger for migrants. No More Deaths has always operated in opposition to the dominant narrative about migration flows. The organization has continued to save lives as activists, grounded in the belief that not only is humanitarian aid never a crime, but that there is a moral imperative to challenge the status quo by providing direct aid. The volunteers here have been active on the margins in ways that surprised me, an aid worker who has always functioned within the official system. With a looming Trump presidency, I fear that much of the social justice advocacy and work done on the margins will become counter-cultural. No More Deaths has always stubbornly stood by their morals in providing lifesaving aid and solidarity in the desert despite harassment from Border Patrol. I fell asleep in my hammock beneath the arc of the Milky Way, listening to the reassuring coyote howls echo off of the rocky hills. I hoped that whoever else was out there, walking lost under these same stars, would find the water jugs we’d left and know that someone felt that they deserved to live.
