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.