Yesterday I spent roughly 12 hours out in the world doing may day stuff. Helped fold the pamphlet. Went to Armory Park where the big rally/teachin was all day. Set up Dry River table. Handed out tons of copies of the pamphlet. Drank lots of water and gatorade. Shot a bunch of footage, but not too much. I'm getting pretty good at economizing tape. Hours of sitting at the editing suite logging pointless footage has really learned me.

Anyway, most of the day was spent just sitting around with the camera on the off chance that something bad would happen, like on April 10 (when I felt bad for leaving early and not being their to film the crap that went down). Only a couple things did, and none as bad as April 10. Only a total of 6 anti-immigrant counterprotesters, 2 or 3 at a time, and they were pretty mild-mannered, and kept across the street by the police. no burning mexican flags this time. The police were annoying. At the end of the afternoon they were like cranky tired children. I plan to post a clip of the bike cops acting like 12 year olds zooming their bikes around in circles. The peacekeepers were annoying. Some of my Dry River compas were too. I plan to write more about that later. Or maybe it's not worth it. Same old liberal-anarchist squabbling. sad.

Called a report in to Portland IMC Radio. Took a short recon mission out to Reid Park where a rally of the border vigilantes was supposedly happening. We didn't find anyone. Then later I heard they had the rally later that evening. oh well.

Jessica, stuck at work, kept some of us updated via txtmob. It was cool being outside at Armory Park eating rice and beans from Comida No Migra and getting messages on my phone like "Indybay reports police are stopping 15,000 from marching in Bakersfield." Then someone reporting from the stage over the PA "In Nogales not a single car has crossed today." wow.

Mostly it was a pleasant day in the park with good music and the inspiration of having all those people around participating in a momentous time in history.

Afterward I invited stillsecretperson over for mojitos. It was the perfect end to a hot tiring day out in the sun.

Yesterday I spent about 4 hours in a fume-filled printshop, Feral Press, helping to screen print No More Deaths yard signs and printing thousands of our May Day Pamphlet.

Then I went to a potluck in the park. Dry River kids and anarchists from Phoenix and Flagstaff, in town for May Day. I brought fresh lemondade I made from lemons from the tree in our yard. Then we all went to the Dry River space and I picked out a pile of relevant zines from the infoshop that we could bring to table at the teach-in/rally today. Then I went to kinko's and made copies of a new bilingual Arizona Indymedia flier that I made.

So yesterday was long and busy. Today is going to be even longer and busier. But more exciting.

For the past couple weeks I've been working with folks from AZ Indymedia, Dry River Collective, and Organic Collective in San Diego to produce a bilingual pamphlet that would inform people about the historical/political context of May Day, relating the current immigrant rights upswell to other struggles both past and present. We're going to be printing up a few thousand copies in Tucson today, but we have it available as a downloadable PDF file. It's an 11x17 double-sided design that we're encouraging groups in other cities to download, print, and distribute on May 1.

In a phone conversation the other day a friend said (i'm paraphrasing) that he saw himself in his current situation at his new job at a giant spanish-language media company as getting a chance to move the discourse or rhetoric or identity definitions around this amazing new civil rights movement by some small distance, just nudge it a little. I said that's what everyone's trying to do right now, from national politicians to punk zinesters. So, this pamphlet is part of my microscopic nudging. enjoy.

There are a few recent developments regarding my film about the Juárez femicide that I haven't blogged about so I thought I would do so today.

Saw a story about a pirate radio station basically in my home town, on Phlegm's blog (out of Urbana, Illinois), getting hassled by the FCC due to complaints from Clear Channel and Cumulus. And they're fighting back in interesting ways!

I say basically because it's in Bettendorf, one of the the 4 Quad Cities. I grew up in Davenport, the other quad city on the Iowa side of the river.

Who woulda thunk, pirate radio there? One set of my parents live in Bettendorf and they said it's been big news there.

This week is proving insane for me: AZ Intl film fest started last week & is going through sunday; working with small adhoc group on a pamphlet for May Day that will be providing a radical context for the immigration rights struggles going on; getting more involved with No More Deaths, talking with them about a new media strategy; financial meltdown; dealing with all the bureaucracy and logistics of getting my DVD pressed; dealing with other possible opportunities involving my film; trying to think hard about a career choice a friend has unexpectedly thrown my way; and trying hard while i have all this other stuff to do during the day to not think too much about this special person who just made my life 10 times more interesting and complicated exactly 4 weeks ago today.... sigh...

It's so silly when people who have blogs but only write in them sporadically start every entry with something like "I haven't been blogging much, sorry." It's exactly like those zines that start every issue with an editorial that apologizes for being so late. I mean, come on - it's not like this is your job or someone paid you to meet a deadline. Newsflash: every single zine is always late. Unless you make a living from your blog, lighten up and stop apologizing.

I suppose it's sort of a wishful ego impulse. Everyone wants to believe that there are friends and/or secret admirers and/or colleagues just waiting, checking every morning, for some new nugget of wisdom or juicy life detail on one's blog. And every morning for 34 days they are disappointed, so of course one should give some apology and explanation, like "I've been doing more productive things." That'll make 'em feel better. Maybe get them to realize they're wasting too much time checking blogs. If you can't write 'em, why should they read them? Indeed.

A nice little video about humans and what's wrong with them. I guess it's been going around the net quite a lot, so, sorry if you've already seen it. i'm not perfect. I'm just a monkey.

One thing I forgot to mention in my blog entry last night about the film "Crossing Arizona" was something ACLU legal observer Ray Ybarra said at the beginning of it: "If you want to understand immigration in this country, come to Arizona."

That underscores what I've been realizing more and more recently. The more I learn about the immigration issue and especially undocumented migrants and dying border crossers, the more I realize that ground zero is right here in southern Arizona. Over half of the border crossing deaths every year are in Arizona.

When I moved here I knew the issue was big here, but had not seen statistics like that. I didn't know that, far more than in any other border state, a huge percentage of the land within 100 miles of the border is federal land. And there are all sorts of other facts and figures I can throw out but I haven't had breakfast yet. Basically though, this is the place.

Tonite was the first real night of the Arizona International Film Festival and I went to see the opening film, "Crossing Arizona," which is a pretty great documentary about immigration, specifically focused on Arizona and the border here. It's pretty well done. It's low budget, shot on DV, took them 2 years to do it. I would recommend it to anyone who's interested in border and immigration stuff, and if you're in the SF Bay area, it's being shown there now till the 27th at the Roxie. It's not a perfect film. They're a little too easy on the Border Patrol, and I think they didn't spend enough time on root causes like economics. But overall it's very good, and I hope it gets out to a ton of people and helps to raise awareness. It's a very moving film and I got choked up several times.

Tommorrow is going to be busy. I'm going to a filmmaker's breakfast that the festival is doing, and then going to a little bit of the community Earth Day festivities, and then the summer planning meeting for No More Deaths is happening. I've been wanting to get more involved in No More Deaths and this is probably going to be a good way to start. Then in the evening is the annual Earth First Journal Pie Party and Fundraiser. That should be lots of fun.