Yesterday I flew to San Francisco and immediately found out about a screening of videos by Alex Rivera at Galeria de la Raza, in the Mission. Alex does amazing work that is mostly concerned with immigration and border issues. It's very informative and hard-hitting yet really humorous at the same time.

There was really good discussion afterward, with lots of really informed and thoughtful comments from the audience. It's great to just drop into town and be surrounded by such great people and work.

The last piece was a longer documentary work about Mexicans living in the U.S. who not only send money back to their home towns (remittances) but who organize in order to pool larger amounts of money and do public works in those towns. One group in New Jersey organized and funded the building of a baseball stadium in a little town in the state of Pueblo.

In the discussion afterward Alex said that remittances total about 15 billion dollars, which is second only to oil in Mexico's economy!! My friend Jos