Yesterday I caught a ride down to Tucson from Tempe with Jessica of Arizona Indymedia. She happened to be driving from Flagstaff back to Tucson so just swung by and picked me up on the way. I was very grateful for that because the Greyhound, for some bizarre reason, takes 7 hours to travel what is a 2-hour drive.

I just passed through Tucson during the Caravan about 2 weeks ago, and now I'm back and I still think it's a pretty cool city. MUCH better than Phoenix, for sure. Today I rode Jessica's bike around, mostly in the University area. There's a few blocks of hipness on 4th Street, and a cool bike collective called Bicas which I went to but they are closed on Mondays (I'll return tomorrow).

The city is subject to constant overflights of military jets, because of the nearby airforce base. I've seen F-15s, A-10s, and some big cargo planes. Ah there goes some now. it's been pretty constant, at least a pair of them every half hour or so. It kind of made me try to imagine what it would be like in Fallujah, what it would be like to multiply those numbers by what, 100? And then add the fact that some of the planes would be dropping bombs nearby and the bombs would kill people I might know or destroy stores or restaurants or homes that i had been to.

Anyway, other than that I like Tucson, so far. It's a warm mostly sunny day, probably about 70, though there was some very light rain for 2 15 minute periods early today. I think people here loved it. It rains so little that they smiled as they walked through the light mist. Tonite is my screening here, the last one of my tour, and then on Wednesday I fly back home to Portland.

In the waning hours of this afternoon I am working on my last report about Juarez. So I'll hopefully be posting that in a little while yet today.

Oh, and also I just found out about this book that sounds really interesting called Confessions of An Economic Hitman, by this guy who used to work for a financial consulting company, and he would fly around the world doing the World Bank's dirty work. Now he's sort of a New Age shaman wannabe, it seems. Wow.

I arrived in Phoenix very very early this morning to do another video screening this afternoon. Actually, I'm in Tempe, the college town on the east side of Phoenix. I woke at 3 am this morning in order to get a ride from Flagstaff to here, since Carly, my host in Flagstaff, was heading to Phoenix airport to get a plane to L.A. It's a beautiful day now that the sun is up and I am killing time, wandering around Tempe till the show, which is at Gentle Strength Coop at 3pm. All the people here in town who set up the show for me are not available.

Last night's screening in Flagstaff was really great, at least compared to the last 2 shows, and it raised as much cash as did the one in San Francisco. I'm really impressed with the strength of the activist community in Flagstaff, which is a pretty small town. I guess there are a lot of progressive students, and a lot of issues people are passionate about there: water issues, native american issues, the public land fee demo thing, which is or was also a big deal in the Northwest, nuclear stuff, and more.

I guess maybe the timing is right, too. It's been over a week since the election and people are perhaps starting to snap out of their shocked depression and starting to get active again, starting to stir out of the disillusioned lethargy which perhaps was the cause for low turnout at my shows in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Some people in Flagstaff seemed excited, looking forward to people radicalizing even more in the wake of this latest fraud-ridden election fiasco. Learning about the resistance to opressions in Bolivia and elsewhere fits right into this mood, as people start to really consider that more drastic measures than get-out-the-vote campaigns are needed to save our country.

Many of the Flagstaff folks are in the grip of a horrible local situation that I think I should mention here. When Kerry came to Flagstaff in August, several of them showed up in wacky costumes, chanting and singing, to excercise their free speech rights and remind people that Kerry wasn't neccesarily the wonderous answer to all our problems that the DNC would have us believe. They ended up getting attacked by local police and 3 of them were actually arrested and charged with various ridiculous felonies like assaulting a police officer. One of them is still in jail because bail was set at $15,000 that he didn't have. This kind of repression at Kerry campaign events is not a surprise, and we saw similar things in Portland, but not, I think, to this degree. Rudy, one of the people who arranged for my screening in Flagstaff, was one of the others charged, and he has had to change his whole life in order to deal with his legal defense. He's gone from a very simple lifestyle, basically supporting himself through dumpster-diving, to doing 12-hour shifts waiting tables in order to pay for his lawyers, extra rent (his housemate is the guy still in jail), and other expenses incurred as fallout from the arrests. This kind of thing is just infuriating. I'm sure that eventually they will prevail, because the police don't have a leg to stand on, but it just sucks to have to deal with this kind of totally undeserved bullshit. I guess Flagstaff cops are as bad as Portland's.

Anyway, it's really exciting and great to be meeting all these great activists in the Southwest and learn what struggles they are involved in, and share with them what's happening where I live and what the common concerns are. I feel once again that I'm an agent of network-strengthing again, like I was in South America, a contributor to the complexity and emergent behavior of the global progressive movement.

Greetings from Flagstaff, Arizona. Tonight is the third show in my rather relaxed 5-city Southwest Tour of my "Bolivia In Crisis" videos. The shows in Albuquerque and Santa Fe were good - the turnout could have been better, but the people who were there were great and there were great discussions. Plus, even if I'm not making tons of money for the Computers for Bolivia Project this trip has been really a great success just for all the cool people that I've met.

Another thing I'm really happy about is that on tuesday I had enough downtime staying with a friend in Chimayo (out in the country near Santa Fe) to produce a short summary video about the Juarez Caravan for Indymedia Newsreal. I was lucky that my friend there had a Mac with Final Cut on it, and though it was an ancient version of Final Cut that I'm not used to using, i still managed to bang out a pretty decent little piece, though not as polished as it would be if i had more time. I just sent it off in the mail this morning to the Newsreal folks in Boulder. I love that I'm travelling but I can still get a piece of videojournalism done less than a week after the delegation in Juarez ended!

Speaking of Juarez, I still have a lot to write about it, but I just do not have time yet. I need to go get some Flagstaff-style Food not Bombs lunch, and then get ready for the show tonite. Chao, from the office of my very helpful and gracious hosts, Flagstaff Activist Network.

Here and now I'm going to continue to catch up on describing events during my time in Juarez and Chihuahua. But first, I need to mention a little bit about where I am right now.

I just arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico and I'm sitting at a beautiful little caf Read more>>>

Yesterday I returned to my sadly screwed-up homeland from the sadly-screwed up Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. I am now in Albuquerque, New Mexico, staying at the house of a participant in New Mexico Indymedia.

After a week without accessing the internet I have a lot to catch up on (even though we were in a pretty nice business-class hotel in Juarez, which had a computer room, the computer would not connect to the net for some reason). I think I will take it gradually and chronologically, starting with Tucson where I last connected from. The morning of the 30th in Tucson our caravan to Juarez met with some car troubles, as documented by our main driver, Swaneagle. Sadly, we were forced to leave her, her daughter Taina, and Luma, in Tucson. Luckily the breakdown did not happen earlier in the trip. We were done with all of our events, but we still needed to get to Las Cruces so that the next day we could cross into Mexico with the rest of the Caravanistas and Delegates. Jessica rented a car and she, Ramona, Nicole and I drove to Las Cruces across the beautiful desert.

Once there we were immediately plunged into the hectic excitement of the dinner and meeting of all the different caravan legs from all over the U.S. and Canada. We were hosted by local activists Amigas de las Mujeres de Juarez, a Las Cruces group that works to assist the mothers of the murdered women in Juarez. It was an exciting time, a flurry of activity in a small house in suburban Las Cruces as people planned for the next day's border crossing and other events.

I will stop here for now. This is just a first return entry to say "I'm back safely."

I will add that being in Mexico during the election was strange and oddly comforting, like being shielded from the grief and outrage and anger that I would have experienced had I been home (don't worry, I voted early before I left Portland). Now that I am back, the full impact of the horrendous results of November 2 is still hitting me. I'm especially disturbed by the sweeping success of the bigoted anti gay marriage measures across the country, even in Oregon. I am truly ashamed for my nation and people.

I'll blog more as I get time. Today should be pretty relaxed, as I don't have much to do till my screening of Bolivia videos here in Albuquerque tonite (Saturday Nov. 6th 7pm at the Center for Peace and Justice, 202 Harvard SE).

other dates on my tour:
--Monday November 8th 7pm at Warehouse 21, 1614 Paseo de Peralta, in Santa Fe.
--Saturday November 13th in Tempe, AZ at Gentelstrength Coop, 7pm
--Monday november 14th in Tucson at Sexto Sol(?? not sure of the name of the venue)

This might be my last post till I return from Mexico on November 5. Here is our plan: today in Tucson in about an hour we of the Caravan will join local activists here for the annual Dia de los Muertos "pilgramage" - which is a 7-mile walk from a local church to the San Xavier Mission. I'm not sure exactly what it is all about but I believe the walk at least partly is symbolizing the walk of illegal immigrants across the Sonoran Desert coming from Sonora, Mexico to Arizona, USA.

After that we get on the road and head east down Interstate 10 to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where we are meeting some (or all?) of the other Caravans and spending the night. Then Sunday we head to El Paso, meet all the delegates and other activists for a border crossing in Juarez. From that point on we'll be staying in Mexico. My cell phone will stop working and I don't know if I'll have time to get on the Internet. Wireless access points are probably rather uncommon in Juarez.

On November 3 we head 5 hours south into Mexico to Chihuahua City, and then on the 5th we come back to El Paso. Then my next adventure, touring with my Bolivia videos, will begin.

I'm getting lots of good footage and I'm very excited about making a documentary about this Caravan and delegation. I understand that there are other filmmakers on the delegation as well, so maybe we could collaborate somehow.

Anyway, gotta go pack and get ready to go....

The Caravan continues, and has been quite an adventure. It kind of sucks that rain and cold has been following me since I left Portland. Today I woke up in this place that's hosting us in Tucson called Borderlinks and looked out the window to see foggy outside, and cold. And I mean thick, peasoup kind of fog. In Los Angeles and San Diego there were bizarrely heavy and unseasonal rains, and even as we drove across the desert yesterday to Phoenix it rained off and on, alternating with beautiful sunny spells. I heard it was snowing in Flagstaff already.

Is this El Ni Read more>>>

Too many spam comments to deal with while travelling. When you only get an hour on the internet a day, if that, and 30 minutes is spent dealing with spam, that's not acceptable. so for now, no comments. if you need to get in touch, use email, if you know it, or my contact handy form.

Things are so rushed. I wish I had more time to report on what is going on as it happens. I wish I had time to post to multiple indymedia sites as we go. News is developing all the time. well, anyway, here are the Juarez Caravan Routes for you to look at.

We are rushing off to San Diego in about an hour....

I am typing this, offline, sitting in a meeting room at a Catholic retreat center called Casa de Maria, near Santa Barbara. It seems like there should be internet access here, but there is not, at least in this building. So I am typing this now and hopefully later today I will be able to post it. I