Well, the screening of my film in Albuquerque went incredibly well. The owners of the theater, the Guild Cinema, were very impressed with the turnout: 102. Apparently this is highly unusual, especially for a monday night and for an activist documentary. They want to show it again in a few months. The Peace and Justice Center here in town wants to show it, too.

I sold all the copies of the DVD as well.

Afterward a bunch of us went out for drinks and I received some very good comments, including some really helpful, filmschool-style critique from another filmmaker, who in fact is in grad school for film in Ohio and was back here in abq to shoot some final pickup scenes for a student piece he's finishing up. He was especially interested because for his next project he wants to make a narrative feature film about the border that touches on the Juarez situation, the Minutemen, drug and human trafficking, etc. He said my film has made him realize he has to totally rewrite the script.

Anyway. I head back to Tucson this morning in a few hours.

Wow. there's actually someone trying to get this initiative on the ballot in Arizona for this fall:

This law will establish a voter reward random drawing every two years with a first prize of one million dollars or more. The purpose is to increase voter participation. Voters who cast ballots in primary or general elections will be eligible to win. The money will come from the Arizona Lottery and private donations.

What a good idea. Maybe it would even get some of my misguided anarchistoid friends to vote.

(thanx José)

Last night I set up a new Flickr group for photos relating to the murdered women in Juárez and Chihuahua. It's located at http://flickr.com/groups/femicide/.

If you have photos that are relevant and you use or want to use Flickr, I invite you to join.

Hello from Albuquerque. I arrived here last night after a day spent with my Tucson homies over in Ciudad Juárez. We lucked out and had a really productive day. We'd been wanting to meet with some community activists in Rancho Anapra called Las Hormigas. But it was proving difficult to arrange something for Saturday and we had sort of resigned ourselves to not being able to see them.
However, as we wandered around Anapra we just stumbled onto their community center. Although it was closed, we had even more good luck. As we stood there reading their posters on the outside of the building, a volunteer drove up after finishing their daily cheap lunch program for the day. She gave us a bunch of literature and we talked a bit about what they were doing, including the resistance to a new highway that is slated to be built through the community and displace thousands of already poor residents of this neighborhood of shacks.

We said we'd follow up with the organizers later, and then drove into el centro. I showed my friends just a taste of what downtown Juarez is like and then we headed for the border bridge. We felt pretty happy with our visit. At the border, the guard gave me, the driver, the full round of questions about where i was from, why we were there, ran my license, etc. I explained we had been in Juarez for the day after being at a conference in Las Cruces for 3 days. He asked what hotel we stayed at and then what was the conference about. I told him the truth, it was about the murdered women of Juarez. I consider it a subtle form of activist information-spreading. It's not illegal to be interested in the femicide, so why not bring it up, keep it on people's minds as much as possible? I'm sure everyone in El Paso knows about it, but many choose to keep it tucked under the rug of their brains.

The conference, for me, was really about people coming together to help each other and help each other work on this cause. Almost everyone who was there already knew most of the facts about the situation, other than a few updates and perhaps some obscure numbers. It was in the form of an academic conference, but it was important not for imparting facts and figures, theories or findings, but for updating our emotional batteries. It gets so easy to work on these kinds of things and become almost desensitized, to work on it and know what it's about but disconnect from the real emotional reality. But by seeing and hearing the mothers one gets an inspirational recharge. One gets sad but then filled with renewed determination to try to make a difference and help. The mothers are the constant reminder, the reality check, the coming-down-to-earth connection.

This is not another academic topic to just write papers on and then go home. This is a real, constant, continuing, horrific situation that needs real action in response to it. Seeing the mothers speak, returning to the city and seeing the pink and black crosses still painted on poles, you know it's still there, that these women are still waiting. In fact, it was announced during one panel that a new body had been found just this week, the first day of the conference, right near the International Bridge. Was this a message, one of the many apparent messages sent using mutilated bodies in Juarez? Was someone trying to say, using "un lenguaje que no entendemos todavía" (as Marisela Ortiz said in my film), that you can have your little conference and give your little speeches and show your little films but the killings will continue? Was someone taunting us from the border while we sat in Las Cruces watching powerpoint presentations?

It's chilling to think like that but it may be true. I hope not, but it may be so, and it may also be so that there's no force on earth that can stop this. But judging by the growing tide of people working to fight it, I'm actually optimistic. It will be stopped. The final measure of the horror will only be determined by the time it will take to finish it, but it is a matter of time now. Eventually enough people will know, about this injustice as with many others, and it will not be able to stand.

For the last 2 days I've been in Las Cruces, New Mexico for a conference on the murdered women of Juarez. It's been a crazy, dizzying blur of panel discussions and networking. I sold or gave away many copies of my film. I talked to many people about my film, about screening it, about how to get it, open sourcing it, and other things. It's been so exciting and so intense too. I will post photos soon but for now check out this post on San Diego Indymedia from DJ Pepperbox, who is also here, she posted a good photo of the "redressing justice" exhibit.

Tommorrow we're going to Juarez. Then I'm heading up to Albuquerque that night.

I'm too frazzled to write more detail. It's just been incredible.

Well, this Saturday, April 1, The Minutemen are revving up their operations again in Arizona. They're having a rally/press conference in Altar Valley, which is pretty near to Tucson, south. I wish I could be there but I'll be in Juárez. It looks like the ACLU will have legal observers out there again. I haven't heard of any other progressive, pro-immigrant response planned yet.

Well, things are coming together in many ways right now, some that I can't really talk about or even totally fathom right now.

It seems that for others this is true as well lately.
What's going on, is there some cosmic strange attractor making stuff happen, making stuff and people fall together in positive ways?

Anyway, details of some things for me: I have sort of a preliminary batch of the final DVDs of my film ready for my little mini-tour of New Mexico. A friend and I assembled cases and inserts till late last night. Today I have to send 20 copies to Mexico Solidarity Network. Tommorrow at least 2 Dry River compañeras and I are taking off at 5am to get to Las Cruces in time for the Justice for Women Symposium. My film will show there at 2:30pm. After the Symposium we plan to go to Juárez for the day and visit with some activists there. Then they head back to Tucson and I head up to Albuquerque, and do a screening there on Monday night at 7:30. Then tuesday morning I fly back to Tucson, and my friend Lenara, an internet artist/researcher from Brazil, is flying in to Tucson at practically the same time.

So that's my next week in a nutshell.

A hilarious diagram from a Pasadena newspaper shows the telltale signs for parents of whether their kid does graffiti. It's so silly but it's a disturbing example of the kind of indoctrination that the media engages in all the time. And what it's teaching: that here's another thing to fear in your children; that it's okay to invade your child's privacy, and if he or she appears to be artistic and also wear a hooded sweatshirt, he must be a criminal; that all graffiti is a "problem" and a sign of gang activity; and a host of other assumptions.

Right now I'm at a meeting - there are usually like 6 people and tonight there's 18. It's incredible.

Umm. I don't know why I'm posting this other than that I'm sort of bored. There are lots of meetings in my life these days. It can be kind of frustrating.

Life is kind of crazy. I'm spending almost all my time getting ready for my trip to show my film in Las Cruces and Albuquerque.
This involves getting copies of the DVD ready to have available at these screenings.

And of course while I've been buying DVD cases and blanks and designing covers and all sorts of other related tasks, the rest of life goes on. All the other groups and meetings and stuff keep moving. And of course money hemorages out of my bank account too.

It's like juggling.

sigh.

Nice article in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Bush has presided during one of the most significant political re-alignments in the history of the Western Hemisphere. By this summer, every major Latin American nation but Colombia is likely to be run by elected leaders with stronger backgrounds in Marx than free markets. If Cold War-era domino theory has been a bust elsewhere, it's working in Latin America.