This is what courage (is one of the things that courage) looks like.Via Dream Activist. More information on Tania Chairez and Jessica Hyejin Lee’s arrests at Dream Activist Pennsylvania.Update: Tania Chairez and Jessica Hyejin Lee have both been released; Miguel Angel Orellana, whom they risked arrest on behalf of, remains detained.
First, two positive things to come out of Arizona this week: the winner of this year’s Schneider Award is The Pirate of Kindergarten, written by George Ella Lyon and illustrated by Arizonan Lynne Avril (also illustrator of The Twelve Days of Christmas in Arizona); the Odyssey Award goes to The True Meaning of Smekday, narrated
Arizona dispatches Read More »
So sometime before noon, I got a call from family in New York, asking if I was okay, because there’d been a shooting at a Tucson supermarket. At first I kind of laughed, “Yeah, right, because all of us shop at the same grocery store here.” But as the conversation went on, at some point
Seriously, Arizona? SERIOUSLY? Read More »
(Yesterday, in a moment of self-consciousness, I friends locked my post on How I Learned About the Dream Act. It’s unlocked again now.)So last night, the Dream Act–which allows some undocumented young people, who’ve grown up here just like you and I have, to stay in this country if they go to college or enlist
More on the Dream Act Read More »
So here’s a thing about “Crossings,” the short story I’ll have out in the Bordertown anthology this spring: my protagonist, Miranda, came to the United States illegally from Mexico as an infant. That’s not the only thing the story is about, but when it begins Miranda is (among other things) a teen facing possible deportation.
How I learned about the Dream Act Read More »
When I was a very new writer in the early 90s, writing in the evenings after my day job on the computer which I’d used the last of my student loan money to buy, there was a part of me that wanted to run away–to Minneapolis, or Eugene, or Seattle, or Toronto. If you’d have
Running away to Bordertown Read More »
Tonight the dead came out to dance.I don’t know why it took me so long to finally make it to Tucson’s All Soul’s Procession, but I’m glad to have finally gone this year.Thousands of people dressed up in white paint and skeletal faces–along with dress up clothes of all sorts: black suits and black dresses,
All Soul’s Procession Read More »
Coverage of yesterday’s SB1070 protests in Tucson and Phoenix, along with photos from protests around the country.And two snapshots from downtown Tucson yesterday:– At an area down in Presidio Park for kids to draw pictures about how they feel about SB1070, a crayon drawing reading: “I Hate SB1070 Because It Takes Parents Away From Children.”
Today Arizona’s SB1070 law, which violates the civil rights of legal and illegal immigrants, visitors from abroad, and those who look like either, goes into effect–sort of.A judge announced a temporary injunction against the worst parts of the bill yesterday. Among other things, in Arizona: law enforcement is not yet required to check the immigration
Arizona and SB1070 as of today Read More »
With SB1070, Arizona’s new immigration law, set to take effect the end of this month (and with reports of residents being unjustly detained even before this has happened), a group of local businesses have launched the We Mean Business campaign to oppose the law. These are companies who have the courage to put signs stating
Thank an Arizona bookseller for opposing SB1070 Read More »