If you're helping to organize the Wounds in the sand Conference, click here to see what your task is for Wednesday, May 15th, Friday at the latest. Download the Wounds Conference Proposal.

We got a story about the "illegal" migrations class in the Stanford Alumni magazine! The story is called A Chance to Teach. I have not written here in a while b/c I've been planning out my summer. this weekend I'm going to really hash out my Wounds in the Sand website.

Workers @ Stanford and LIP/WIP

Alright, so I have to realize that not only is this quarter going by real fast but also the whole year, so it's time for strategically focusing my energies. Nowing how long it takes to conduct ethnographic type work that does not follow the more elitist traditional methods of anthropology, my Workers @ Midnight Project probably will not be the best concentration of my energies at this point. I think that if this LIP/WIP project takes off, that could become one of our first projects and we could begin planning it and getting faculty support and guidance. If we do this then it could be done very professionally and in a manner respectful to workers. It could also be more effective in actually changing student and administrative attitudes at Stanford.



Wounds in the Sand i-Documentary

What I've decided to do is focus on creating an interactive documentary based on the Wounds in the Sand ASB. I have tons of images from both this year's trip and last year's, some very interesting audio recordings of the Border patrol, the maquila manager, Cecilia, and even some recordings of the migrants we spoke to at the El Plan Retorno. I also have a lot of text and story from the writings that the other members are currently doing. There are simply tons of possibilities and I could really have a lot of fun with this and come out with a very impactful and attitude changing interactive documentary. I was thinking maybe I could even implant a pre/post attitudinal survey to measure the effectiveness of the i-Doc in changing attitudes and perceptions about undocumented immigrants.



Wounds in the Sand Conference

Beside this, there's that conference event that the Wounds in the Sand crew is planning. I think we could organize it in a way that it could really feed into creating action, especially if we have a LIP/WIP meeting at its conclusion where we invite all the student groups, workers and faculty doing work related to labor and immigration and also leave it open to students not yet involved. It could really be a powerful spring board into this summer and next year.

Today was a good day. I have now started to make connections with other students and student orgs who are interested in the goals behind my project and even excited about extending these ideas further. Basically, my Alternative Spring Break group, Wounds in the Sand and members of the Student Labor Action Coalition are going to collaborate and a form a new student group called for now;


WIP: The Worker.Immigrant.Project

or

LIP: The Labor.Immigration.Project


Our purpose will be to conduct statistical/ethnographic research about worker/immigrant issues on campus and off, design creative educational efforts to educate campus students, faculty and workers about these issues, and inform and connect the various organizations on campus and in the area that do labor/legal advocacy or educational work for local immigrants and workers.



My Stanford Workers @ Midnight project fits perfectly into this mission and will therefor become one of our first projects. The students I met with absolutely loved the idea of creating a Relax Zone for workers at midnight with the hopes that not only will we be able to learn, document and disseminate their stories but also begin the process for eventually creating a Stanford Workers Center where workers can go relax, learn English, get legal advice, etc.



At the present moment, I am very excited.

Alright, now that I got the technicalities out of the way, I can start my ruminations. To begin: I have been thinking extensively for the past five or six years about illegality. Since a young child, I've always been fascinated and disturbed by the possibility that people could even be thought of as "illegal." Everytime there was an assignment in school, I would gravitate towards the same issue, usually exploring it in a different way or through a different lense, and still even in my third year of college, I have not been able to escape it; illegality. Understanding this injustice and making other's understand it's dehumanizing nature has evolved into an obsession. How could it be anything else. It is like a wound. For every "illegal" cousin that stayed in my house, every "illegal" uncle who came to build interstate highways, every "illegal" aunt who came to clean suburban homes, for every one of these family members there was a wound inflicted on me. It made me question my own legal status. How can "legal papers" make me so much different from my own family? Do my "papers" really mean anything to this country, or is my skin color more important? Do my teachers resent my presence in their classes? Am I just another "illegal" to them? Now in college, I've attempted to begin answering these questions and formulating more pointed questions. How and why has neo-liberal globalization created displaced people and essentialized them as "illegal" border-crossers or the more euphamistic, economic migrants? How is this experienced locally on the most suburban of suburban American street-corners and simultaneously on the most rural of rural indigenous rancho towns? How does the Third World enter some of the most elite American (therefore) global institutions? How does this all intersect in me as the son of previously undocumented parents and as a student of San Stanford University? Possible Answer: The day laborers of silicon valley and the subcontracted midnight workers of Stanford University. A beautiful story involving Day, Night, Student, Worker, and Mojado. I want to explore these sites and use the web as a tool to recreate the liminal spaces that these sites represent.

Now my archive even works.

I believe that this blog is now successfully setup.