On the move: walks, runs, prayers & protests

Spring is here and people are on the move! From an occasional contributor to YES! Roberto Rodriguez.

Walks, Runs, Prayers, Protests & Urgent Appeals
We've been sent a number of requests from readers to pass on urgent messages. Apologies if you are being bombarded by these requests, but their very nature requires that people be minimally informed. All request moral or financial support. Please follow up if possible and feel free to post & forward. Thanks. Roberto Rodriguez - Column of the Americas.

• Macehualli Day Laborer Run for Peace and Dignity. Santa Monica to New York
• Hopi Run: Hopiland, Arizona to Mexico City-Tenochtitlan
• 350 South Central L.A. Farmers Resist Eviction
• Guerrero Azteca Project: March for Peace March 11-27
• Protection of Sacred Sites Action - March 25
• "El Agua es Vida, paz y Salud" (Water is Life, Peace, and Health) Centro Otomi, Temoaya, Mexico Marzo 17-21 (March 17-21)
  
• Rethinking Schools: "The Line Between Us" – Teaching the Border

Macehualli Day Laborer Run for Peace and Dignity. Santa Monica to New York.
A cross-country run, by jornaleros or immigrant workers commenced this month, March 11, expected to last two months.

With Macehualli Day Laborer Run for Peace and Dignity, the national day laborer community hopes to: 1) advocate realistic and inclusive immigration reform granting equality to all residents in the United States; 2) highlight the contributions of Macehualli day laborers to this country's economy and cultural wealth; 3) denounce the xenophobic and hateful motives of vigilantes and their legislative supporters; and 4) to urge reconciliation, mutual understanding, and peaceful coexistence in our shared communities. For more information, visit www.ndlon.org

Hopi Run: Hopiland, Arizona to Mexico City-Tenochtitlan March 2-18
Hopi runners earlier this month set off from Northern Arizona on a run to Mexico City - to highlight the importance of water. The runners are expected to arrive on March 14. There will be several events. One includes a historic March 16th Mexico City HOPI - AZTEC prayer for water.

The Azteca- Chichimecas, the Otomi, Mazahuas, and many other native and ecumenical groups will be receiving the HOPI H2Opi runners in Mexico City and worldwide people will be praying for, meditating, chanting and thanking WATER simultaneously while the Hopi present the water from the run to four women who are water keepers in Mexico. Please check www.tekio.net for more info. Also check www.h2opirun.org for info.

We feel that it is important to inspire people with the love, gratitude and awe that water merits. We are water and the condition of water is a reflection of the condition of humans. So let us all join and bring forth the flowing, healing energy needed to support life.
Helen Samuels, Coordinator of the Alternative Water Forum in Mexico City.

[Ed note: The run is sponsored by the Black Mesa Trust which has just succeeded, along with environmentalist partners, in stopping the Peabody Coal Company's draining of their sacred aquifers. That story was featured in the YES! water issue and the story of the recent victory is in the current issue of YES!]

Guerrero Azteca Project: March for Peace March 12-27
A 241-mile march that aims at ensuring that the Latino voice of opposition to the War is heard loud and clear across the Americas.

Fernando Suarez del Solar, Pablo Paredes, Camilo Mejia and Aidan Delgado will lead a coalition of the willing across this 241 mile quest for peace from Tijuana, Mexico to San Francisco with a memorial ceremony and blood drive.

"We make this call not only to the Latino population but to all those who agree with our message 'No more bloodshed in Iraq'." For updates on the walk, go to: www.guerreroazteca.org/

350 S. Central L.A. Farmers resist Eviction
For months now, 350 South Central L.A. Farmers have been threatened with eviction. The urban farmers are resisting amid legal and monetary threats also. At the moment, the city has pledged in writing to prevent the eviction of the South Central Farmers as long as negotiations continue between developer Ralph Horowitz and the Trust for Public Land. For updates, visit: www.southcentralfarmers.com

Grassroots Mobilization for Sacred Sites and Human Rights in Flagstaff, Arizona - March 25th
Over a thousand people are expected to converge in Flagstaff to march for Sacred Sites (San Francisco Peaks) and Human Rights on March 25th. It will be held in association with the National Conference of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (Chicano/a Student Movement of Aztlan) -- which will be taking place at Northern Arizona University during that week.

More than 50 community organizations, businesses, and institutions from throughout the US are sponsoring the March, among them the Save the Peaks Coalition, Youth of the Peaks, E.C.H.O.E.S, Native Movement, Tonatierra, and the Laguna Acoma Coalition For A Safe Environment.

“Attacks on sacred sites and colonial borders that divide our families and peoples are a violation of our human rights as Indigenous peoples within our own homelands,” said Evon Peter, Chairman of Native Movement.”

Kelley Nez of Youth of the Peaks, “This march unites the struggles to protect sacred places and the rights of working peoples, key issues that have been affecting us in the southwestern US and throughout the Americas. We are marching in solidarity with our people's north and south against the ongoing efforts for a corporately controlled global economy, which continues to leave our communities with little or nothing.”

For more info: (928) 699-9601 or yaiva@nativemovement.org or www.nativemovement.org (928) 213-9063. For more info on the M.E.Ch.A. conference visit www.nau.edu/mecha

"El Agua es Vida, paz y Salud" (Water is Life, Peace, and Health) Centro Otomi, Temoaya, Mexico Marzo 17-21 (March 17-21)
Consejo de Ancianos y Guardianes de la Tradición Otomí Olmeca Tolteca Teotihuacana & Universidad Indígena Internacional Convoca. 8, 000 TAMBORES: La Curación de la Tierra
Nuevamente, se reunirán 8.000 Tambores de los distintos Pueblos Originarios (Aborígenes), para la sanación de la Madre Tierra, por la Vida y por la Paz. Convocados por la Nación Otomí en México.

Para mayores informes del programa, visite nuestra Página e Internet: http://www.universidadindigena.org. Requerimientos de inscripción, por favor, contáctenos al Teléfono (722) 2 91 07 48 ó al (722) 7 73 22 40 o bien escríbanos hoy mismo por E-mail: informes@universidadindigena.org

Rethinking Schools: "The Line Between Us" - Teaching the Border

Dear friends,
Recently, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the "Sensenbrenner Bill." If approved by the Senate, the law would make it a felony for immigrants to be in the United States without documents, criminalize the act of helping an "illegal" immigrant, deputize local police to enforce federal immigration restrictions, and authorize millions of dollars to build 700 more miles of walls between the United States and Mexico.

Rethinking Schools has just published THE LINE BETWEEN US: TEACHING ABOUT THE BORDER AND MEXICAN IMMIGRATION by Rethinking Schools editor, Bill Bigelow. The book incorporates role plays, stories, poetry, improvisations, simulations, and video to show how to engage students in thinking critically about immigration. The book demonstrates how teachers can help students understand the immigrant experience and the drama of border life.

Sincerely, Bob Peterson, repmilw@aol.com
fifth grade teacher, Rethinking Schools editor

March 8 is International Women's Day, and the need for the balancing force of women power has never been greater.

The women leading the current "historic week of action" for peace include the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, a poet, a former US Army colonel and US diplomat, an Iraqi women's delegation, and a former candidate for US Senate. These women represent different communities, but their deep respect for life and their fierce resistance to wrong-doing holds them together.

Two of them, Cindy Sheehan and Medea Benjamin, were arrested yesterday while attempting to deliver a petition for peace to the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Their action starts this week of action that will reach its climax on March 8 with women's protests around the world. Click here to find an event or create one, and here to sign the call for peace.

My friend Kathryn Keve sent these quotes:

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day I can hear her breathing. --Arundhati Roy

It's the women's turn. --Kurt Vonnegut

We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together. --Eleanor Roosevelt

The politics of love and the politics of fear are now pitted against each other in a naked struggle that will define not only the 21st Century but centuries to come. We are the Sons and Daughters of Liberty in that struggle, indeed we are. Let us not shirk from the mission that fate has bestowed upon us, for it has done so as a blessing. Never have I been less proud of my government or more proud of its people. This is a great time. --Doris "Granny D" Haddock

For ten years, YES! has been telling the stories of the peacemakers from around the world who are showing us what is possible. We take our hats off to the women who, especially this week, are leading the way.