Pages

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

The diminishing of authentic passion through corporate marketing

"Empowering People" were the words that flashed across the screen as I turned on my Acer Netbook.  If empowering people really was their priority, they wouldn't sell the computers at a price where only a small part of the world's population can afford them (mostly people who are already "empowered") and they wouldn't be a client of infamous sweatshop computer assembly factory Foxconn in the republic of China who is in the business of disempowering people.  I guess they wouldn't sell much if they told the truth in their marketing slogans, "Empowering Profit", "Disempowering the 99% in order to empower the 1%" or, even more accurate, "we don't care who we empower or exploit as long as we make a profit and the more the better".

Although I definitely feel passionate about how corporations have no consciencsous and are ruling the world and need to be stopped as well as how there needs to be a major shift in priorities of the world's political and economic system, my main point in this entry is to focus on one small evil (among the many) that corporations commmit by using these tag lines that don't reflect what they are really after.  When they claim that they are "empowering people" not because they are, but because they think that will sell more computers, it can eventually make that phrase cliche.  People see the phrase "empowering People" over and over again, don't see anyone empowered, and just keep using their computer. Meanwhile, there are efforts around the world where organizations and everyday people decide they want to empower others like this one appers to be or this one (whom I actually have experience with and can vouch for).  These orgs and efforts that honestly put people as a priority over profit, could just speak openly about what they do and maybe even use that phrase of "empowering people" and others would fall in love with their cause.  But the phrase has already been cheapened and people who would be impressed and even support their efforts are hesitant because "empowering people" is now associated with a company logo with a multi-million dollar annual advertising budget.

I used the phrase empowering people as an example.  I don't think it's reached the clicheness that other company logos have and I think there's still hope that it could actually be truly associated with people who are truly empowering people as opposed to backward priority corporations like Acer.  One thing Acer could do to earn the right to use that phrase would be to put people as a higher priority than profit.  They could give away free computers to people who need them, pay a living wage to the people who make them, provide safe and sustainable work places, not expect that any of their employees have a better life than any other, and make this phrase "empowering people" visible to all people as opposed to just the ones that might be able to buy more of their product.  I like to think I'm not affected by their fiendish almost subliminal attempt to make me think that I'm somehow contributing to a worthy cause, since I bought mine used.  I hope I'm right and I hope that this flash on the screen, doesn't subconsciencously satisfy that natural human desire in all of us to want to help others.




Sunday, November 13, 2011

Bicycle Insecurity


The other day... I decided to have lunch on the way to work at a cafe downtown at the 12th and Imperial trolley station.  After squeezing out the trolley through the crowd, my bicycle on my shoulder, I set it down on the platform, hopped on and whizzed the 200 ft around the building to the cafe. I dropped my bike to lean against the cement hump next to the entrance and opened the big glass door almost all in one motion.
"I'll have the combo with the vegetarian delight and the fries.  Can you use this plate instead of the paper plate and this cup instead of the foam cup?"  I always carry those in my backpack, you know, reuse, reduce, recyle.  I went to sit down, my whole day was a scurry.  'Where am I going next, oh yeah, my class, what am I teaching today? Ok.  chill.  frist things first... I really need to return that email to the border coalition... oh, and I have to return that call to Fran, but I can do that after I finish preparing my class, but that call's really important, and what about that email I was supposed to send this morning... and... shit.. first things first?  everything's first!...'  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.  'I gotta go to the bathroom.' Out the glass doors, bike still there, through the next set of glass doors two feet away.  As I heard "please take out all your change, cell phone, and any metal in your pockets in the tray and lay it on the conveyer belt," I was thinking, 'my bike will be ok, it'll only be out of site for a couple minutes while I take a wiz.'   The next security guard lady watching the screen was laughing so hard at the security guard with the wand in case you beep's joke, which I didn't hear, that her eyes were closed and a small tear fell down her cheek.  She stopped breathing for a second and then handed me someone else's tray.  "Oh, I'm sorry that's his!" and she started laughing all over again.  "No problem" I said and laughed a little too.  As I peed I thought "...what are these security guards supposedly protecting here?  what is this building?"  A fleeting thought that reminded me of how border patrol falsely protects us.  That's often in the back of my head.  I came out of the bathroom and they had stopped laughing.  As I rounded out the door I again saw the cement hump...  "What the fuck!?  Oh shit!... "  I knew right away someone had taken it, that there was no other possible explanation.  I ran around the corner to the trolley stop frantically looking in all directions down all the possible roads.  There was no one on them riding my bicycle.  There was a security guard in the cafe sitting right next to where I parked my bicycle...he hadn't seen anything and really didn't know how to help.  I sat back down. ' I can't believe it.'  I tried to tell myself it wasn't a big deal.  Well, it wasn't that big of a deal, but quite a pain to get around without a bike at least til my next pay check. I don't have too many things in my budget I can sacrifice, but I'll have to find something.  Shit, I just bought this bicycle. I guess people are right, maybe I should lock it every where I go and not be so trusting... maybe 40's too old to be riding a bicycle everywhere... relax, you're not far from work you can walk it and ride public trans and get another bike in a week or so.  Yeah, I'll get a better one, this'll be a good thing... Someone else that needs a bike, has one now.'  This was probably all true, but I was still in the bummed out/borderline denial stage.  I really didn't want to loose that bicycle..  I went back out and asked the trolley cops if they'd seen anything.  They could only suggest that I ask the security officers at the gov't offices, where I went to the bathroom, since it's their pervue.
"I left my bicycle out here while I was in the bathroom and when I came out it was gone.  Did you guys see anything?"
"I'm just doing my job here looking at the screen.  I didn't see anything." said the giggle lady security guard  in an inappropriately defensive tone.  I looked at the other two security officers who just kind of shrugged.
By this time my lunch was ready so I went back to getting over loosing my bicylce while I enjoyed my sandwich.  About half way through and still bummed, I heard a knock on the glass wall that separated the cafe' and the gov't building.  It was the security officer with the magic wand that made the defensive lady giggle signaling me to meet him a few feet away outside the glass doors by the lonely cement hump.
"We've recoverd your bicylce.  When your finished eating, come on in and let me know and we'll get it for you."
"Wow! That's great!"  I quickly finished my sandwhich and almost followed him back in.  When I got there, he looked at me like he didn't know why I was there, "I'm here to get my bicylce back that you recovered."  Still excited that I didn't loose it.
He got on the walkie-talkie, "...aaah Frankie come over."  Then to me, "He's coming, he'll get it for you."  In the few seconds I was waiting, I started to wonder how it is that they recoverd my bicyle and how it is that they knew it was mine.  I never even described it to them.  "So how did you guys recover it?".. before the funny guy could answer, another security guard came in, Frankie I assume, dressed in a tie and jacket... the funny guy said to him, "He want's to know how you recovered his bicycle... how you got it from that guy that took it"
"Well, actually" I said "I mostly just want my bicylce back, but I AM kind of curious."
"I don't know if we have your bicylce, I'm not sure where it would be..." said fancy dressed Frankie, kind of flustered.  I just looked at him with a confused look in my eyes.
"I have a room full of bicyles, not sure if we'll find yours."
"Well, he said you recovered it." I said pointing to the funny guy holding the wand in vane.   I was really confused now.  The funny guy called Fancy Frankie dumb and Fancy Frankie turned around and left without saying anything.
"Just ignore him.  Some peopel are dense."
Just then an elderly gentlemen, tall and slender with grey hair walked up from somewhere behind the funny guy and said "come with me" and waived me out the door.  "Your bike's in here" as we arrived at the outdoor room that holds the trash bins.  He opened the metal door and my loan bike was leaned up against a blue bin.  "Why is it in here?"
"The thing is you can't park where you parked.  You need to park at the bicycle rack."
"So you guys took my bicyle and hid it to send a message about using the bike rack??"
"Yes" he said as he turned around and started walking back at a fast pace.  I was walking back too and knew the best thing to do would be to just go to work, but I was pissed and couldn't help saying something.  I peddled up beside the short-haired Gandolf,  "Is there a manager or someone I could talk to?"
"I'm a supervisor."
"That's pretty shitty what you guys did.  This is my only form of transportation."
"We'll look into it, you're welcome to use the bike rack any time."
I just took off on my bicylce.  As I peddled out the anger and breathed in the clear air, a thought occured to me, did I just discover an undercover bicycle theft ring?

Monday, September 5, 2011

The Alamo trees

The top of the trail on our curious hike through a trail at San Pedro Mártir revealed a forest of Alamos.  As we walked through them, Dillon mentioned that he learned that all the trees in an Alamo forest are part of one living organism because their roots are all intertwined.  When one "dies", it only contributes to the ecosytem's survival.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Cross platforming social networks - Can't we all just get along?

I think I like Google+'s format a little better than facebook, but does it really matter? It's the social networking concept that has become so popular, not a particular feature that one has and another doesn't. In other words, the biggest contributing factor to FB being the most popular is the fact that everyone's on it and it feeds on itself. What really needs to happen is that all the social networking sites be connected, cross platforming. It shouldn't matter which social network I use to communicate or publish something or which social networking site someone else is using if they want to communicate with me. It should work like email in the way that it doesn't matter if I have gmail and you have hotmail. This is already happening to a certain extent with cross posting of an article or a video but you have to have an account with all the sites you want to post on. That's a pain in the ass. It's too much work to have to update your profile and projects on several different social networks. The competitition to "take over" and try to get everyone to use just one site will never end and it's counterproductive to getting people to communicate. I know people who refuse to use FB because it's too commercial, it has an ugly interface, it's too addicting, etc. They should be able to choose a different social networking site and still be able to communicate with people on FB. This will ruin competition you might say? I don't think so because people will still have a choice as to which social networking site they want to use (again like hotmail versus gmail or yahoo mail) and the different companies would continue to try to make their site the most popular or try to find a niche market. Then the priority would be on features and functionality as opposed to feeling obligated because it's the one that has the most exposure or because "all my friends are on it."

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Should borders exist?


The short answer is maybe. Political borders the way they are defined and insisted on between the US and Mexico and between Israel and Palestine are definitely causing more harm than good, generating violence through an insistence on separating people that are connected. I do believe that a type of border can exist and, in our current society, would be natural. I’ve observed, and enjoyed the fact that people, in certain areas, have a tendency to develop a certain way of life, a culture, and I see a natural demarcation forming around them. I think in parts of Latin America and in Africa this happens where people go from one area to another and there is a rough line that separates the two areas loosely defined by a way of life. A strong example of this are the indigenous communities in Southern Mexico where you can go from one town/area to the next and people speak a different variation of the language of the region, sometimes so different that it is incomprehensible between the people of the neighboring towns. In these areas, separations or borders aren’t as affected by nation states as cities around the world and small towns in rural America. They are kind of left alone by the dominant culture (except when it comes to plundering for their natural resources, but that’s another story). The areas are often separated by natural borders (mountains, rivers, or just open space). So I think borders are ok as a way of just letting people know, when they travel, that they are now passing from one area to the next without any restrictions.
I definitely don’t think the border walls being constructed between Mexico and the United States and between Israel and Palestine established through wars should exist and I definitely don’t believe there should be a “Border Patrol”. There’s no need to protect one area from the other. The notion seems ridiculous to me. I don’t mean, necessarily, that there shouldn’t be some type of representation for a certain area. To ‘border regions’, like any other region, there should be a clear path for police and ambulance to arrive in case of an emergency. And this would be a good reason to make a line between two regions in order to know which area’s police/ambulance to call on. The free movement of people, the choice to get to know each other and form a way of life in any area they choose should take priority with the lines being drawn by the very people that live these ways of life.
With the internet and commerce without borders, I do see the world becoming ever more connected and see a possible future that the natural tendency of people gathering in certain geographical areas and forming a way of life uninfluenced by other ways of life and only coinciding in the natural human functions, diminishing and maybe even disappearing all together. Then again, the natural tendency to form separate groups could be stronger than these connections and continue to exist in some form.
If we remove the insistence on one area being separated from another, borders, in the sense I’m talking about where there is a simple demaracation emphasized as much or less than the one between California and Oregon or Spain and Portugal, it seems as though, in our current society would form, and as technology develops, may continue to exist in some form in the future or may disappear completely leaving the world with everybody having, roughly, the same perspective on life. In other words, I don’t really know if they should exist because what’s being called borders today aren’t natural and it’s hard to say what would happen if they weren’t there, which they shouldn’t be. I believe that what would happen upon removing this insistence that they do exist, we would remove violence and develop more of an openness to natural human connection.

Friday, June 10, 2011

I’m disappointed in how the world is turning out.


 
When I was young child, I felt like there was a terrible prejudice toward people who are different.  I remember being angry with my Dad when he made a joke about Middle Eastern people and upset with my best friend in high school when he joked about the Trenoubal catostrophe being ok cause the people who suffered were "Just a buncha Russians."  I remember being intrigued by people who couldn’t speak English.  when I was in grammar school, I had immigrant friends from Laos and Vietnam who were two of my best friends.  My 5th grade teacher, I remember, noticed my interest and would assign the seat of any new student who couldn’t speak English close to me because she knew I’d learn their ways quickly and could facilitate class instruction for them.   Too bad she was a total bitch and I actually ended up defending them more than anything.  I remember thinking how cool it was to learn their language and go to their house and see what a Vietnamese family or laocean lived like.   I remember thinking that the world should be a place where people can take advantage of what people from different perspectives have to offer and that it could be some day.  As I got older, I felt like it wasn’t there yet but there was potential, that it was showing signs/hope that it could be.  

Then came George W Bush, the pinnacle of the “ugly American”.  Just when I felt like things were on the edge between the optimistic, adventurous, and curious minded that had the potential to love and understand and the passion to make a better world and the American who preferred to stay within the confining walls of fear, isolation, and lifeless monotony that rejected the inclusion of “foreign” ideas and who not only thought people from the US were superior to the rest of the world, but that they are the only people in the world.   I didn’t know what to do.  I felt like the chances for this world I was hoping for, the world that had a chance to exist, whatever forces were in place to carry out this world were cut off.  I feel now like he was there long enough to really ingrain intolerance into the American system.   I’m disappointed because I feel like this intolerance is not only an attitude, this “ugly American” that goes to a foreign country and doesn’t understand why people don’t speak English, has now spread to the point where English and the “American way” is dominating other countries through commerce, “free” trade, and war at an accelerating pace.  Instead of an attempt at putting us in a box that, with determination and curiousity, we could step out of, they are expanding the mono-cultural corporate box, crushing all the space outside of it leaving more and more people running around in circles grasping for a change of scenery.

During the Bush years, I did what I could to protest. I stood on the corner of a busy street with others every friday with an orange jump suit on and signs to impeach the president and gathered signatures to try to get San Diego to join some other cities around the country that had agreed that he should be impeached. I went to large protest joining millions of others who realized the damage being done and its apparent irreversability.  


While I protested, I continued on a path of doing what I liked creating situations for people to get to know each other across barriers.  Langauge exchanges with people in Tijuana.  I live in Tijuana and started a project where people would get to know each other, literally across the US/Mexico border.   I enjoyed and was inspired by this work and never looked at it as a protest or confrontation to “the system.”   It wasn’t a reaction to the political situation, it was a continuation of my inspired hope for what I saw could create a better world.   A continuation of my innocent assumption that this was a path that existed, a path that satisfied my desire to get to know the “other”.  I didn’t know how many were on this path or if gatherings of common interests at the border (yoga, poetry, language learning, etc.) would spark interest. My main drive was simply following my passion get people to come together to make friends.  I didn't look at this as the only path, I looked at as my path, my contribution. I felt validated when some of the events gained popularity and the goal of people from different walks of life getting to know each other was sometimes accomplished.


Turns out that people’s desire and enthusiasm to participate mattered little as far as the state was concerned.  As the years went on, Border Patrol increased its presence and made the bi-national gatherings more and more difficult.   The only thing to do was to protest, and protest some more.  Make waves.  My activism and my hobby/passion kind of came together when a group called Friends of Friendship Park formed in 2008 in order to stop the closing of the only place along the entire US/Mex border where friendship and family gatherings could occur, the same place I was holding these common interest themed events.  Despite support from political representatives, civil disobedience, talks with higher-ups in Washington DC, publicity in the media, and pressure from religious, environmental, and cultural groups, the secondary wall was erected in the park in 2008 and access was completely prohibited to the bi-national friendship area.  We continue to struggle to regain access and established a relationship with local Border Patrol.  This is where my clearest experience has been as far as seeing the evidence of a system that imposes and ingrains intolerance.  Through my work over the last couple years, I’ve dealt with DHS on a fairly regular basis, namely local Border Patrol and their superiors in Washington DC.  I’ve learned that their policy has no room for the idea of friendship and people getting to know each other, having the priveledge of discovering a new perspective on life across cultural barriers.    These opportunities still exist through art and other cultural efforts.  My hopes for them to be a part of the power structure as opposed to a permanent challenge to it, have dwindled.   Perhaps it was naivite from the beginning.  David beat Goliath but he never should have had to be in the impossible situation he was and overcome it with a miracle.  If he had what was at least a good argument of being the righteous one, why shouldn’t he be on even ground with Goliath?   And why couldn’t the two work together to improve the situation?  Why does Goliath have to have all the power to start with and why does there need to be an activist “struggle”?

When I started out with the bi-national gatherings that represent my ideals and my childhood passion for getting to know the other it really didn’t seem like that big of deal or that there would be any type of opposition to it.  Why would there be if there was an actual space already created and designated for it?  My path with Friends of Friendship Park is now to get back to this place, back to the way it was when it wasn’t a big arrangement or struggle, just a simple meeting of friends on a common ground.
The current path of the world brings up questions for me.  Is it too late?  Is it inevitable that we’re to become a monoculture?  Are we on a path of global Starbucks, McDonalds, GM and Walmart supported by a military/media/industrial complex?  Is now the real struggle between classes?  I feel like my insistence on people getting to know each other across cultures might be a little out dated.  Are we so far along the corporate monopoly that the only antagnosim left is along class lines?  My friend David, who is a great traveler and linguist says that beneath the superficial appearance of blue jeans, iphones, and French fries, that cultural nuances in foreign countries still hold strong.  I hope he’s right.  When I see the power being concentrated in the hands of ever less people and ever more across political lines being thrown into the proleteriate box, I wonder about Marx’s idea that the greed and profit over humanity capitalist ideals contributing to the power of the people who are being forced in the box to start a revolution.  I honestly hope not because, if the box exploded in violence and destruction of the ruling class I fear that many would die across all classes and I don’t understand how this revolution that Marx predicts would erase the classes and not result in a new ruling class.   Should I accept that we’re all more the same now and work toward making a better monoculture?  Is diversity in cultures becoming  a thing of the past?  

Friday, May 6, 2011

The tale of the Bi-national Garden - follow-up

This is final part of a four part history of the bi-national garden to document the what´s happened over the last year or so.

As mentioned in the final part of the three part series The Tale of the Bi-national Garden, the State of Baja California decided to offer El Grupo de los 12, the coalition on the Mexican side, the opportunity to adapt all the "green areas" in the park. This was kind of up in the air until the announcement the the First Lady of Mexico was coming to inaugurate the new design for the park on Feb 10th of 2011. El Grupo de los 12 took advantage of the fact that we were invited to the ceremony and sent out a press release asking that the First Lady put pressure on the state to go through with the process.

I gave a speech on behalf of El Grupo de los 12 and included a part that Ricardo Arana from Proyecto fronterizo de educacion ambiental wrote up that stated that the community is doing their part and we now ask the state to do theirs.  The speech went well and the first lady walked up to the garden with kindergarten students and we all planted a row of seed balls up against the fence.  It was a touching ceremony and there were more cameras in one spot than I had ever seen in my life.  I really felt like a movie star as I walked up to the garden next to the first lady.  The ironic thing was that there were construction vehicles and official people on the US side who had nothing to do with the 1st lady's presnence.  She turned and waved to a couple people on the US side who waved back and the official people didn't wave and didn't even know who she was.  This really pinpointed how DHS is in their own world and really wants to create a park that walls off Mexico and gives the impression to the US public as much as possible that Mexico doesn't exist or isn't worth paying attention to.
The line in the speech worked, because the very next day, the governor of Baja California called me.  His office then called Ricardo Arana who is working with the Baja California Government to make the adaption happen.  El grupo de los 12 had a meeting in which most of the orgs attended and we came up with some great ideas and a schedule to implement them through out the year by season in which we'd form teams of orgs that would be assigned to different seasons.  The new format was somewhat successful.  This, from the beginning, has been the biggest challenge that we've run into.  It's never much of a challenge to get groups and individuals together to do a planting ceremony.  It's often a challenge to find a system in which community members share responsabilities throughout the year to care for the garden.
Meanwhile, I had been contacted by local Border Patrol at Imperial Beech station to let me know that the "Explorers", a scout program that allows teenagers to explore different enforcement careers woud be assigned to maintain the garden.  I was put in contact with Agent Rudy Zuniga at IB station who was in charge of the Explorers program.  I was really encouraged by the opportunity to give the kids a different perspective than on the border emphasizing the importance of Native Flora and cross-border friendship.  I was communicating with Agent Zuniga about what the Explorers would be doing in the garden and trying to coordinate their schedule with the Grupo de los 12 schedule in order work together.  Agent Zuniga wasn´t necessarily aiming for that and had gone out to the garden with Explorers on a couple of occasions to clean it up already.  In November of  2011, I managed to convince Agent Zuniga to let me come into the station and give a powerpoint presentation to the US Border Patrol Explorer youth on Border encuentro activities and native flora.  During the hour long presentation, the 20 or so kids were relatively quiet, didn´t ask a lot of questions.  I asked what they thought of Border encuentro and the idea of making friends across the border and I got a vibe of the feeling that I used to have in High School of I´m behaving and pretending like I care because I´ve been told to and don´t want to get in trouble but I´d much rather be hanging with my friends doing something fun.  Agent Zuniga "encouraged" them to ask questions or they´d have to stay longer and one of them asked me if I was afraid I´d get in trouble with Border Patrol for what I did.  This was a peculiar question because nothing I showed them that I did was against the law or Border Patrol rules that I know of.  I realized that there was some type of precondtioning here and I answered by telling him that friendship and collaboration across the border creates an understanding and trust between people that contributes to the security of the region so we actually want to help Border Patrol reach their goal of creating security at the border.
I felt good about the presentation and I felt like the person that was influenced by it the most, unexpectedly, was Agent Zuniga.  During the presentation he told me that he would figure out a way that the Exploreres could join us in the annual planting celebration on Nov. 20th even though his superiors had told him this wouldn't be possible.  He wasn't able to convince them of it but did join us a couple weeks later with the kids for another outing where we were joined by Eli, a native plant activist who has been collecting seeds every year from native flora in the region in an effort to revegetate the region.

Eli passing a native seed ball to a Border Patrol Explorer at the outing on December 4th 2010.


During the outing Agent Zuniga mentioned to me that the Exploreres would be coming out the first Sat of the month.  Leading up to the 4th, I remember him and I almost developing an informal relationship, he asked me advice on how to teach his eleven year old Spanish and I when I dropped off some seed balls before an event, I noticed the way we talked to each other was starting to sound more like friends than a professional relationship.  Shortly after the 4th, he informed me that he'd be moving to another department and put me in contact with three other agents who would be taking his place.
There wasn't the same chance to develop a relationship with these agents and at our first meeting at the garden in January of 2011, between Agent Glance, Agent Correa, Visual Arts Professor Elizabether Chaney who had been a geat advocate and contributor to the garden effort, and I, I remember it showed.  Agent Glance asked me what was to be done and gave the kids quick military like instructions on how to proceed. When telling me them to clean up the area around the garden he told them to look out for dangerous objects and picked up an inhaler and half jokingly said "I don't know what this is, probably a pipe bomb."  It was a joke but kind of revealed how he had been briefed about the area.  I should've answered "probably not."  Anyway, despite the ignorance and the lack of relationship developed, the studentst did do some planting and I remember particularly a young girl really grilling Liz Chaney and I through the fence about the benefits of native flora and telling us how she wants to plant more in other places.  Liz also noticed that one of the kids had previously arranged to meet a friend in Tijuana through the fence and they were able to talk to each other.
We talked about a major garden gathering at the end of March for the grand Salvemos La Playa cleanup day and agreed to meet one more time before then through the fence at the garden in order to prep the area.  We met again at the beginning of March, again Liz Chaney and I plus a few other members of El Grupo de los 12, some younger members.  At first it was just Liz and I and we met Agent Glance and another agent whom I hadn't met in person.  The Explorers were back behind the secondary barrier cleaning the State Parks area and only the agents approached us.  Agent Glance explained to me that from now on he can't make the decisions for the group any more and that I have to go through chain of command and talk to his superior in order to get things approved.  This was actually ok with me because I had found that communication was a bit difficult and one Sat was already canceled at the last minute.  On this day we had arranged to meet with the Grupo de los 12 members and the Explorers so I told Agent Glance, that I like the new plan and went ahead explaining the plan for the day.  He explained to me that no adult is allowed to talk to the kids without being vetted through a background check as these are Scout rules.  I told the rule makes sense but that I should've been informed of this before hand and that I'm ok with the new protocol but that I'm worried that things will change up again that I can work with just about anything, but I can't work with coming to an agreement, making a plan and then, on day of implementation of the plan, telling me that we have to change the protocol.  He agreed, to bring the kids over in a bit when the G12 came and then just then, someone came up beside me and in a loud voice said "Hey man, talking to agent
Glance through the fence, how bout I jump over this fence and then you arrest me?  Would we get on that Border Patrol show on TV?"   He then went on to saying other idiotic things.  I guess I should've guessed that talking to two uniformed Border Patrol agents through the fence might cause some type of reaction in some people.  The agents reacted badly.  The one that was accompanying Angent Glance called him a "Pendejo" and I saw her hand on her holster.  The guy didn't notice that movement, and just made some snyde crack back to the pendejo remark and walked off.
Another guy that was standing behind the loud mouth started kind of civil conversation with Agent Glance saying something about how we're not all that different and that race shouldn't be used to divide us.  Agent Glance was still riled up (which kind of took me aback as the worst reaction possible if your goal were to difuse a situation) from the loud mouth, and told the guy to go away and let us finsih our conversation or he would call the Mexican authorities and tell them he was harrassing us because he's friends with the guy that made the snyde comments.
I didn't understand why the agents would react this way.  Agent Glance told me it seemed like there was an animosity toward me as well from them.  I think the loud mouth had made some kind of comment to me as well, but I explained to Agent Glance, cause it didn't seem like he knew, that there's a pretty big "barrier" of annimosity between Border Patrol agents and a great deal of Mexicans and that it would be pretty natural for their to be a bit of intense feelings right here for some.  His adreneline was still flowing and I don't think he was quite listening.  He left with the other agent without waiting for the G12 members.  I think partially because they were running late and partially because the indident scared him away.
I got a hold of the Agent in charge of the Explorers and he basically cut the program out of the Scouts routine completely.  I pleaded with him and explained how beneficial the garden activities were to the Scouts education and sense of accomplishment to no avail.
A few summer months went by and started the process over again of bugging Border Patrol to let me do something about the garden, let there be public access.  When I got a hold of the IB station in Early May of 2011, they told me that they were planning on contacting me to give me the chance to remove the plants temporarly because the primary barrier was to be replaced.  I asked them if they had a date that they were going to replace teh primary barrier set yet and they didn´t so I asked instead if we could have permission to go in to the garden and maintain it on a regular basis and once they had a date we would remove the plants and this is exactly what happened.  Throughout the summer Ricardo Arana with Proyecto fronterizo de educación ambiental and a key member of the Grupo de los 12 and some of his home gardening students in Tijuana along with a student environmental club at Point Loma Nazarene lead by Daniel Virden, and Jon Wreschensky from Friends of Friendship Park coalitiona as well as other volunteers joined me in regular outings throughout the summer and we rebuilt and expanded the garden on both sides.
Planting on May 25th, 2011

We continued throughout the summer around once or twice a month and I developed a relationship with Chris Young the new Assistant Patrol chief in charge at Imperial Beach station.  It was the first time that I had ever arranged an outing previously with Border Patrol and upon arriving the agents had received the message and knew the plan almost every time.  They often allowed us to use the border patrol roads to get out to the park to carry our tools and rock decorations.  
At the end of the summer, we put on a public tour of the garden as part of State Parks Tijuana Estuary involvement day.  It was on a Saturday at time when visitors were allowed into the restricted area around the binational monument about 100 ft west of the garden to visit with family and/see the monument.  A friend of mine Alex who´s passion is taking videos and especially of border related and immigration themes, tagged along that September day.  We both noticed that there were a couple of families talking acorss the border inside the restricted area.  They were separated by the primary fence along with a chest high railing that kept them about 5 ft away from their relatives on the Mexican side.  We were told by BP that there was a limit of 6 people in the garden at a time and so invited them to come over to the garden where, close by there was a gapping hole in the fence.  It allowed them to stand and talk, hold hands, hug, and kiss through the fence.  One mother hadn´t seen her son in a year and a 1/2.  Alex really captured the moment beautifully.



Followers