I’ve been struggling lately with how best to support the people of Oaxaca right now. My first thought was to go down to oaxaca. i heard they were looking for folks with experience in building blockades to come help (they are also asking for Food Not Bombs folks, and i figured my skills as a certified EMT and street medic couldn’t hurt). but reality has a way of slapping you in the face. i know that i could easily hitch down there, but i still have rent and bills and a cat who refused to hitchhike. besides, my time in Chiapas really helped me realized that the best way to act in solidarity is to take those acts of solidarity and everyday revolution back to our own communities. But being new to this city and having no network of rad friends in place, i don’t know where to begin. To keep from feeling despair i’ve kept myself busy with writing letters, but i’ve always looked at letter-writing as a supplement to action.

So as i sat down to begin writing a letter to the editor of our “local” paper (yet another subsidiary of Gannet), i thought it would be best to end the letter with an invitation to some sort of community discussion. Well, my first idea was to invite people to a film screening, but the only video i have even remotely related is a 3-hour documentary about the zapatista struggle… and its entirely in spanish with no subtitles. So that’s when i turned to the idea of a discussion.

One thing i’ve learned over the years is that if you want people to get passionately engaged in a campaign, you have to appeal to their self-interest. I think that’s why Brad Will’s death brought the struggle in Oaxaca to the forefront of many (White) activists’ minds here in the US. The struggle for autonomy had been going on for months with numerous atrocities being carried out, including death, rape, and disappearances. But when Brad was killed, it brought it home. For one, many of us knew Brad. Many knew him well from his coast-to-coast activism, others of us knew him as an acquaintance. Another thing is that many of us have been to Mexico (as well as other countries) to show our solidarity with local organizing efforts. So Brad’s death helped us realize that it could just as easily had been us who was killed. I wish empathy were more deeply ingrained in us, but for most of us it is a learning (and unlearning) process.

So i was thinking of how to draw the struggle in Oaxaca closer to home. I soon realized that i don’t need to strain myself to draw a connection between bloomington and oaxaca because they are already working on a very literal, physical connection between the two. In the US, this connection is a part of NAFTA and is called I-69. In Mexico, its part of the NAFTA and FTAA extension, Plan Puebla Panama. Its more than a connection between these two locations. Its a super-highway toll road that will, when completed, stretch from Canada to the Panama Canal. The road is planned to run right through Bloomington. In fact, there has been a strong campaign here to oppose the road. The campaign gained momentum when the government began stealing land from farmers (under the eminent domain law) to build the road. Much like the road that is already being constructed in southern Mexico, most people here couldn’t afford the toll road. But that’s ok, cuz its not built for us. The road is part of an infrastructure plan that is meant to ultimately undermine the Asian labor market (a US plan to undermine the growing economic power of China, and a plan for US corporations to exploit workers closer to home in order to save money).

I’m getting tired and this post is already getting long. So i’ll get into the bulk of what i’m calling “a thick line from btown to oaxaca” tomorrow. In the meantime, i challenge other folks in the US (especially White folks) to consider ways of bringing acts of solidarity into your community. And let me know what those ideas are.