Cause media.
Hey everyone, it's James. I am just recording an introduction for today's episode, which we recorded on Sunday night. I'm recording this on Monday night and you will hear this on Tuesday morning. That's Tuesday, the twenty eighth of November. I just wanted to include another ask for donations right up front here, because we are tired, broke and sad. I spent last night sleeping out by the migrant camp
in Nocumber, one of the camps. It was extremely cold like and I had a good sleeping bag, right it must have been much much worse for people have blankets. I had a young woman completely breaking down and crying this morning, understandably because it's terrible and people have been there for five six days now. We ran out of food all our distribution sites today. We just desperately need more help and we need a much larger scale operation, but we can't find that. So if you're able to help,
please please do. I know it's a difficult time of year. I'm not asking you to give money that I wouldn't give. I'm thousand plus dollars deep in this. I'm not asking you to do things that I wouldn't do spending half my week out there. Like I'm not just preaching something that I am not part of. Is something I'm very much part of. Some think it's very important to me and it would mean a lot to me if people could help however they can, either materially or with their time.
Thank you very much and I hope you enjoy the episode.
Hi.
Hello, it's me James, the guy who does podcasts who talks to you when you're driving to work, and today on this podcast it Could Happen Here, which is about the world falling apart and people who are putting it back together. I am joined by two friends of mine. We are in the desert in a Cumber at the Cumba Hot Springs Hotel, which is open now thankfully. We've just spent most of today and the last two months
doing mutual aid project out here. So if you guys like to introduce yourselves in any way you think is relevant, that would be great to start off with, and then we can talk about what's been going on here.
I am have aal I use the them pronouns. I live in San Diego but now currently living in Harcumber helping out with the migrant crisis at the border.
Hi, I'm alo like alo Vera, I use she her pronouns, And I've been doing mutual aid for a couple of years now and recently have come into the scene of helping with the refugee crisis at the border.
Massive thank you, Okay. So I think to start off with, can one of you or both of you describe just what we've seen today. I think it's very hard for people to get a grasp of how the scale of what's happening and how bad it is here.
Yeah.
So today we are in the wake of a holiday where c BP takes off, well most of them are taking off for the holiday, and probably what is it iss action as well, who picks up the migrants. So there's a huge backlog of people not getting picked up, stuck in these open air detention sites. And this is some of the highest numbers that we've seen in a long time since like the beginning of this what happened in September, right, Yeah, and it's insane, like the amount
of people that we were running out of food. Basically we barely made it by on peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the world famous peanut butter.
Because we feed them they just want the sandwich.
And it was wild.
It was It's it's like the desperation is getting worse because as it gets colder, you know, people are suffering more. They're you know, shivering more, so it's using more energy. They're more hungry when we show up there tailing our van as we pull up, which doesn't didn't always happen, And yeah, the desperation is real.
We saw what like three sixty I.
Think at one camp Willows and then at another camp it was one fifty at another camp totally what seven math is hard?
Yeah, yeah, and it varies throughout the day, right, Like I'm surprised. We should explain, maybe Ali can do this. What is it open at detention site?
Right?
Oads is yacarnoon we use What does that look like?
So an opener detention center from what I've seen, is literally just people left out in the desert with nothing. The shelter that they have has either been built themselves by the shrubs and you know, the manzanita bushes that they find around there that they also burn, which creates awful smoke, as well as what we provide them in terms of tarps, blankets, tents. What I've seen in the open air detention centers is essentially when Border Patrol has the start of a quarter, they have the money to
really get people out of there. You have a lot of people just processed very quickly. It doesn't pile up. And then because of that, all the infrastructure that we put into these places, and all of the infrastructure that these refugees build themselves, right this is not provided by Border Patrol, gets basically ruined. And so you have soiled blankets that have become the tops of tents because that's their only use.
At this point.
You have not enough shelters, so people are sleeping just among the rocks and trees because it's the best they can. And I think one of the most notable points of these open air detention centers is legally speaking, Border Patrol gets around this by not really calling them detention centers, saying that they're not detained and that technically they're free. But the reality is there's nowhere for them to go
without getting you know, arrested or deported. But because of this loophole, Border Patrol has no obligation to feed them, and so when they do feed them at the start of the quarter when they have the budget at which they blow. It's oranges, it's crackers. It's not enough to live off of when you're stuck there for five days. I spoke to a Kurdish migrant today who had been
there for five days. And you know, we've heard of people staying there for an entire week, just stuck in these camps as they overflow with people because they're not cleared due to whether it be a holiday season or whatever it might be that puts us in this circumstance.
Yeah, and obviously most people won't have been here. You can look on a map or Google Maps that you want to, but all of this is happening like literally in the shadow of the border wall in some cases, or right next to the border wall. Sometimes it's a little bit next, a little bit further away. And just to explain why there are these where they eye you, guys want to explain like how people are getting to
the because cir Cumber. If you've got Google Maps, if you're not driving, like, you can put it up and you can look right, we're like an hour and a bit east of San Diego, at seventy miles east of San Diego closer to El Centro in San Diego. So can you explain how people are ending up here by the hundreds of thousands.
Yeah, so.
Talk to many migrants and they stay in a hotel in TJ. I have no idea which one, and wouldn't give that information if I did, but they, Yeah, they stay in a hotel in TJ. And they get separated by nationality. So the Coyotes take their passports from them and put them in stacks and separate them by their nationalities. So you'll get you know, Chinese nationalists together, You'll get people that are from Turkey together, mostly Kurdish, and.
Then you'll get whatever their nationality is.
And I'm sure the outliers get just lumped into whatever is the most you know, like group, yeah, language group exactly. And then they get in the morning, I guess that like five or six am, they drive all the way out from TJ to Hkamba and get dropped off at
there's three points where there's breaks in the walls. And these walls obviously they don't go over the mountains because Trump was trying to build distance rather than actual stopping people, and so these breaks in the walls are very easy to cross.
It's literally just walking over.
There was some remnants of concertina wire or bob wire like in the area, but it's all ripped and super easy to cross.
And so the.
Coyotes will drop them off near or bits away from that point and have them walk in when that's where border patrol. After they cross, border patrol will intercept them give them wristbands for the day they arrived. We actually just saw this last week. They must have ran out of wristbands because they were giving like Sunday wristbands when it was like a Wednesday. Yeah, everybody saying fuck like
and that makes our job more complicated too. Not only their job, I'm sure, because they're trying to process them in order, but our job because we're trying to record how long have people been here. I remember I was talking to a Chinese nationalist and had to call a translator just to see like because they had a Sunday wristband and I think it was Tuesday or something already, and I was like, wait, you got you've been here for two days. And they were like like trying to
explain what the language barrier wants. The translated like, no, we got here three hours ago. We kept thinking they got here three days ago. They kept showing the number three on their hands, and so, yeah, they give them these wristbands and then tell them to wait in these areas that are very close to where they are intercepted, and Border patrol will tell them there's cameras all over the desert, we're watching you, so don't leave, and if you leave, it'll mess up your migro process or your
asylum process, and so they most of them stay. We've actually have seen a lot of people walking on the eighty here trying to get to town because they're desperate, they're cold, they're hungry, and they're probably just like fuck this, you know. But it's interesting too, how like border patrol in all media aspects denies the existence of the camps.
Yeah, they're not explicitly to me right later, they don't exist, or they don't detain people people that they what they'll say to people aren't detained here, that they're free to go.
Which technically they are and they can walk.
But I had a Kurdish friend that I met at one of the camps that we call Moon Camp, and twenty year old from Turkey, and he said that him and a bunch of friends that he was traveling with just walked to the subway up the street, got a subway sandwich, and then border patrol showed up after they had ordered their food, yeah, and said you have to go back with us, but finish your food here, because imagine them walking in was being taken back with subway
sandwiches and be like, oh, we can just leave and get out of here. Like so they just finished their sandwiches and then he took them straight back.
So that is detention. If you can't leave, then you're in detention. That's the debt. By definition.
I feel like, yeah, and I don't think people think they are free to leave. And I don't think people certainly they're not told what situation they were in, right, I think that maybe they would assume that, But there's also not very many places for them to go. We are in the middle of nowhere.
So from what I've talked to different people, you know, on top of just like crossing the border, there's also an entire period where these people are traveling and all of them travel in different ways, and some of them are traveling all the way from South America through Panama, through the jungle, and you know, people are dying on the route over here, and some of them are lucky enough to just fly in and and you know, right, yeah, they have to fight to Cancun, fly into Cancun, and
then make their way over to TJ and make it through the border. And I have seen, like for myself with my own eyes, you know, burns from motorcycle exhaust from you know, the different methods that they've used to get here. And I've seen spider bites, I've seen, you know, injuries that are infected that have been infected for a long time because they've been that way since they were
in the jungle, and it's inadequate. I had a woman that I was helping give medical care to whose ankles were swollen from a steroid that she was given that she should not have been given and that she had a bad reaction to. And yeah, that's just been their reality traveling here and trying to get here. On top of that, I think that speaking of medical issues and speaking on what you were saying earlier about the threats of becoming undocumented, the threats of you know, being forced
to stay in these camps. There's even fear of having a medical emergency. So like when EMS comes out, when we call nine to one one or Border patrol calls nine one one, right, they're not like working in connection with Border Patrol. They're just going to a hospital as if it was you know, someone house person on the
street going to the hospital. And so they end up there, and if they're not given the proper information to get a court tape, to finish their asylum process and to really like be submitted properly into the country, they are at risk of becoming undocumented. And I think that fear has spread among people, and I've definitely noticed personally that there is fear to have nine to one call to be taken away in an ambulance because they fear, you know, becoming undocumented or being.
At risk or separated.
Separated has been a big thing because if they end up having their process either take longer or just be stuck in the hospital or whatever it may be, they're away from their family, they have to go through a different process. They're not processed that at the detention center is the same way or at the same time. So it's just it's a it's a there's a lot of fear and I think that's led to a lot of unnecessary harm. And we do our best in terms of
medical care, but there's you know, we're limited. We you know, it's over the counter, it's you know, it's we can't do much.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's a street medicine really yeah exactly. Yeah, Like we have some doctors and nurses and other qualified medical people come and help, but they don't have the diagnostic tools that they need. Right, Like today we had somebody who had clearly some high issues and like the best we can do is say, this person needs to go to hospital. But then in this case they were able to take the person's partners. Sometimes they won't take
the person's partner. Sometimes the person could be separated from their children, and so they're obviously very afraid of that. And to compound that, I think like the release that they're not released in the way they had proviously been released, that they're dumped onto the street at certain transit centers, right, and then again it falls onto volunteers nonprofits to help
them get to where they're going to go. The scale of the mutual aid operation is really impressive, and it's something that I don't think is is like we don't talk about enough. People don't really understand it, So could maybe we just start like literally what we do every day in a day. We havevolity here every day.
Yes, yeah, One thing I forgot to mention is I am here every single day now full time, ten plus hours a day. It's eight days a week. And so yeah, every day we wake up. I wake up around like six am, and we try to get to the first camp, which is down the street from where I'm staying, around
seven thirty or eight o'clock in the morning. And the previous night we have loaded the van up with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because they have a good hold, you don't need to keep them really refrigerated much or you know, the YadA YadA, and so it's just peb and j's water and fruit and we give them each one at least sometimes more if we have the capability, and then we another person who is also here full time will hit another camp on their way because it's
on their way to meet up at a central location we call the Youth Center or the YC, where all of our donations end up, whether it's clothes, blankets, food items, non perishables, perishables. We have a fridge and in that place. Once we get there, we'll assess what we need to
do is do we need to make more food? Do we have enough to go feed the third camp, which we call one seven seven, which is all the way in Boulevard a little outside of Hakamba, And if we have enough, we'll just hit we'll leave and hit that spot and then come back and start dinner. And in the meanwhile, we have a lot of volunteers that will show up and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because that is our easy go to staple. It's quick to
give out. It's you know, not a whole lot of prep time to make you know, five hundred sandwiches, which seems like a lot, but we've gone through probably tens of thousand sandwiches by this point.
So he gave out a thousand PB andjs today.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
Yeah, we ran out like today, I gave out everything and there was even people where like the two we got everybody in the line, which was I think I think that was around three sixty. No, no, it was three sixty when we did account and so in the morning, Yeah, and we ran out and but we had two. So like a lot of the times, especially the micros that
have been there multiple days, they'll jump in. There's like always two people or three people that are like, I'm here to help Kurdish people, our amazing help and are always willing to step up. But yeah, this morning at Willow one of the camps, we had two guys that were kind of controlling the line and helping keep them back, and one of them like send them to us one
at a time. And at the very end of it, I had nothing for them, and I was like going to hook them up with a couple of sandwiches and a little like everybody who helps, I'll cook them up with a couple of extra sandwiches or food items or water or cigarettes even And uh, yeah, I had nothing for them except for kids sandwiches or kid sandwiches kid packs.
So we make these little sand which bags full of like different candies and you know, granola bars and things that kids would like to eat and give them a lot of nutrition and stuff.
So I just gave them extra.
That and once other migrants saw me giving those things out that I had been holding and telling other people, no, these are for kids, then everybody swarmed and it was just like, okay, well, I'm giving all the kid whoever's there, whoever's arm is there, They're getting you know, a kid's pack, and got rid of literally all of our food. And I think we put in like twelve plus cases of water, forty packs, and they were all gone except for maybe like ten or fifteen waters.
It was one of the more dire mornings.
That we've had, especially Yeah, at these camps.
I know that three p sixty was the number that you guys got in the morning, but I believe that by the time that we were working in the evening, at least when I was doing medical check, the number that I was getting told either around the camp or from Border Patrol was five hundred at Willows So and this is you know, these are numbers that even Border
Patrol is like freaking out over. They are, you know, worried because they can't deal with this quantity of people and keep them processing while there's still a consistent flow. And that's you know, it puts a lot of strain on us because, like you were saying, we're running out of food. We don't have enough to feed five hundred people. You know, every day, even though we're just doing you know, two meals, a breakfast and as best we can a dinner, and trying to make sure that dinner is a hot
meal because it is frigid out here. I slept in my van and I kept having to wake up to try and warm up and do something to keep myself from freezing. And I, you know, I can only imagine what it's like for them with what minimal equipment they have. Some of them don't even have tents. So it has
been a lot. I know that today, running medical, I've seen a lot of people with colds, and I am suspicious that that perhaps there is COVID running around, that perhaps there is, you know something, there's definitely something, some kind of very severe illness. Going through the camps and being in this freezing cold is not helping anyone's immune system. And on top of that, I've seen broken fingers and
some other stuff. And that's that's been my today. Yeah, has been treating that and then helping out with dinner, which I will say I tried a little bit of the lentils and rice, and I can say we are feeding them well.
It is delicious, delicious food. Thank you.
Sam Schultz, an amazing cook and an amazing helper for us making sure that we, you know, are able to do this for like you were saying, for a long time, you know, this was put on uh, you know, one family of locals to really yeah, one family of Quakers to really take care of these people day in and day out. And it wasn't until you came here and we're able to actually like be here full time that there was even just an extra hand around. And you know, right,
volunteers are here during the week. But the reality is is we are all still stuck at work, we all still live in this healthscape. We're all still stuck grinding those gears and making ends meet. And so coming out here for a lot of us is you know, like for me, is a weekend task. It's you know, it's what we can do. It's what we have the ability and the time and the gas money for. And on top of that, a lot of us spent a lot
of our own money. I know that I've spent like at least a grand and a half on just like supplies for these runs, on supplies for whatever I can. And you know, sometimes we get we're able to get reimbursed by our mutual aids, and sometimes the money runs dry and we just, you know, we need a lot of support out here that we don't have, that we don't get And I feel like we really felt that today running out of food.
Yeah, it was bleak today. And of course the thing is, like we can feed five hundred people and do this gargantuane effort, and then we have to feed the same number tomorrow. And like if we clear out us that we on top of like those of us who are able to go out to do medicals, to do feeds, sometimes some of us go out and construct shelters or to check that there aren't people who are sick and the shelters who aren't getting care that they need, et cetera,
et cetera. Like you said, people have to cook, right, people have to make pbdas people have to resupply our stuff and drive it up from San Diego, which is an hour and fifteen minutes away. Like it's a gargantuine effort that it's exclusively taken on by volunteers, and like a relatively small group of volunteers considering the scale of the task at hand. I wonder like if you would like talk about your volunteering experience a little bit, because I think it's been great. Like it's a very diverse
group of people. We've had so many We have the Schultz family who are Quakers, who are amazing, who have been like spearheading this since the start. We have like obviously a lot of anarchist people, and a lot of people from various migrant advocacy and aid groups. Uh that's what we had the Black Panthers the other day. And it's probably a ton of people I'm missing.
But yeah, in church groups, church careers, I mean, the whole the y C was kind of given to us and I think now we're renting it to my knowledge, but that was given to us by the what's the Church of Methodist Church here in Hukumba. And then there's a group of Mormons and they're just kind of unaffiliated from the church in a way, like they're not There was just a family that saw the need and some of the elders were helping load up the beans that
they made the other day. You know from the house that the lady that makes it, and then another lady, Mormon lady makes us these roles and we'll just like give us like hundreds and hundreds of bread rolls, which everybody loves, even the volunteers.
I've been eating the bread home made rolls. Yeah, it's super good.
So that Yeah, like you said, mutual ad groups, anarchists, just individuals. Random people will show up they heard it. We had a couple of people show up that heard it on National, NPR, KPBS, and you know, then they orgs border kindness. I'll look, Gelato will come out here and send volunteers and whatnot. But it's hard to really rely on volunteers. Like we have a sign up sheet and everything so we can kind of gauge what the day is going to be like.
But sometimes people don't show up, and.
Sometimes especially around the holiday times, it gets really thin because everybody's got their own lives and things to do. And but yeah, I mean I started volunteering just on my weekends when I was working full time at my dead end job back at home in San Diego, and I would you know, saw the need. I was down at Whiskey eight in San di Sidro pretty much every day after work and.
On the weekends.
And then when they started doing street releases at IRIS station in San Diego. I would just be there full time and on my weekends, just be there until in death and Haitian Bridge started showing up and kind of took in Detention Resistance and they kind of took over that scene, and so the need was like, oh, Jakamba
needs help, so I just would come. After that, I just started coming out here every weekend from I would get off on a Thursday at like two pm, take care of my cats at home for a second, then drive out, help out whatever I could by the time I got here, spend the night somehow either I never had to sleep in my car, but I would be ready to, and then I have some friends here that would put me up for the night and stay Thursday night to Friday, work all day Friday and all day
Saturday until I had to go home because I worked at five am on Sunday. And then all that week I would just be at wait going down after work. And so I haven't had a day off since this really started. I mean, I think I got the flu for a week five days right am. I had a fever four or five fucking days in a row, which is horrible, but so not really a day off.
Technically, but yeah.
And then I since I had been coming out here every weekend and dedicating my time to Hukumba and had so many ties with like the locals and I know, the people who own the hotel out here that we are currently at, and just you know, showed face and it showed a strong worth work ethic, I guess to help feed these people, and the passion of you know, and the amount of care that I gave and attention to these people and listening to them and the Schultz family who are like the main on the ground people.
Since day one, We're like, yeah, this this person needs to be out here. We want to have all out here full time and all Lochlado got a grant to UH to basically fund that, and so once that money came through, I just took a sabbatical from my nine to five and I was like, peace, I got more important things.
Do you think give Jeff Bezos more money? You know? So he needs more yachts clearly?
Yeah, clearly?
Yeah and more space trips you know.
Yeah.
So yeah.
So ever since then, I've just you know, I'm lucky enough to have that, and you know, showed that, you know, dedication to where I can be out here, and I honestly like some people may think like, oh, because I'm getting paid, I'm a boss or I'm a lead, and like to me, it's like, no, we're all leading and I'm still just doing the same work. I'm just now able to be here well on payroll forty eight hours a week, but in reality it's ten hour days, eight days a week.
It's all the time. And like, yeah, I think it's really important that people know actually that we have a very veryverque group. It's not like everybody is necessarily like committed to horizontal organizing is a bill and endule, but that's how we operate and it works really well.
Yeah, especially Sam and the Quakers, they're very good at listening to the American Friends Society.
Right, Yeah, it works so well. Like when I was just thinking the other day, I was out here and it was the day before the holiday, and first of all, we had this moment where this lady pulled up and she was like, hey, who's in charge. We were all like everyone's in charge, and the lady was like what how does that? How did you then? But then like another time, we had a bit of a crisis we ran out of balls when we're trying to feed people, and like one of us came up with yeah, and
the ziplock back yeah we made. So we were like, we didn't have bowls, we had sandwiches, So we gave them a sandwich and then took the zip block back back and filled it with beans. And like, you know, it wasn't the person who'd been here for the longest or done the most sessions, but it was a great idea and it got us out of a difficult situation. And like, I think, because we organize with respect for each other, we can listen to each other and incorporate
those ideas. And you had something to say.
Oh, yeah, I just I want to highlight the community that I've seen built here. I know that in terms of nine hich organizing, I I personally have seen you know, everyone step up and lead, even people who are there their first day. Right if there is a task to be done and they say they know how to do it and they have a good idea, they're leading it,
They're spearheading it. There is you know, there's no second guessing or egos that I've seen, at least not to such a degree that it's been harmful, and I think that that has given us a lot of power and has allowed sort of our creativity to get us through this. I think it's a testament to what non hierarchical organizing means and how you know, lack of hierarchy and lack of a dedicated leader doesn't mean a lack of leadership. I think it falls on all of us to lead.
It falls on all of us to bring what we know to the table, whether that be from the experience that we've had coming here and working here and knowing the details and the minutia of what's going on specifically here in Hakumba with this project, or what we bring to the table from our past experiences. And I think that that has really beautifully coalesced into a really efficient system as best as we can do, as best as
we can manage. You know, we've really made do and kept people alive in a huge way.
Yeah, And I think kept people alive is right, Like if if I don't know how this would have gone down if we weren't here, because I don't know if they would have kept doing it, but certainly more people would have been very unwell or passed away like, I think we can all think of a different medical emergency where we've had to intervene to stop it getting much worse.
Yeah, Like just last week, I think, did you come out the day after something rained on all of us and there was like a heavy downpour.
We weren't even ready.
We thought it was, oh, it might be like a little drizzle or it might be light rain here, and they're scattered. But then we set up and we're cooking and getting ready for to do lunch or after breakfast and getting ready to do our dinner and stuff, and it just started downpouring on us. And I was driving and I told you, oh, yeah, you showed up that day and literally like we inter as we got to we were like, oh fuck, we got to like move now.
So we just got all the ponchos that we had a bunch of ponchos, got them all in the car, drove to the first camp that we had fed that morning, and we're just started handing out ponchos as the rain's coming down. They're walking in as you know, the coyotes dropped them off and that's a long hike had the Moon camp from where they end up to where they break in the wall is thirty minute.
Walk, yeah, so or so.
And so they are arriving in the pouring rain, their socks are getting wet. It is super cold, especially at Moon because of the location. It's just ridiculously cold, and that's like case for hypothermia. And we're there to you know, to stop them from getting so wet. We're giving them trash bags for their bags, ponchos for their being their persons. I remember seeing this little girl, she must have been
like five or six. And then we had cardboard and because we didn't think it was going to be so pouring before we when we loaded up the van and we had cardboard to keep you know, the ground drive for them to like lay on in their tents or whatever. And people took the cardboard out of the van and we're like blocking the rain and shielding this little child from getting wet, you know. And it's super windy at
Moon too, at that camp. It's the location. It gets a lot of the the wind from uh whatever that passes, Yeah, it comes up from Yeah.
Yeah.
I think anything you said, which we should probably touch on, it's like perhaps it's because of the way we organize, because we don't have like strict rolls jobs or low
leadership things. But like you'd mentioned it before, but like nine times out of ten, we end up doing things with people know people right, Like the other day, I know, like a Kurdish guy and I set up a ton of tents, Colombian dude, and I built this amazing shelter and it wasn't for hit and his family, it was for anyone who needed it.
I definitely have seen that sort of collaboration with the migrants, and I feel like it doesn't feel like charity. It feels like mutual aid. And on top of that, when I'm hearing from them, you know they you know, they're helping us out. But then on top of that, they're saying, I'm going to get processed and I'm coming back, I'm helping, and I'm have you been in touch with anyone who is who has come back yet?
Well? Yeah.
Actually, like early on in IRIS, when I was doing IRIS, there was like a few people that were staying a few days before they traveled onward and they just wanted to be around and help. There was also a dude we just called him Columbia because he was from Columbia, it's kind of that nickname stuck and he stuck around. I mean he got sponsored by pretty much loosely sponsored by one of the organizers that was helping out of Wa and he stuck around. He came out to Ukumba
a bunch of times. He killed it on everything he did, cooking dishes, whatever, you know, cleaning up whatever. He just he just saw that need. And yeah, I mean I've been in contact with a couple of people that said they would come out, and you know, I don't pressure them. I don't and a A I wanted pressure them to come out because they came here for you know, better
life and all that. But at the same time, it's just hard to get back to some people because I've given them brought to way too many Kurdish people to get back to everyone on WhatsApp and that's you know, I got signal, I got regular text.
And then whatsappened That kind of gets buried.
So, yeah, there was some Afghan folks out here in September. A few Afghan folks who would come out. I think they had arrived either in May or but perhaps earlier. But there were some afcron folks who came out and we're able to help us. Of course, like it's great because we don't all have all the languages we need and we don't have all the skills we need, and so the more people we can incorporate, even if temporarily well they're here, then like the better we can help people, right right.
Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, I mean, but I think definitely the the the vibe is there that they want to come help. And yeah, like the other day I was feeding. We're doing a hot dinner and we set up and everything, and then all these Kurdish people because I you know, will wear this caffee like a like a scuff yeah, with the scarf that that you gave me, uh all the way from Comishla, and so they recognize it.
And then I know the saying is bji.
Kredistan when you know you're from Turkey, oh you Kurdish because most of the people from Turkey are Kurdish, not all the most, And so you know, we'll start talking and then you know, they get all excited and then they would just want to help, you know. And I think even regardless of if I said that or not, or had the scarf on, they would still just want to help.
Remember one time I was surrounded.
It was just me serving one of the things, because we'll serve multiple things water like a soup, and then a rice or a bread or whatever, and then maybe some hand wipes or something, and so we just had it was just me in the middle, surrounded my Kurdish people, and I remember the dude next to me.
It was just like someone videotape.
Yeah, we Krittish people help really well, tell the world, you know.
Yeah, and then like even yeah, when we're not doing food, So it's like guys will often come up to me and be like, hey, do you have bin bags? We'd like to clean up. We'd like it's a mess here and we'd like to clean up.
Yeah, we're unloading every time I'm loading, Like that's its cellphone charging station. I want, Like it doesn't matter, you know what nationality. Someone is there to help, They're like, oh, can I grab the table? Can I do this? How can I plug this in? A lot of times are plugging and I'm like, no, I got this a certain way. I like to plug this all in that makes sense and relatively high risk activity. I don't want any electrocution or.
Like the other day I was chopping some stuff with an axe and guy wanted to help, and I was say, look if I hurt myself and I can get to hospital. If you hurt yourself, it's going to be a rough.
That could have been a stick it out.
He might purpose hurt himself at.
That point he had his whole family. Yeah, but yeah, we build shelters, and like, some people are really good at that, and they're good at tying knots, and they're good at seeing things at three D and some people are not. So like, often just get a team of people who can help, and then you'll get a team of people who need shelter. So we'll just career to round building shelters for people. And it's fun. Like it can't I'm sure it's not a very stimulating environment out there,
you know. So being engaged in a talk, completing stuff and helping people, I'm sure he's rewarding.
Or like, yeah, even tonight we had a dude from Turkey who just like was holding his head. Tia one of our local residents. She lives around here. Medically, she's doesn't have a whole lot of medical experience other.
Than being a mother or a grandmother.
And working in as a pharmacy tech and knowing a little bit about it and learning and being super badass. She came to me and she's like, look, this guy has a headache, he's a migraine and he has medication from TV. So this is obviously like an ongoing situation. And my eyes were her just from all the smoke, yeah, the fires that they were starting in the area, and he's just sitting there holding his head, clearly, just absolutely miserable.
So she took him in her car just to like give some heater and to warm them up and to try to make him feel better, get him away from the smoke. And she's like, yo, we got to get this guy. He's here traveling alone from Turkey. He doesn't have anybody. So we went and found some more and
I think he was Kurdish as well. We went and found another Turkish person or Kurdish person from Turkey, and I grabbed this person and I was like, hey, I have somebody here who has a gnarly migraine and they just they need their heir alone.
They don't have shelter they need.
And so this guy came over and talked to him and was like look, I got we got a tent over here, come camp with us. Like that's the kind of shit that we have to deal with, you know what I mean, Just like the migrants will like getting a migrant to help another migrant, you know, it's just like it's community. That's what like mutual aid is about.
I think that and that specific situation, I had been talking to the group that took him in. I'd been talking with them and chatting with him, and I sat by the fire with them just talking about you know, what was your experience like, and trying to get warm because God, it's cold out there, even for us volunteers, and you know, we're far away from the fires, and it's really hard because you know, this road is cleared and so there's you know, there's no warmth out there
by where they have to stand to get food. But what I what I wanted to highlight was that because we are interacting with these people as equals, because we are coming here and seeing them as people, and we spend the time to talk with them and to build commune with them, we can build those connections which allow people like the gentleman with the migraine to you know, be taken in and to have you know, basically a temporary family while he's there and make sure that he's
taken care of. And that's I think something that really highlights the strength of this type of organization and this type of work, type of you know, the way that our politics, the way that our ideals really shine in this kind of setting.
Yeah, it's right. Like I've been around a lot of humanitarian crises and you know, refuse situations, and I think we're doing it really excellent. Do you have a stectually Given the minimal funding and and sort of scale of access to resources we have, we could do a lot more if we had a lot more money, but we don't.
You know, we're cooking on like a fucking burners us. Yeah, bro, we took up to a propaneting that's made out of an old cag that's just like if you turn it on wrong and let the gas bleed, you will blow yourself up. So it's just like like Sam shuw is you know, responsible for everybody at the youth center where we do stuff. So he doesn't really like other people cooking,
does it. I mean, even though I know how to do it, He's like doesn't even like me doing it because he's responsible for me if anything were to happen. So it's like our capacity is super limited. We don't
have enough burners, we don't have enough containers. We have a couple one really nice like locking containers that hold hot food and keep the food hot, but not enough to serve upwards of six hundred people at all three camps, and not enough vans, like it would be ideal, like in my situation to send a van that has charging capabilities to charge everybody's cell phone, to feed everybody, to give them water and all their needs, blankets, medical to each camp all at once.
Instead of us driving, it's.
Cooking a massive amount of food of the UTH center and hoping we have enough to hit all three camps.
Because the numbers we can try to call border patrol offices and get numbers, but the numbers are always a little skewed or just off, you know, or sometimes lately they have just been straight up not giving us the fucking numbers, like being dicks, especially uh Campo Border Patrol Office, which because we deal with two different Campo takes care of the Boulevard open air detention site and then the boulevard. Border Patrol takes care of the willows.
In the moon camp in a kumba and.
Straight up the boulevard Port of Patrol called Campo Nazis. Like they treat their employees like Nats. They're just Nazis, and I've seen it in fact.
Yeah, but yeah, like we have to interact with board Patrol a lot to get people the help that they need, right, but like, yeah, they're definitely some cases where like there have been certain people who are much like they they the agent I spoke to today for a Border Pol agent,
he was very accommodating. He took the person who was in medical distress and their partner, He drove them himself to where they could be ms and ensure that the pretunity they go to hospital, Like I don't have a whole lot of knowledge what happened afterwards that we don't have. We're not entitled to their private medical information and not should we be. But like other times, it could be
much harder. So it's just luck of the drawer, right, Like we there's so much we don't control, I guess, yeah, and like we don't know exactly, Like we can't control who goes when, who has the highest level of knee you know, like constantly people will be coming up to me and being like, hey, like today I was warming up milk for babies in my camping stuff, right, and it was three or four babies, and they were like,
do you think they'll take us first? We have babies, And like I think most of the people there would rather give up their space and let that baby go out because no one wants to see a fucking baby shivering out there like it's fucked, it's terrible, but we don't know, and we can't tell you and we can't help you, and so like a lot of that stuff's outside of our control. But the stuff that's within our control, I think we've done a really good job of I
wonder like if people are listening. I think I just want to convey that we're all just weird, like a group of like we're not like Ragca extremely like Motley Crewe, and but we're really doing excellent work. I think if it may blow our trumpet, but like if people want to come and help, first of all, I would like
you probably can. People think that they can't, they don't have anything useful, Like I promise you do, Like if you can, if you can like lift a ladle or like a palette of water bottles, or drive a vehicle, or.
Multiple multiple languages, sometimes it's like yeah you want or even just right, or even just one language other than English, because I mean even some people speak perfectly English out there, and so just going out there and paying attention to them, even if you don't have the capacity to cook food or to serve food or whatever, if you can go talk to people and you're sociable and you can make
connections and listen to their needs. And you know, there's Google Translate, there's we have a list of translators, like a form with numbers, so if you have a language barrier, you can just call start calling down the line of numbers of Mandarin or this language or that language, and you can get I got a hold of somebody one time for Mandarin to figure out how many days they had been there, and it was like called a couple of people, first no answer, and then finally someone picked up,
and so it's yeah, you know, anybody, there's always you could always find something. Honestly, one thing that I make doing, which when I first started coming out here, we had a little bit more volunteers, especially I was coming out on the weekends, when weekends typically we have more volunteers because people have jobs in the weekdays, and week days
we have less. But I was when I first started coming out to Hookumba on the weekends, I started bringing my guitar and my bongos and my you know, different instruments, tambourines, and I we gave out all the instruments to the migrants at night while we were giving them dinner to they were around the campfire and so that they can play and enjoy themselves and lift their spirits and so like that would be rad to have somebody on spot all the time with a guitar and like jamming with
the migrants and lifting their spirits because it's they're miserable. And one dude from Muzbekistan once sold me. Spoke really good English, and in fact he told me about there's like commercials and so he.
Worked at like a center where they send people over here.
Wow.
Yeah, like he was on the call center or whatever for it or something like that.
But well, I was like, well, like how was it?
Like I he was like, honestly, we're just bored. Yeah, they're just waiting and at that time, like the weights were like four or five days. You know, it changes, it vary as it goes from two to three to four or five, and the dissensions and sometimes they get out the same day if they're lucky. But yeah, it was just we're bored and we're just waiting and they're anxious, and which also just tears at their spirit while they're you know, their first day in America, you know.
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, like welcome to America, sleeping with jesseet. It's like just above freezing.
Yeah, and here's no blankets, no structures, no anything, no food, no water. If your lucky, Border patrol will bring crackers and water for not enough people.
Yeah, and yeah, a bunch of US waiters turn up with blankets and that's it.
Yeah.
And I know that even if it's you know, I try and include other people. But even just like I go out there with my guitar sometimes and there's a lull and or we're waiting to pack up or whatever, and I'll be playing and I think the little moments
like that mean everything for these folks. And I know that I've you know, I'll bring up that I have, you know, on a day that I don't have my guitar, I'll bring up that I play it and the migrants will be all excited, wanting me to bring it out or wanting me to to you know, whatever the activity may be, just to to stimulate, you know, their minds
a little bit. I mean, this is it's it's really bleak and being there for for days, for just stuck in the desert with nothing to do, right, And I mean sometimes, you know, I've seen a soccer ball out there that the kids play with, and that's that's so heartwight warming. Things like that that really, you know, we want these people to feel like they can still be in community with each other like they're not. And I feel like things like that really.
Help to.
Repair that sense of desperation, because right now, with the level of desperation, we do see a lot of fighting for some applies, a lot of fighting for resources because it's it's hard. It's hard out there. People want to
make sure that their kids have blankets. People are so cold they can't sleep, And I feel like things that bring them together, activities that really make them feel like a community out there and help us feel in community with them, allows us to have a more cohesive relationship and allows things to go more smoothly. And I think it's, you know, in some cases, more important than the supplies themselves, because it makes sure that they go to the right places.
It helps us triage, it helps us, you know, it's its own tool for survival.
It could distract them from their suffering, you know, if they can have an ounce of joy, you know, and this horrible condition, in these horrible conditions, that it'll distract them enough to smile and to laugh and to not be miserable.
Yeah, I have a normal moment. Yeah. So I wonder if people want to help, what are the ways that they can help.
Ways it can help are are coming out here directly, hands on the ground.
Money donating money.
Is another huge need because a lot of the supplies that we need cost money.
We need a new kitchen, we need, you know, a.
Dishwashing station because we're currently just dumping all of our dish washing water into a lawn that has a small drain. Yeah, and yeah, a Loolato is one organization that takes money that you can donate to. Border Kindness is another one. Yeah, I know, Detention Resistance is out here. A lot the most direct way to is would be donating directly to Sam Schultz himself. So yeah, and just you know, following those same organizations, they're a free shit. Color Active is
another one. They mostly focus on W eight. But this is all related, right, Like I we had this man from Turkey who came with his dog Bom bomb or bam bam like he said flintstones, but they say bomb bomb, I guess. And he was stuck in one of the camps, and so you know, we like took his dog because he was not going to be taken from the camp. He spent the night alone because they had enough room for him. They's like, they don't know how to process a fucking dog, I guess. So we took his dog
for him and so he could get processed. And once he ended up out of detention at Central, which is where they released them, we reunited his dog with him. Very emotional on both sides of the separation.
And the reuniting. So you know, there's all these organizations.
You can you know, volunteer down in Central at the when they release you can you know there's and so yeah, but following all these accounts sharing the stories, you know what I mean on your social media, be it Twitter, all re call it the other thing or you know, Instagram, Facebook, whatever your media is. Discord YadA YadA.
Yeah. I think even sharing my stories is really powerful. People could translate, they can reach out, they want to do that. I looked up the r L it's for border Kindness. It's link tr dot e e slash border Kindness, and for it's altlado a l O t r O l a d o dot org slash donate And.
They pay me to be out here, so please don't it to them.
Yeah, yeah, help them and border kindas. Jackie and James are great, They're always out here.
It's either one is wonderful.
I also wanted to highlight the lovely mutual aid groups that do a lot of work. There's not as many of them directly putting their efforts out here, but I know that they have helped me work out here and make sure that I have the funds I need to, you know, do little store runs that are necessary on a on a moment's notice at times because we we run out of something and we can't wait for a bulk order supply and the you know, there there are
these mutual aid groups. You know, they they put in the work to reimburse folks when we do things like that, when we have to go make runs because we can't bulk order, we can't do it the most efficient way
because we have a need right now. And that has saved us in a lot of different moments, especially I used to volunteer down at W eight in Sandy Cidro and that was the primary way that we got resources was through these mutual aid groups who who fundraised and and I yeah, I just wanted to highlight them and highlight the So there's the Rose Cute Collective. I know that they do a lot of fundraising. I know that
you were saying free Ship, Free Shit Collective. Yeah. Uh, there's a few Freestore SD Yeah, there's a there's a few different ones who you know, their funds help keep us running, especially in the hardest of times right now.
Yeah, because we're all broke.
We're so broke, we have no money, have any money.
I'm on the migrant diet because I'm broke, and I'm just eating the food that we feed them when there's leftovers.
Yeah. Yeah, we've been a lot of peb and j and beans help us, help us feed ourselves and that was wonderful. Thank you so much. Yeah, everyone listening to you do.
Name, thank you.
Yeah, and come down here. If someone came from San Francisco in May, come back, Like there are places you can stay are in the desert if you want to come and help. But even if you have language skills like we there were so many ways you can help.
Come down. I've always had a place to stay, even though I like, like of all I've I've always been ready to sleep in my van, but always had a spot to say, come down. It's you know, it's worth it. It's there's a vortex that's not coming they called the locals call it, call it of vortex. You know. You you come here and it's like every past lifetime has has been here and you're destined to be here. There's something special about this town and I've really fallen in love with it since coming.
Yeah. Yeah, I hope we'll be boogum. It would mean a lot to me if like we could do something cool and like further support something that's very important to me and I think very important for the world.
Totally. It's sick.
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