Friday, September 10
12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Pacific Room at Tides, Thoreau Center for Sustainability SF
Presented by Lou Ramirez
Join us for a premiere screening of the San Francisco Film Festival's The Wall, directed by Ricardo A. Martinez.
In 2006, the U.S. Congress passed The Secure Fence Act calling for the construction of 700 miles of fence along the U.S./Mexico border. Filmed over two years, The Wall documents the impact of constructing this border fence along the Southwest. From policy makers to citizens of border towns, the debate elevates as residents respond to having a fence built in their backyard. Nobody could have imagined how many problems the fence would create, from an excess of dead bodies to an increase in smuggling costs.
The San Francisco Latino Film Festival runs September 16 through September 28, 2010. Check local listings for screenings and the Cine+Mas website for more information: www.sflatinofilmfestival.com.
Brown Bag events are free informal mid-day learning sessions hosted at Tides. Friends, neighbors and colleagues are welcome. Visitors, please sign in at the front desk.
Stories from the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
Thursday, July 1 12:30pm - 1:30pm
Atlantic Room at Tides, Thoreau CenterFrom a distance, the U.S.-Mexico border looks like a dividing line. In her new book, The Wind Doesn't Need a Passport: Stories from the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, journalist Tyche Hendricks shows us that that border is actually a region. A complex, multi-faceted, often-misunderstood, bi-national terrain, it is more borderlands than borderline.
Many people have lives on both sides: they cross daily for work, school, family, shopping. Pollution and disease flow back and forth. Extensive trade and economic activity tie the United States and Mexico together. And there's a shared history and culture. But with a stalled immigration policy and a raging drug war, it's the people who live in the borderlands who are bearing the brunt of the violence, the political friction and the pressures of the recession.
Hendricks traveled through the border region and gathered some remarkable stories -- from emergency rooms and factory floors, farm kitchens and jail cells. She saw American and Mexican cowboys, environmentalists, nurses and nuns wrestling with shared bi-national problems. A better understanding of the borderlands -- and the way the United States and Mexico are connected there -- could help policymakers reach more lasting solutions that benefit both countries.
Tyche Hendricks reported on immigration and immigrant communities at the San Francisco Chronicle for many years. She has taught at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism and took her international reporting students to Tijuana last winter. She is now an editor for The California Report on KQED Public Radio. The Wind Doesn't Need a Passport: Stories from the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands is out this month from the University of California Press.
Brown Bag events are free informal mid-day learning sessions hosted at Tides. Friends, neighbors and colleagues are welcome. Visitors, please sign in at the front desk.
