About Casa Grande and CCA

It has been nearly two months since my trip to the southwest. I think about it often. A few significant experiences remain to be written about. One was the shortcut past Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. That was an emotional day.

I left Tucson for the last time the Saturday morning, the very next day after my trip to Buenos Aires Wildlife Refuge. I can’t quite describe my feelings of grief as I descended the back wooden staircase outside, from the upper story of the large house, to the small gravel lot behind Pima Friends Meeting in Tucson. I opened the trunk of the white Honda Sonata rental car and filled it, realizing I had no idea when I would ever be back. The feeling escalated into a mild exasperation when I wasn't able to find someone to pay for the room. People were having meetings downstairs all morning. I did not feel I could interrupt.

Committee work in Friends meetings is often conducted on Saturdays, and those sorts of gatherings are sometimes planned around larger events, such as a quarterly business session. They can last a long time, but usually break for lunch. I walked into the downstairs back door very quietly. Since my mother is a Quaker minister, I am experienced at getting attention when needed without being too disruptive. I hoped someone would leave the meeting room to use the bathroom or have a drink, or get something from their car. Then I could ask who to pay. They didn’t. I sat on the side porch, logged into my bank account, and scheduled a payment to be mailed on the next business day. They could see me through the window. Nobody came out. I felt unjustifiably neglected, but I get like that sometimes. I was told later by email that people “usually put it in the drop box by the front door.” I wondered if people who visited my home meeting ran into such frustrating, somewhat insignificant dilemmas.

When I got into the car, as I turned on the ignition, the tears came. I just cried for a little while. I took one last look at the meetinghouse, and pulled out of the lot. I drove away from the park where Pablo had given me the CD he made. I drove up Interstate 10. I thought of the cross I had carried just a week ago, and wondered where along Interstate 10 the young man whose cross I had carried had been found. I wondered if someone might be there along the road now, just out of sight. After some miles, I felt a strong urge that I sometimes have, for no reason, to take the next exit, and just drive. It was a beautiful, quiet, November Saturday morning in the desert, without a lot of traffic.

The road I pulled off onto was Route 87. I did not want to end up in the middle of nowhere, so I pulled out the map of Arizona I had saved on a previous trip and packed in my computer bag. (No GPS for this 1980’s pizza and buffalo wings delivery girl). The road went to Phoenix. Part-way-there was a notorious brown spot jumping out at me – a National Monument. Yes!

I can’t entirely describe these feelings I have. They are related to the “Quaker knowing,” intuitive-like knowledge I’ve written about before, and sometimes stronger. There is no audible voice, but the words are clear in my mind: “Go this way.” I made note of the approximate distance, and of the part of Mesa I would be arriving into. I recognized the names of some of the streets from driving around my first days in Phoenix. I tucked the map away and drove on.

There were miles upon miles of ripe cotton. I stopped and took a picture. A little further on, off to the left, a red Farmall tractor was kicking up dust, pulling a small harvester. My husband, Bruce, loves Farmalls, and my father did too. I wanted to stop again, but thought I might never make it back to Phoenix if I kept stopping to take photos. My eyes scanned fields, wondering if an immigrant might be sleeping under a large tree, or if they might hide in the local barns. And then I saw it, and a shock went through my whole being.

Picture at this news story link:

http://archive.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2008/Sep-03-Wed-2008/news/23608276.html

It was the prison. I just had not expected it. It was not on my map. After the week's experiences, there it was, rising out of my pastoral road trip. Immaculate, enormous, and not a soul in sight. The letters, CCA, were on the front of the building. I considered pulling over to take a picture, but the thought of security watching me photograph them through cameras turned my stomach. I mean, I felt ill. If I pulled over, it would more likely be to vomit, I realized, because the physical reaction was that strong. I was shaking, and holding my steering wheel tightly by the time I passed it all. I did stop in the next town; Elroy maybe, and bought a cup of coffee and a donut. My hands were still shaking as I took the money out of my worn, leather, one-pocket zip wallet at the gas station. I had been carrying the old thing, full with my passport card, license, credit and debit cards, and change in a SPIbelt from some old half marathon a few years ago. A SPIbelt is an elastic belt, convenient for marathoners, with zip-pockets, and can be worn over or under clothing. I had just worn it under my clothes into Mexico twice. The young cashier was friendly. Everyone in town seemed friendly, and I wondered how many of them worked at the prison.The shaking subsided.

Finally, I got to Casa Grande. Admission was surprisingly free, because of it being Veterans Day weekend. But I had to take my coffee back out to the car. They did not permit food or drinks. I had my last 5K T-shirt on, and it flouted Wheeling, WV's Ogden Classic. A woman passing me started talking in a very fake “hillbilly” dialect to the people with her, accentuating the bigoted tone of this entire experience. I felt sad and disgusted with the ignorance, and annoyed that some people still found humor in that.

I browsed the museum, then sat and watched the movie prior to the next tour. I took pictures of the display of kinds of building structures in the museum for Bruce, because he likes to construct from raw materials. I could not shake the image of the prison during the entire movie; and as I sat there in the dark, listening to the story of the ancestors of the people who lived here, a quiet, simmering rage filled me. I wondered how many of the descendents of those who lived here were down the road, incarcerated, for simply crossing a political line, drawn by who? And for what? I looked around me, taking note that there was only one tan-skinned family in the room. By the time the movie was over, I was fighting tears, so enraged; wondering what everyone else visiting was here to see; what would they take away? Then we went outside. 

The square holes were for the solstices and equinoxes.

We walked around the structure. To know that this was once one of the largest settlements of native Americans, and their central community structure, left a deep impression on me. How dare we! How dare white people move to this area freely, live here a year, and feel entitled to this place enough to build a prison and incarcerate people whose ancestors lived here thousands of years ago! How dare we! To think that some of the largest prisons for immigrants in the U.S. are right at the very heart of the ancestral grounds of many of the people we put in them is hienous. This is NOT a “free country,” for anyone except those who exploit.

We go vacationing, and look at hieroglyphs, and we don’t understand what they mean, on any level whatsoever.

I keep thinking back to Jan de Hartog’s story about Friends during WWII, in his book, “The Lamb’s War.” It is fiction, but the story that comes to mind most is about the witnessing of Nazi’s killing Jews indiscriminately, and of making their loved ones watch and lose control, for sport. I’ve thought of that often through the years. In the same train of thought, I think of Shane Bauer, imprisoned in Iran, falsely accused of spying while hiking in the mountains near Iran. I think of what he experienced, and his looking into the U.S. prison system when he got home, and writing about it.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/solitary-confinement-shane-bauer

The family and friends of those imprisoned in Iran began a fast for their release. This fast inspired one of the first immigrant rights groups I joined, the Facebook group, Starving for Justice, that led to my taking this trip. I fasted for Shane and his friends, but also with this group, for the immigrants imprisoned in the U.S.. Each week we fasted one day per week, and kept going with it for months. So many people are willing to support people like Shane, an American citizen imprisoned unjustly in a Middle Eastern country, but are unwilling to see or believe the atrocities and injustices being committed here, within our own borders, by us.

Casa Grande left its mark on my soul.

I walked back to my car, indefinably outraged, and drove along the two-lane highway, all the way back to Mesa. I found my way to my son’s home. He and his girlfriend were comfy on their couch, watching TED talks on the television, and working on their laptops. I brought in my luggage, then sat on the easy chair next to them, and turned on my laptop also. An oriental woman on the television was talking about a woman with a ripped vagina from childbirth causing a fistula to her urethra. The uncontrollable leakage and stench inspired her community to leave her to be killed by dogs. This happened somewhere in Asia. She was able fight the dogs off, then crawl to a neighboring town where her fistula was ultimately repaired. And then she made a difference by starting a fund for women in remote places, who had such fistulas caused by childbirth to be repaired. What an odd story for such a day, but a relevant one.

My life is very full and busy. I live over a thousand miles from the border. I came home to my own financial and personal instabilities to deal with; to friends and family talking about their own winter vacations; and to a profound disillusionment with those around me. I came home to people complaining about their employer because they couldn't get the schedules they wanted; to foreigners seeking health care in a city hospital; to drug users losing control while trying to get help. But what was stuck in my vision was images of desperate, despondent, hard-working farmers with blistered feet, who would do anything in the world to be able to have those issues. I am also disillusioned with myself. If someone put me in prison today, I’m positive they could “break” me in a very short period of time, but what would they prove, other than their own inhumanity? What do we prove by putting desperate people in prison for crossing a border? Who are we helping? It is not ourselves, and it is not them. We know people can be broken. I have been thinking a lot since my trip about what it is I am going to do to fix what is happening to so many people.