A Sunday Contract

Dear Troy and Lyle,

We have been talking for some time of pooling our different skills together for work on each other's homeplaces. What follows are some late-night sketches toward a common contract.

As you both know, we share a long history of tinkering together on projects. The place we rent together outside Lexington in nearby Keene, with its hops deck and vegetable gardens, 22-hole disc golf course and fire pits, is littered with the fruits of our collective labor. And before our time in Keene, there was the six-month long construction of a writing shack—1 foot larger than Thoreau's, though no sleeping loft—over beers and conversation on the Houp property between Wilmore and High Bridge, land that backed up to the palisades of the Kentucky River at the edge of Minter's Branch. And farther back still, before me, there was you and Troy in your late teens, both stuck in Wilmore with a High Bridge state of mind, looking to build your own ways out into the world.

I propose simply to transfer back into our homes the skills we have developed while working together on these projects. Our history together suggests that we have figured out to get along while keeping our hands and minds busy, and to do these things together passingly well: to take joy from our collective work and to make this seem a natural extension of an enjoyable and productive day in Kentucky.

In working together on our homeplaces, we may take advantage of our unique skill sets. Troy's carpentry and general home maintenance skills are much needed at my 100 year old house; Lyle's rockwork and general outdoor landscaping knowledge can be more productively put to use, by all of us, with the addition of some outside muscle (however meager that muscle may be). And as for me, while I offer no specific carpentry or lapidary skills, you know you can count on my steady, if unspectacular, work—to set the bar low, yes, but also to always show up and exert that initial energy to just get the bar set to begin with. Working together, there is no doubt that we may continue to learn and benefit from each other's strengths.

Of course, there are more practical reasons for our trading of our labor. I am speaking of the nice collection of tools that, collectively, we gain access to in working together: rock hammers, trucks, ladders, saws, etc. The greater variety of tools at our disposal means that most jobs don't need to accrue an added tool rental or purchasing expense; since the farm we rent together was, for many years a dump site, we are also well blessed with odd castoff trinkets, like rusted fencerows that make for fine blackberry or bean trellises, that we may find good ways to re-use.

If thus far all of this sounds like too much, well, work, let me here acknowledge that I am only formally recognizing that which we mostly do already. Left unacknowledged up to this point is the immense amount of joy we have gotten ripping apart and burning honeysuckle limbs, collecting rock and building an outdoor oven, and listening to Peanut Houp tell us about the time he got drunk in the navy and passed out on the wrong damn submarine (leading to all sorts of hijinks) while we nailed scavenged black tar oak board pieces—as siding—for a place we simply called the Shack.

And now that we're at it, I should also point out that history dictates that our labor trading days must also involve great meals with family and friends and (occasionally) strangers. Who can forget the garlic soups and rabbit stews of winter, cooked over a small wood burning stove during cold winter afternoons and nights, that were prepared as we cleared a path through honeysuckle to an overlook over the Kentucky River, or the gatherings with Michelle and Julie and Stone and Lisa and Mike and the rest, chowing down on Severn's tomatoes or boiled greens while on break from a disc golf game. I see no reason why cooking would not be incorporated into our days' activities, as a crescendo to the day's relaxed toils.

Just what our toils will be, of course, can always be determined as we go. I know that Troy needs honeysuckle clearance, rock gathering, and a firepit built. Lyle needs help getting his man shack in order. I'd like a shed to house my tools and some semi-skilled maintenance on our house's interior. No doubt, through the many breaks for walks, talks, drinks, and games, we will undoubtedly provide each other interested feedback on the future visions and hopes for our places, our lives.

The work, that is, will no doubt become more valuable to us as it and we age.

If you are interested, I propose we shoot to meet on Sundays. There is nothing intrinsically Right about this time, other than that, at the moment, it seems to fit all our schedules. If this convenience no longer presents itself, we can always choose a different day to try and meet at each other's houses. We can change all the above arrangement, in fact, as our needs and conditions change. We can always be free to opt out.

But at the moment, it just seems right that we extend our friendships to the work we do on our homes.

Thoughts?

best,

Danny

P.S. I can't start next week as I will be attending Keeneland with Troy. We are currently seeking a sober driver for the event.

An Ethics of Collecting Rock

I recall fondly the first time I ever took rock. A Sunday morning, early and cold, idling in the car on the shoulder of the outer Circle near where it hits Liberty Road by that ridiculous Halloween shop. Like much of New Circle, this stretch features a couple small road cutouts, and I was about to scout and grab rock that had fallen over a period of time into the ditch below. I wanted to harvest some of the fallen stone for a pathway and sundry other small projects for my home two miles away. The process would involve about thirty minutes of my time grabbing the rock on the side of the road and another fifteen minutes in transport home and unloading.

The central question I pondered that day, while waiting to jump out into the cold to try my hand at rock-thievery, is the same one I continue to ask myself five years later when traipsing around places that are supposed “Off Limits” to me, though my fear in having to answer it while collecting rock has subsided substantially over the years: “Well, just what the hell do you think you are doing here?”

Throughout the years, I have offered different answers to that question. Gathering rock on roadside cutouts, construction sites or back alleyways is a distinct activity; it tends to get noticed by passersby, and I've never checked into the legal specifics, so I at least try to mentally prepare for just such a question whenever I'm out.

Collectively, the different answers I've imagined to the question “what are you doing here?” form a sort of personal ethics for rock collecting, a justification for why and how I collect rock—in effect, an orientation for being in the world. On the whole, my rock ethic is rooted in ideas of usufructure (the taking of pleasure and profit from unused private land) and anarchist critiques of private property. Together, I have found they offer a solid foundation for trespassing onto under-used land in order to take discarded items not used by the property owners, particularly natural ones like rock. Though thankfully nobody representing authority has ever stopped me to have to answer this question (perhaps an indication that while I may be breaking the law, I'm not doing anything wrong), I've imagined two general reasons against taking rock from public or private lands—reasons my rock ethics must both question and take into account.

First, one might suggest that my collecting endangers myself or someone else. In asking how I might ensure that the process was as safe as any other daily driving activity in the U.S. (like commuting to work), I have had to ask and answer a number of related questions: can I come at off-hours time, when no workers are around. (If I do go at off-hours time, am I accompanied by a friend?) Is the shoulder on the side of the highway sufficiently wide for me to park for ten minutes? Is the rock safe to access, or is it in a position where it could do bodily harm to me? Is there a possibility that the rock will pose a driving hazard to others in the area. When the answers to these questions are “no,” I normally find another spot.

A second, more theoretical question, is a little less straightforward but I find much more intriguing. One might ask how my taking of rock damages the environment by manner of theft. In a strictly capitalist sense, this is what is we mean, I think, when we talk about the sanctity of private property. Here in the United States, we assume, by dint of deed, that the owner will proceed to make the best use of the land. We assume this because private property, in a capitalist society such as ours, is sacrosanct. The best use of that property is whatever the owner does to it, and, conversely, anything that the owner does not condone gets viewed as damaging to that environment in the sense that your very unsanctioned presence detracts from it—so long as environment is synonymous with a deed. Or at least, this seems to me pretty much what property rights enshrine in our laws, the unquestioned assumption that your use of land is less valuable (and correct) than a property owner's use.

Most of my rock collecting actions, of course, constitute a legal trespassing, particularly so in the case of construction sites. That the sanctity of property stands beyond thought, beyond question, is one of the reasons why I enjoy trespassing to collect rock. I want people to see what I do from their homes or cars—trespassing onto places both private and government affiliated—and to begin to question the primacy of private property. “Oh, look at that young hardworking lad over there! He's not hurting anything taking all that pretty Kentucky rock that X construction company ripped up during their construction of Y Estates! What a neat and industrious idea putting that rock to good use!”

A bit idealistic? Try collecting rock and the question will become a bit more intimate. It's something that I ask myself all the time while scouting out rock locations. Specifically, I ask whether I do damage to the property owner for taking discarded rock, stone whose main use to the owner is as a substance to be carted off to somewhere else—that is, as a waste product of that property. Don't believe me? Take a look at the many unfinished (and finishing) construction sites and the amount of rock sitting discarded, waiting to get hauled off, or watch that favorite cutout of yours over a couple years and wait for the county crew to come and cart it off.

Observing these things, and seeing how useful stone is, has lead me to note simple things about private property—notably that private property owners can both misuse and not use the land that they own, and that while trespassing might be illegal, it doesn't have to be immoral or wrong to do. It also didn't have to detract from a property's value. My taking of stone does no damage to the actual private property—only to the unquestioning idea of its sanctity.

Of course, the same rock ethic restricts as much as it frees. I am, after all, not suggesting that you start ripping the rocks off some bungalow on Desha. The question of damage to the environment is much wider than property rights. Do I want to take stone from somebody's house? Not hardly, unless I am invited to do so. Doing so would damage that person's home environment. Similarly, I might ask whether the stone I gather has a cultural value to the environment, as an old rock wall might, or if it held still a use value, if it is still in service to the area, as an overgrown stepping stone might be. In my accounts of environmental damages, these things hold more value to me than a deed paper.

Ultimately, such values necessary to answer the (as yet) unasked questions of “What are you doing, and why are you doing it?” force me to think beyond my environment as property, and to respond to it more as a commons, a place that we all have the responsibility and capacity for using and tending to. You'll be forced to ask the same sorts of questions, I'd wager, at some point while you gather rock for your projects. Though we may disagree on some particular instances, I trust you'll arrive at many of the same conclusions that I have.

Collecting and Stacking Rock

It's hard to reckon the precise tonnage of rock that I have gathered from the inner bluegrass region these past four years. I have no scales, so instead I tend to measure such things in minor back aches and fall fires around rock fire-pits.
But irrespective of the precise number, here's what that tonnage has built in Lexington: four small guerrilla gardens atop drainage ditches and astride fences in places like the Rupp Arena parking lot (all of which are waiting to be re-inhabited); two separate rock walkways (approximately 40 feet in length and partially adorned in creeping thyme); a rock fire-pit surrounded by rock patio that was built into a double terraced rock flower bed (all this more or less a 120 square foot thing that reaches a height of 3 feet); a 40 foot section of a partially-raised-bed garden that backed up to a fence/property line; a terraced 200 square foot garden built atop what was previously an unusable steep incline of weeds behind my former house; a 30 foot long rock fence (as yet only partially completed) at my current home; and sundry other projects taken on alone and with friends.

The list could go on were I to include into my figures things built in Jessamine County, but I think you get the point. I like to collect and stack rock and do it quite frequently.

My attraction to rock is both practical and aesthetic. Moving here in 2000 for school, I have been continually struck by the power—aesthetic, historic, racial, economic—of the inner bluegrass region's rock fences. When we first moved here, my wife and I would take long rides in the country, both by ourselves and as part of those weekend tours we gave visiting family and friends.

As I have lived here longer, my fence experiences have become more tactile. I have scraped my boots and jeans hopping an eighteenth century rock fence that divided land near the Kentucky River that Daniel Boone helped survey, and more recently I have periodically helped re-stack an only slightly newer fence in Keene, KY. I have now walked enough Kentucky ground to know that my interest in rock fences lies mainly in the rock: Limestone mostly, and shitloads of it, all over the region, used in the construction of beautiful fences, terraces, mills, bridge bases, houses, garden and flower beds, retaining walls, and culverts, to name a few rock creations old and new I've come across and marveled at.

This last learned attraction,the historic multi-functionality of rock, is also practical. I first experienced the practical use of stones when trying to figure out what to do about the dirt and mud path created by our two dogs that stretched across the back yard of our former home. Grass seed did not work, discipline and (later) pleading did not work, and the pea gravel I paid to get dumped there to make a walkway was messy and stuck in my barefeet when I walked in it.

When friends in Carlisle offered us the rocks strewn across their property that had been ripped up in the making of their new home, I began gathering rocks for a walkway. By the time I finished the firepit and terraced garden, I realized that in addition to its utility as walking surface, rocks can raise garden beds, separate areas of my yard, level uneven land, provide a building beam to perch my canoe upon, and otherwise create an aesthetic “hardscape.” I also learned that I didn't need to go to Carlisle to get it. As I began to look and see how much was available, gratis, at ripped up construction sites, interstate cutouts, water-main projects, and excavation sites in our own yards, I saw the economic and aesthetic practicality of choosing homegrown rock over Lowes-bought faux-rock.

As with most things, collecting and stacking rock is both infinitely easy and gloriously nuanced—an activity for both green beginners pulling a one-off project and craft tradespeople getting paid for their enhanced skills. Here's the easy version, which is restrictive to the degree that it assumes automobile access and physical ability to lift things weighing between five (5) and one thousand (1000) pounds: Get in your vehicle and locate rocks accessible to said vehicle. Load rocks. Drive home, unload product by stacking it. Repeat as necessary.

It gets more nuanced, of course. First,trucks are better vehicles to use than Cooper Minis, though I find it instructive to note that community gardener Michael Marchman, “Notable Neighbor” for the August issue of Chevy Chaser, used the trunk of his stepfather's Buick Park Avenue to transport the rock grabbed for his public sidewalk garden located on the corner of Hart and Ridgeway. Commuting to Northern Kentucky University where he has found adjunct work as a teacher of geography, Michael grabbed rock off cutouts on the sixty mile stretch of I-75 he drove twice a week. It took about fifteen minutes per excursion as he selected and then moved the chosen rocks to his trunk. All in all, this took Marchman less than a semester of 15-minute respites from his car to build a garden now in its second year of harvest.

On the collection side of things, there are other nuances I've learned. Nearby rock outcroppings are easier in both the arrival and the departure. I'd suggest to stay within twenty-five miles, mostly because it's ridiculously easy to do. Sunday mornings are good times to hunt rock since most of Lexington and its police force are engaged in various religious activities. Home construction sites often result in mounds of rock upturned from the earth; rock mounds are preferable in that you can roll heavier rocks down them and into your truck bed rather than heaving them into it.

If you are collecting rock from ground torn up for active construction, stay out of the way of workers and visit when you will not be in their way. If you collect from other sites, make sure that your taking does not negatively impact the physical and cultural environment in which it sits. Thank friends and acquaintances who offer their rocks. And finally, go travel the road to Galilee: the ripped up stretch of Harrodsburg Road beginning past the great Christian megachurches and ending at the turnoff to Wilmore and Asbury Seminary. I don't know if it's legal or not, but my hunch is that rock gleaning is supported by at least some part of Christian thought.

On the stacking of stones, I'm more a practitioner than a craftsperson. But I have found that wider bases seem to make more sturdy structures. So does stacking to avoid long running vertical joints. This happens when you put two ends together on one level (making a joint) and then put two ends together at the same place for the next set of rocks stacked on top. Vary the joints, and make level stacks of rock. Having level stacks gives you a much easier base to work your next layer of rocks. Use small rocks as backfill for support or as shems. Rocks want three stable points of contact to help be steady and the backfill helps keep it in place.

These are some basics of collecting and stacking, and they are from someone who has not spent much time learning the finer points of the craft. I collect and lay rock for a variety of reasons, so my things are not perfect. I am not an expert. I update, I fiddle, I repair, I move, I tend, I learn. I get a little bit better and then the simple process gets a few new fun wrinkles thrown into it.

But at its most democratic and simple, all you need to do to collect and stack rock is this: Look and think. Drive. Act. Go home. Tailor as you can and need.

Some Definitions and Precepts

Last year an article appearing in the New York Times, a shortened version of which also appeared in our Herald Leader, caught my attention. The headline read, “Russia makes return to the barter system,” and was followed by the rather ominous subheading “Critic says it's a step backward.” The article noted that Russia's local iteration of the global downturn had resulted in a minor uptick in bartering for goods—up to 3 or 4% of all sales, as reported by the Russian Economic Barometer. I say minor because in the 1990s, when Russia embraced capitalist reforms and sent its economy (and people) into a tailspin as the government transferred its wealth to well-heeled capitalists who unsurprisingly grew richer at public expense, the paper reported that “barter transactions...accounted for an astonishing 50 percent of sales for midsize enterprises and 75 percent for large ones.”

The critic of bartering was Vladimir Popov, who teaches at the New Economic School in Moscow; I am sure that he had good reasons for critiquing the barter system, which seems to have arisen as a way to cope with massive inflation, but they did not appear in the article. Instead, the paper reported that Popov called Russians “arrogant,” and claimed that the minor uptick in barter meant they were “hiding [their] head in the sand.” What the Russians needed to do, the article implied, was to cut costs and reduce inefficiency, normally euphemisms for firing workers and mechanizing production.

The article stood out to me because at the time I had just finished reading an online essay by Charles Eisenstein entitled “Economics of Fermentation.” In his much more developed article, which originally appeared in Wise Traditions Magazine, Eisenstein essentially makes the opposite argument of Popov. Rather than increasing our reliance on exchanging dollars for services and everything else, Eisenstein calls for a return to a much older form of economy, what he calls an “economy of reciprocation and social exchange,” based in human contact and the establishment of social connections. For Eisenstein, what bartering does for us socially is something that gets left out of our money transactions.

Money is, he notes, “an anonymous form of energy.” Anyone can go into Wal Mart and buy a TV or food with it, and we need not know how it arrived there or who made it. In barter and social exchange, however, the emphasis is more intimate, on things we make for and with each other. One household makes cheese, another beer, another clothes from wool. Needs and transaction prices are determined primarily by a community rather than anonymous people from afar who cannot or do not conceive of us.

I'll not go any further into Eisenstein's ideas here, as I'm sure a discussion of them will play into future pieces, but needless to say that such ideas are at the center of how I would define a basil economy. The following bulleted points make a stab at an opening definition and guiding principals.

A basil economy will:

--take non-monetary transactions seriously. This is not an argument for the abolishment of money; rather, it is a realization that money as a form of economic exchange has usurped other useful modes and overcrowd our thinking. In short, a basil economy seeks to put the exchange of money in its place as one among a number of possibilities. Though your financial analyst may tell you that you can “grow” your money, such growth is entirely unnatural and mostly unearned: unlike basil, tomatoes, wool, wood, or a host of other things we need, money does not grow from the sun, the soil, or our water supply. We should figure out how to use better these living trinkets of exchange that we ourselves might produce from our own labor.

--be based first and foremost in small, community-based transactions centered on need: food, clothing, water, shelter, pleasure, health, transportation, education. This is not an argument against the flow of needed outside goods or people into the community; rather, it is a re-commitment to ourselves as able producers. This should help restrict the accumulation of too many things while at the same time to allow for a natural diversification of such needs into localized art, shelter styles, etc.—things all communities used to have and do.

This means that a basil economy will

--flourish to the degree that we produce things. We must begin to think of ourselves as producers once again, makers of things, rather than consumers. For the most part, what we make need not be “perfect,” only “good” and “committed.” (Perfect tends to marginalize interested parties and also to increase value for products that many cannot afford.) Currently, 70% of our GDP is based in consumption, which means that our current solutions to our economic moment lie in us purchasing more. This is a false answer and it makes us poorer socially and economically in hock for the one thing we cannot produce: money. When credit becomes our lifeblood, the answer is not to feed that beast by generating more money to buy things, but to have us scale down to need less money.

In other words, a basil economy will

--assume a scaling down of economic activity to something approaching a subsistence economy. As Americans, we have been perched at the top of the economic world order. As we emerge out of our current economic moment, this will no longer be the case. We should recognize that and pare down our outsized and destructive expectations.

It will mean a renewed focus on

--seasonal and cyclical growth and death rather than on the unnatural capitalist model of permanent accumulation and permanent growth. Cancers grow exponentially; economies, like our earth, should experience periods of growth and decay, of work and rest, of relative abundance and scarcity. By focusing on these sort of growths, by desiring them over continual 3, 4, 6, 8 percent returns, we will better prepare ourselves to be resilient and communally self-sufficient.

What I'm describing requires a lot more work from us, from you, from me. It will mean that we necessarily spend much less time watching television and playing on the computer. These contraptions let us off the hook, make us fat and lazy, and waste a lot of our time that could be better spent doing and making things, generating ideas and meeting people.

Basil Economy

Building a Basil Economy

Author's Note: Most, if not all, of these musings will appear in Lexington, KY's North of Center biweekly paper. This is the first installment of a somewhat regular column for it.

A few years back I penned what I thought would be a regular column for Lexington's Nougat Magazine that I was going to title “Suburban Flaneur.” It was to be an evolving primer for re-inhabiting our bleak suburban Lexington worlds.

For reasons too numerous to detail here, that column never appeared, Nougat folded, and I moved downtown—all of which ensured that Suburban Flaneur would never happen. If North of Center ever gets desperate for content—and that prospect always seems only an issue away—we may print an abridged version of the only piece I wrote under the Suburban Flaneur byline as a matter of historical curiosity. In the meantime, though, you are stuck with this.

More recently, in issues two and three of this paper, I authored a two-part article on a related topic titled “Building a Basil Economy.” This more contained piece looked at how the current local food and gardening zeitgeist might lead to workable alternatives to our current money-centered economy (and lives). Growing our own food, I argued, allows us to detach on our own terms from a global economy based increasingly in transnational finance and new “hot markets” of exploitation. At the same time, it might reconnect us to a more intimate economy of local production based in basic human needs—food, yes, but also friendship, clothing, art, shelter, communication.

I'm resurrecting that phrase, building a basil economy, for the title of this column for several reasons. There are the easy ones: it fills column space across the page, a great attribute according to our layout editor; I'm lazy and lack creativity and this title is already there; I like the way it sounds. In addition to these, I can cite at least two more important reasons.

First, I felt like the limited feedback I received from friends about that article missed my point, something no writer likes to experience. While I think people appreciated the writing, and at least two noted with glee the vague marijuana references and skillfully procured use of expletives (both things nearly always a winner in a free bi-weekly paper), I didn't get a sense that anyone actually thought building an economy based on human need of things like food, shelter, and clothing was actually possible or practical at this point in time, which is a sad and pathetic testimony to our current historical moment. As my oldest and perhaps closest friend Tim wrote to me, “You put out an extreme view point in order that your audience may budge just a bit. Great rhetorical tactic.”

Second, I realized when writing the article that there was more to my topic that I wanted to explore and write on, something I assume all writers do enjoy experiencing. In writing my piece, I included John Walker's urban gleaning ideas, Geoff and Sherry Maddocks' ideas on community economics, my own efforts operating a free store stand, and Ryan Koch's efforts working with the nonprofit gardening group Seedleaf. But I excluded as much as I included. I missed talking about food not bombs, the growth in guerrilla gardens, the turn to dinner parties, the creation of this newspaper, the enjoyment of alternate forms of sport, the proliferation of marijuana as a Kentucky cash crop, the possibility of turning elderberries into your own intoxicating forms of wine, the ways to procure free Kentucky rock, and the many forms of bartering that take place on a daily basis, just to mention a few. In my mind, to talk about what I call a basil economy without these and other things seems to miss the point. The very word building, after all, implies a process, not a two-part article.

My hunch is that by calling attention to these acts, groups, people, and economies, and by taking them seriously, I will make my argument better that the joys and labors that I celebrate are not rhetorical acts or the opiate induced ravings of a degenerate that they may seem at first glance, but rather very real possibilities for a different way of living. After all, an economy rooted in local, often personal, production of food and pleasure and clothing and shelter is not only possible, but is in fact already happening, already building. We are just waiting for you to get up off your fat, lazy, uniquely American ass and join in the fun.

At its best, then, this column should call you to be a producer, to make something, to be creative, and to share it with us, we who should be your friends. In other words, it should offer you the psychic tools, base knowledge, and inspiration to help build something.

In the next column, Danny will define what the hell he's talking about.

Brian Rich talk on Immigrant Detention

Brian Rich delivered a powerful talk on immigrant detention on Thursday, May 28, at Al's Bar in Lexington. Below is a copy of his talk:

Ana Romero and Death Prisons for the Innocent
By Brian L. Rich

Talk given at Al’s Bar, Lexington, KY – May 28, 2009

1. Intro
Thank you. I’ve never given a presentation in a bar before, at least not a sober one, so excuse me if I seem a bit out of place.

I’d like to thank Danny Mayer for this opportunity and also to praise him for putting together this series of bar talks. I’d also like to thank family and friends for their support through some of the rough times involved in what I am going to talk about. Without their love and support, I wouldn’t be able to stand up here and get thru this. You know I love you, so thank you so much.

I am a professor of sociology at Transylvania University. I am also on the board of directors of the Kentucky Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (KCIRR). However, I want to make it clear that the ideas and positions I will express here tonight are my own and have not been approved by either my University or the Coalition. I speak alone as a public sociologist and a concerned citizen. But I know that I am not alone in caring deeply and acting - and with no small amount of tenderness - for the people I will speak about.

Now then, without telling you the main point of what I am about to say, I will let you know from the get-go that I’ll be moving from the past to the future, from the small to the large-scale and back to the small, from studious and serious to indignant and upset, and then to positive and optimistic, even to dreaming at the end. This will serve to offset the nightmarish facts that I warn you I will have to touch on in between. That’s my one and only warning. So hang on.


1. Ana Romero’s case and now Emanuel Reyes

Anaseli Romero Rivera (Ana from now on) was an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador. She was a mother of two grown sons and the daughter of an aging and sick mother all living in El Salvador. She cleaned houses in Shelbyville. Her sister Blanca is married to Mario there and they own and run a nice Mexican restaurant.

Ana had been in the states for about three years when one day, Jan.14, 2008, an officer came to her place, apparently looking for another person. Not finding that person, the officer asked to see Ana’s ID. Ana showed it to him. She was arrested. She had been ordered out of the country less than three years earlier in 2005 for not having documents, but she did not leave.

Being without documents, many immigrants obtain fake ones. This is - unfortunately for all of us – a common response to a life threatening situation. Being “ILLEGAL” in this country is indeed life threatening. Putting yourself in a life threatening situation must have reasons behind it. But hardly any of us knows about this. I will come back to that in a few minutes.

Immigrants obtain false documents, ironically, for the purpose of trying to stay out of trouble with the system. We all need papers to stay out of trouble, but false papers, most critically perhaps, circulate and are obtained so that people can get work. I’ll come back to that in a few minutes as well.

Ana was taken to the Shelbyville jail, and sometime after that she was taken briefly to the detention center in Grayson county, and then was sent to the Franklin County jail in Frankfort. As I understand it, she had two counts against, her failing to obey the deportation order and possessing a false ID.

On August 7th last year, after nearly 7 months in jail, Ana had her day in court. And what did the judge decide? The judge fined her $100 dollars and time served. Of course, the federal deportation order was in place; she was going to be deported back to El Salvador, back to her two grown sons and her aging and sick mother. Back to the family that she left behind, back to the family that she came here to help. She had come here into this life-threatening situation without documents to help support her mother and her grown sons. But she was resigned to her fate and was ready to face the consequences of her risk and return to family there. That much is clear. Her son told her “Everything is waiting for you.” And Ana told her son “I’ll be there.”[1]

Now then, there are some legal technicalities that I don’t fully understand, but this much seems clear. Once she paid her $100 fine and having spent 7 months in jail for these charges, the federal government had a limited amount of time to pick her up for deportation. Usually it’s 48 hours but if it’s over a weekend it can run up to 72 hours I believe.

In any case, the feds didn’t come. Her things were all packed and ready to go, Ana was ready. But the feds didn’t come to pick her up. By law, if the feds don’t pick you up for deportation and your sentence is finished, the jail is supposed to set you free. So now Ana was supposed to be released, but she wasn’t released.

Ana despaired and there is evidence she got more depressed. On August 20th, almost two weeks after her court appearance and still in jail, Ana called her sister Blanca, telling her her stomach hurt and that the food smelled bad, that she was being treated badly, that they had put her in a dark cell as punishment for not wanting to eat. The family encouraged her to eat but she insisted that the food was not good.[2]

Ana was put on suicide watch. She was seen by mental health providers. She insisted she was not suicidal. She was taken off suicide watch. Then on that fateful night, Ana was allegedly found in her cell with her neck wrapped in a sheet. There were vital signs, she did not die there. She was taken to the hospital, where she died on August 21.

The autopsy and Medical Examiner investigation and reports sustain that Ana died as a result of asphyxiation due to hanging.[3] The family and many of us close to the situation, had a very hard time believing this because Ana was looking forward to going home, she was resigned to her deportation. Recently in a letter to her sister Blanca, she had written that famous prayer, “Lord give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change those things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference between them. Amen”[4]

Ana’s family had to endure many very difficult moments from the time Ana was first put in custody 7 months earlier, thru the news of her death when the authorities informed them, the long period of uncertainty and sorrow that followed her death before her body was available for the funeral that didn’t occur until December past, and on further now with the legal case that is pending. The lawyers for the family are pursuing and preparing several claims that I’ve told will be filed in court next month. So the search for justice for Ana continues and we will see what becomes of the charges that will be put forth against the government.

But the details of the Ana Romero case and Ana’s death in jail, as sad as they are, do not stand alone. Far from it.

For another example right here in Kentucky, we just recently learned that another immigrant, a Mexican named Emanuel Reyes, may have been mistreated or mishandled by prison personnel a few weeks ago. Reyes was in jail in the Grayson County detention center outside of Leitchfield in Western Kentucky, on what charges I don’t know. Apparently he got into a fight with another inmate and was seriously beaten up. His injuries were bad enough that he underwent brain surgery and died six days later. But if his injuries were so serious, why was 911 not called for emergency care? Why wasn’t he taken by ambulance or flown by helicopter (both of which are available at the Grayson facility) to the hospital? Instead, he was taken to the hospital in a deputy car.[5]

Let’s go even bigger. In just the years 2003 -2009 more than 90 immigrant detainees have died in custody.[6] Currently, the detention system holds over 500,000 immigrants.[7] The entire prison system has grown enormously over the past decades, as many studies and statistics have already documented. But the growth in the immigrant population in prison is astounding and correlates pretty well with the increase in the undocumented immigrant population.

My colleague Dr. Doug Massey a sociologist at Yale University, probably one of the top 2-3 researchers on immigration in the U.S., testified in the senate last week. Dr. Massey has been studying very closely immigration, esp. from Mexico, for over 20 years. In his testimony he presented damning evidence to show that the increase in the undocumented immigrant population in our country is a direct result of our failed immigration system.[8] What does that mean? It means that our federal government, aided and abetted by the large corporations that are the most direct beneficiaries of undocumented immigration, is directly responsible for the large increases in undocumented immigrants without papers in our country, now often estimated at easily over 12 million people. How did this happen?

Well, it’s a bit complicated, but let me boil it down for you. Some might disagree with my interpretation, but the facts are there, it’s a matter of how we see the facts emerging and why. Basically, our government and the constituents that have been most influential in affecting immigration policy, have allowed the our broken immigration policy to go without reform because it has been good for business.

Just look around here in Lexington. Perhaps as many as 90% of workers in the horse industry are immigrants, the vast majority without papers. The hospitality and service industries (restaurants, hotels, eg.) are heavily dependent on immigrant labor. Construction and factory work in our area have significant numbers of immigrant workers.[9] Our local economy would come to a crashing halt if these workers were all arrested and put in jail for not having “real” papers. This is one reason why immigrants obtain false IDs, they need them to show employers who only have to “make believe” that they look like real IDs in order to hire them.

Having no legal status, and being almost completely defenseless legally, immigrant workers do not complain, work long hours, sometimes multiple jobs, put up with abuse, and fear detection from “la migra” the government immigration enforcement agency now known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement or “ICE”. They are in no position to organize themselves at the workplace and want nothing more than to work without trouble, help their families whether here and/or back home, and possibly someday return home.

It never ceases to amaze me when people try to link immigrants with increased crime. Studies consistently show that immigrants have the LOWEST crime rates of any group in the U.S.[10] Why would people without papers, who have borrowed and spent large amounts of money to cross the border, risking their lives often, (not to mention the risk of apprehension at the border upon trying or deportation once here) and traveled long distances away from family get involved in crime? The LAST thing they want is to get into legal trouble, when family members back home are dependent upon the money they send back home to survive.

The logic of our immigration system, especially as it is related to our long and ongoing economic and political relationship with Mexico and other Central American countries (like El Salvador, in the case of Ana), is what is at the root of our broken system. What I mean by that is that the system is ILLOGICAL. We have to understand a basic truth about globalization in order to make sense of our immigration problem.

2. NAFTA and immigration

The North American Free Trade Agreement (or NAFTA) has been fundamentally changing the relationship between our country and Mexico. Put into effect in 1994, NAFTA lifted many barriers to the on-going economic integration of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Mexican migration has been an integral feature of our economy since the Mexican-American War that followed on the heels of our civil war. As a result of the U.S. victory in that war, almost half of the territory claimed by Mexico was incorporated into the Southwestern U.S. Since that time, and especially in the past 25 years, our integration with Mexico has accelerated.

Now, more than ever, we are involved in a deep and long-term process of economic integration with our neighbors to the south. What this means for migration is that insofar as our economy needs more workers and insofar as Mexico has a surplus of workers willing to come here, then immigration from Mexico will continue. Despite the current economic crisis, we can project that immigration from Mexico over the longer-term will continue. Therefore, it behooves ALL of us to make this process legal, rather than continuing to exacerbate and make worse the growth of illegal activities in the black market or underground economy that we have seen.

Just to give you some idea of how fast this integration of the U.S. and Mexico has progressed, let me quote a few lines from Professor Massey’s testimony 8 days ago to the U.S. Senate. Speaking about how and why the build-up in border patrols and militarization of our border has occurred in the past few years, Massey stated:

“Paradoxically, this militarization [of the border] occurred as undocumented migration reached its peak and [began] moving downward. It also unfolded as we were drawing closer to Mexico economically, by treaty agreeing to lower the barriers to cross-border movements of goods, capital, information, services, and certain classes of people. Between 1980 and 2000 total trade increased nine times [that’s 900%], business visitors 7.4 times [740%], treaty investors ten times [1000%], and intracompany transferees 27 times [2700%]” [11]

He goes on to say further that: ” our militarization of the border increased the costs of crossing it from $600 to $2,200 in constant dollars ) while also increasing the risk of death while having no effect on the probability of apprehension. Given the higher costs and risks of border crossing, fewer migrants left; but those who did still got across because the odds of apprehension did not rise. Once inside the US they hunkered down and stayed longer and in larger numbers to avoid experiencing the costs and risks again. In sum, it was because of a decline in return migration and not an increase in entry from Mexico that the undocumented population ballooned during the 1990s…” [12]

This BALLOONING of the undocumented population, related directly to NAFTA, is a direct result of our government’s lack of adequate response and change in our immigration policy. For a number of reasons, we have been unwilling to provide increased LEGAL channels (work visas, green cards, etc) for the Mexican workers we need in our domestic economy (and who need work here to help their families survive and prosper). I would love to say more about NAFTA’s effects on the domestic economy of Mexico, but let it suffice here to say that is has been devastating especially in the rural countryside. In effect we have an example where the dynamics of our economic integration are FORCING Mexican workers to come without documents. And then we have set up a costly and deadly system of apprehensions, raids, and deportations that have torn families apart, disrupted communities here and in Mexico, and caused the kind of grief that Ana Romero’s and countless other immigrants have had to suffer.

I ask you all to think about how costly this is to each of us, putting aside for a second the immigrants directly under the Damocles Sword of our broken system. Between 1985 and 2005, the total cost of immigration enforcement went from 1 to 5 Billion dollars [a 500% increase]. Between 1980 and 2000, the Border Patrol Agncy’s budget increased by 27 times (2700%).[13] But nothing is improved. We have more immigrants without papers, we have more detention centers, more raids and deportations, more hardship, more suffering, more death. THIS IS OUR TAX MONEY BEING THROWN DOWN THE DRAIN!

Is this the kind of country that we want? A country that sets up a system for its own selfish interest at the expense of our poorer neighbors to the south? A country that represses, imprisons, and threatens the very people it so needs to keep our economy moving and growing? A country that turns a blind eye towards an entire group of people who are suffering and quiet for fear of worse things to come? A country that plans, builds, opens, and fills and overfills more and more prisons?

Folks, listen, we are PAYING OUT THE NOSE for this nonsense and mostly we are unaware and uncaring about it. Is this REALLY where we want so much of our taxes to be going? Think about Ana and her family, think about the 90 other immigrants who have died in these prisons, think of the 500,000 immigrants that are today sitting in these jails and detention centers.[14] Do they really deserve to be there? Are they really guilty?

3. Death prisons for the innocent

I put the extreme title of DEATH PRISONS for the INNOCENT on this talk, not to claim that all these people have crossed the border legally, not to say they are innocent victims. They know full well what they are doing, they take these risks in a calculated and hopeful way. They want a better future, they want to get themselves and their families a bit ahead, they come with dreams and hopes just like our ancestors did. But instead of being welcomed, given papers and freedom to move about and live and work for a better day, no we put them under the gun, we make it harder and harder for them. And you know something, it isn’t just the immigrant population that we are doing this to. It is the folks without the best education, folks without the right skin color, folks without good opportunities, folks that enter into drug addiction, or petty theft, for lack of better alternatives.

Certainly I don’t want to claim all these folks are innocent. There are always bad elements in any group; often folks turn bad because they don’t have hope, don’t see a better day ahead thru the normal and good channels. However, I do want to claim that the good, hard-working, family-loving immigrants that are forced to migrate into our communities ARE innocent. If they are guilty of anything, they are guilty of the same things we are guilty of, guilty of hope, guilty of the desire for a better life, guilty of the will to work hard and raise a family, guilty of wanting to be good children and support their aging parents, guilty of wanting their children to get a decent education and grow up strong and wholesome, smart and courageous.

I believe we should seriously, each and all of us, think about what kind of society we want for ourselves and our neighbors. Let’s send people to jail that need to be segregated for the safety of everyone else. People that need to be tended to and to pay their debt to the people they have harmed and to society. People that can be encouraged to see the wrongs they have committed. People that might change their ways once they are given better choices. But let’s not build and fill prisons, detention centers, and jails with immigrants and their dreams for a better life. Let’s not incarcerate people that break laws that are badly conceived and make no sense. Let’s change the laws.

Look at where our country stands in the world on this issue of incarceration. The U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations.

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population, but it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners. We have has 2.3 million people behind bars, more than any other nation in the entire world. [15]

I think we can do better than that.

4. So, where do we go from here? What can we do?

You may have heard the phrase “Let history be the judge” – I think this is a very interesting set of 5 words: “let history be the judge” – I think it’s interesting because it isn’t about history at all really. It’s about the future. Think about it.

When we say let “history be the judge,” we are really talking about how folks in the FUTURE will evaluate what we are doing now, because we are always making history in the present. Let history be the judge means let us see what people in the FUTURE say about what we are doing now. The phrase is about the FUTURE really, not the past.

So how will we be judged when the children today and their children look back at these events in the future?

Will we find the sense to look, without fear, without a blind eye, at the reality of our broken immigration system and its deadly consequences and DO something to fix it? President Obama promised during his campaign to reform this broken immigration system in the first year of his term. We should hold him to it, because it is important and is directly connected to solving our other crises, from the economy to health care reform to strengthening a fraying sense of community.

The term Comprehensive Immigration Reform has been widely used to describe change that would involve more border security, some type of large increase in work visas, and our long (and I would say almost sacred) tradition of allowing family reunification. Sometimes fines for employers that hired undocumented workers are proposed. We have this on the books now for over 20 years and the number of employers that have paid such fines you could count on two hands (o.k. maybe a few more hands). And you might be able to tell by now, I don’t think wasting more and more of our taxes on border security is the answer to what ails us.

The immigration reform details are complex. But there is no doubt in my mind that a centerpiece of any successful reform should be the legalization of the 12 million undocumented immigrants we have now living and working and raising families in our midst. Can we do this? Yes, we can. Can we make it work for the better of all of us? Sure. Bringing the underground illegal economies above ground should always be positive. The rule of lawlessness we now have on our hands is bad for all of us.

So if you want a better future for yourself, your parents, your kids, grandkids, friends, and neighbors, I encourage you to pay attention to this debate, this critical process of immigration reform. I encourage you to support pro-immigrant organizations like KCIRR. I encourage you to challenge the racists and xenophobes who stigmatize, make fun of and degrade our immigrant neighbors. Maybe you even know friends, co-workers, family members, or neighbors that make jokes or put down immigrants. Challenge them courteously. Ask them if they know how their own family got here in the first place. Ask them if they actually know any immigrants very well at all. I encourage you to get involved.

This is personal to me, I suppose that is just a teeny bit obvious at this point. But I think this should be personal for you too. After all, unless we were here before the Europeans, we were all immigrants once, coming of our own free will, indentured, or enslaved. But even if we can indentured and enslaved, we are no longer illegally kept that way.

This is really about how we define and identify ourselves as Americans. Will we build more prisons, conduct more raids and deportations? Build bigger, taller, more expensive walls on our border? Or will we find a way to integrate ourselves into a larger society, a better one, one that sees borders as something we may need to erode, not to increase their power to divide us?

I know we can dream and I know that dreaming is not just idle speculation about a future wish. Dreaming is critical to thinking deeply about improving ourselves and our world.

I remember the pain and sorrow I saw on Ana’s sister Blanca’s, tear-stained face, before and during and after Ana’s funeral and also at the vigil we held for Ana at the Franklin County jail on the third month anniversary of her death. I witnessed Ana’s 20 year-old son Erik crying for the senseless and unnecessary loss of his only mother. My own feeble attempts to comfort them personally were very humbling.

Multiply these sorrows ten thousand or a million times ---- and let’s ask ourselves if we can find a better way. To quote one of my favorite song writers: “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” And I do hope you will join me and the tens of thousands of others that are working hard to make a comprehensive and humane immigration reform a reality, and as soon as possible. We will all be better off for the effort.

Thank you very much.

Brian L. Rich, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology

Transylvania University
300 N. Broadway
Lexington, KY 40508-1797
Phone: 859-233-819
Fax: 859-281-3507

Please consider the environment before printing this email.


[1] Valarie Honeycutt Spears, “Second opinion sought in immigrant jail death,” Lexington Herald-Leader, Sept.9, 2008.

[2] Millie Mercado, “Familia esper respuestas: muchas son las icognitas que rodean el caso de Anaseli Romero-Rivera” [Family awaits answers: many unknowns surround the case of Anaseli Romero-Rivera], Hoy en las Americas , Sept.11, 2008; Valarie Honeycutt Spears and Steve Lannen, “Officials silent on jail death,” Lexington Herald-Leader, Sept.3, 2008

[3] Valarie Honeycutt Spears, “Franklin coroner asks for records in jail death” Lexington Herald-Leader, Oct. 1, 2008.

[4] Mercado, op cit.

[5] Tonia Rose, “Local magistrate questions jail officials’ decision in transport of injured inmate,” Journal-Times (Grayson County), May 6, 2009.

[6] Nina Bernstein, “Immigrant Detainee Dies, and a Life is Buried,” New York Times, April 2, 2009

[7] Ibid.

[8] Testimony of Douglas Massey, United States Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, May 20, 2009. http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=3859&wit_id=7939; Marisa Treviño, “Guest Voz: Princeton sociologist proves federal government responsible for high undocumented population,” Latina Lista, May 22, 2009. www.latinalista/palabrafinal/2009/05/guest_voz_princeton_sociologist_proves...

[9] Brian L. Rich and Marta Miranda. 2005. “The Sociopolitical Dynamics of Mexican Immigration in Lexington, Kentucky, 1997 – 2002: An Ambivalent Community Responds,” pp.187-219 in New Destinations: Mexican Migration in the United States. Edited by Victor Zúňiga and Rubén Hernández-León. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

[10] Butcher, Kristin F and Anne Morrison Piehl. 2007. Why are Immigrants’ Incarceration Rates So Low? Evidence on Selective Immigration, Deterrence, and Deportation. (July). National Bureau of Economic Research, Paper No. 13229; Sampson, Robert J., Jeffrey D. Morenoff, and Stephen Raudenbush. 2005. “Social Anatomy of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Violence.” American Journal of Public Health (February), 95 (2): 224–232.

[11] Testimony of Douglas Massey, United States Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, May 20, 2009. http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=3859&wit_id=7939

[12] Ibid.

[13] Massey Testimony, op.cit.

[14] Bernstein, op.cit.

[15] Adam Liptak, “Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’” New York Times, April 23, 2008.

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