Alt Wire is a digest of spoon-fed inspiration curated by our favorite editors, journalists, artists, and visionaries. Today's guest is Noemi Martinez of the zine and blog Hermana, Resist and of the organization Speak! Radical Women of Color Media Justice Collective.

Maegan "Mamita Mala" Ortiz pointed me in the direction of The Sanctuary, Building Bridges & Breaking Down Walls. Anyone interested or working in/with immigration, (im)migrant rights and civil rights should be turned on to this. 100% pro-migrant, my kind of place. 

Vivir Latino keeps me grounded on what's going on in the land of Latino politics and entertainment, often with that tongue-in-cheek attitude I love.

In zine talk, I'm very excited about Alex Wrekk's second edition of Stolen Sharpie Revolution, and must soon get this in my grubby hands. I'd already been doing zines when it came out years ago, but the sheer wealth of info contained, makes me, well, giddy. When I was tabling with my "traveling zine library" of a couple of hundred zines packed into suitcases, I told zine newbies that Stolen Sharpie Revolution was *the* zine bible.  Alex makes buttons, with that small distro feeling we all love and miss.

I'm in between rented houses, as usual, and half my things are packed including books, posters and suitcases full of zines. But I get by on easily digestible but thought provoking zines with copious amounts of radical love from brokenbeautiful press, Nadia, letter writing, and Raven's Eye (whose posts remind me of radical love that doesn't make it into books).

Bio: Noemi Martinez describes herself as "a Chicana/Boriqua writer & activist spiller of truths and secrets living in the militarized borderland of deep South Texas." She writes the zine Hermana, Resist and blogs at hermanaresist.com.  She's a member of the Speak! Radical Women of Color Media Justice Collective. Being vegan in the land of cabrito and fajitas was not challenging enough, so she organizes Mujerfest, Homenaje a Nuestras Muertas, and Valley Voices against Violence. She's also a "single mami to two kick ass future alternative media makers." You can also find her work on Twitter at @5secondpoems 

Thousands of inmates in three Phoenix-area jails are on lockdown—an attempt to force an end to a two-week old hunger strike among mostly immigrant detainees who have not yet been convicted of any crime. 

Valeria Fernandez, a reporter for Inter Press Service, writes:

The Maricopa County jail system, administered by Sheriff Joseph Arpaio, holds about 9,000 inmates, 70 percent of whom are pre-trial detainees.  

The country’s self-proclaimed "toughest" sheriff is famous for housing prisoners in tents, giving them pink underwear and feeding them what he claims are 30-cent meals. But he’s recently been in the spotlight of a national uproar over his tactics to crack down on illegal immigration by conducting traffic stops and raiding businesses.

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office is currently under investigation by the federal Justice Department over allegations of racial profiling and civil rights violations. It is also the subject of a 30-year-old lawsuit over jail conditions, including the quality of the food.

Family and supporters of the striking detainees have been holding candlelight vigils outside the jails.

Source: Inter Press Service  

When Dan Millis stumbled upon the dead body of 14-year-old Salvadoran migrant Josseline Hernandez Quinteros, he was just doing what he does: leaving water on behalf of the organization "No More Deaths" for immigrants crossing the Arizona desert. "The only safe way for migrants to cross through these militarized zones is on foot,” Millis told ColorLines. “They’re taking superhuman, 100-mile hikes.”

The water is a simple but profound gesture. In the eyes of at least one Fish and Wildlife officer, however, it's littering. Or so says  the $175 ticket issued to Millis two days after he discovered the corpse of the young girl, when he was on yet another water drop.

A federal judge ruled against the litterer, but offered no punishment. "Last summer," writes Julianne Ong Hing, No More Deaths volunteers "had face-to-face contact with 580 migrants, giving them food, water or medical attention. It’s a statistic ... that does not count the untold numbers who empty the canisters of water and supplies left along the trail by humanitarian aid groups every night."

Source: ColorLines

Image by  misskel , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

The word “sanctuary” is a common epithet thrown around Republican circles in the presidential primaries. The idea of harboring undocumented immigrants in “sanctuary cities” was fodder for attack in many Republican debates. The New Sanctuary Movement is turning the idea of sanctuary around, defying current immigration laws, and using churches throughout the United States to offer refuge to undocumented immigrants. According to its website, the organization offers protection to immigrants facing deportation “whose legal cases clearly reveal the contradictions and moral injustice of our current immigration system while working to support legislation that would change their situation.”

Although the churches are unable to offer legal protection to undocumented immigrants, Sasha Abramsky of the Nation writes, “the cloak of religious authority, the aura of sacred space, does seem to provide a moral protection, making government agencies that much more reluctant to go after people facing deportation.” Abramsky reports that faith-based groups in California, New York, Illinois, Arizona, and Washington are joining the movement and working to interject a human-rights angle into the often callous debate.

The goals of the New Sanctuary Movement may be laudable, but some progressives take issue with the organization’s methods. Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute at New York University's School of Law is quoted in the piece saying that the effect of the New Sanctuary Movement is “more symbolic than meaningful” adding that the churches may violate the separation between church and state.

—Bennett Gordon

Image by Fred, licensed under Creative Commons.

Surviving the cold Chicago winters can be tough for anyone. For the more than half a million Mexican-Americans living in the Windy City, and the many more in the metro area, the frigid weather can be brutal. Instead of packing their bags and leaving for warmer climates, the Mexican immigrant population has managed to bring a bit of Mexico with them: by building a hill to enshrine an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the grounds of a Chicago-area Catholic children’s home.

According to Willard F. Jabusch, a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago writing in Commonweal (subscription required), more than 7,000 people now attend Mass each Sunday at the shrine. On the recent feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the site drew many more—despite the bitterly cold December weather. Jabusch writes that the site’s popularity highlights the community’s resilience: “Racism, border guards, and fences have not kept out the newest wave of immigrants. Nor will their spiritual passion and zeal be suppressed.”

—Steve Thorngate

The town of Manassas in northern Virginia has become a flashpoint in the US immigration debate. In July of 2007, Prince William County, where Manassas is located, passed a law aimed at cracking down on illegal immigrants. Police officers in the county are now required to check immigration papers when they stop suspected illegal immigrants for other crimes. Immigrant rights advocates cried foul, saying the laws required racial profiling. Anti-immigration activists continued their fight for the right not to have to press “one” for English and “two” for Spanish.

Four young documentary filmmakers are chronicling the debate in what they’re calling an “Interactive Documentary” posted on YouTube. Bypassing the usual lag time between filming and releasing, filmmakers are releasing the documentary in segments, encouraging interaction between the Manassas community and the internet community at large.

Although the films are not without bias, they give near-equal time to both immigration and anti-immigration advocates. The filmmakers aim to explore “alternatives to the intense polarization that is hindering progress on the immigration issue.”

You can watch one of the films below, or you can watch them all in order by visiting the website youtube.com/user/9500Liberty

For more information on the US immigration debate, read Putting a Stop to Slave Labor from the March/April issue of Utne Reader.

—Bennett Gordon