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EP56 Undeterred - Community Resistance in the Rural Border Town of Arivaca, Arizona
Alexandra Arriaga: Hello everyone and welcome to a very special episode of I AM GPH. Please join us as we talk to Eva Lewis, the independent filmmaker behind Undeterred. A documentary about community resistance in the rural border town of Arivaca, Arizona. Undeterred is an intimate and unique portrait of how residents in a small rural community caught in the cross-hairs of geo-political forces have mobilized to demand human rights and to provide aid to injured often times dying migrants funneled across a wilderness desert. We're also joined by community organizer, Carlota Wray and her son, Jackson Wray. Both Eva and Carlota, volunteer with People Helping People or PHP. An Arivaca-based community organization that provides crisis relief and advocates for border demilitarization. If you want to learn more about the film and the story behind it, please stay tuned. Hi everyone, thank you so much for joining us today. How are you doing?
Eva Lewis: Good.
Carlota Wray: Good morning.
Jackson Wray: Well.
Eva Lewis: Thanks for having us.
Alexandra Arriaga: Of course. So could you please introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about your background and what drew you to do the work that you do?
Eva Lewis: My name is Eva. I live in Arivaca. I'm originally from New York and I grew up on the east coast but I lived in Arivaca, Arizona for about six years now. Was brought out there originally to do border solidarity work and got to know people in the community and was really inspired by some of the people that I met and decided to stay and started making short videos about the organizing that was going on in the community. Met people like Carlota who's here and felt really excited by the work that she and others were doing and so stayed and actually have lived there now and started turning my short videos into a longer project that turned into Undeterred, which is the film that we're screening here at NYU.
Alexandra Arriaga: Awesome.
Carlota Wray: Thank you for having us. My name is Carlota Wray. Yeah, I live in Arivaca for pretty much 40 years now. It's a beautiful community. My kids were born there and grew up there. All those years as residents we have immigrants, refugees, they come into our community already but when the humanitarian groups came in in Arivaca, I really appreciate them because they pretty much came to change my life. I needed to change the things that I was doing to be more involved. They really inspire me, and I start coming into their meetings and of course I stay. I’m planning to stay for them. Thank you. Thank you for having us.
Alexandra Arriaga: Of course, it's our pleasure.
Jackson Wray: I'm Jackson Wray. I was raised in Arivaca. This is my mother, Carlota. I live in Tucson and I work with queer and trans youth there as an advocate educator but I'm also a member of People Helping People, which is a grassroot organization that's run out off Arivaca there who provide humanitarian aid. Yeah, I go back and forth between Tucson and the town I grew up in supporting the group in whatever way that I can. Yeah, just us all sharing the labor, and the organizing, and the implementation to support folks in a responsive way.
Alexandra Arriaga: Very important work. Going back a little bit, Eva, your film, Undeterred was recently screened here at NYU. Could you please tell us about the film and what sparked the idea to make it.
Eva Lewis: I think just being in Arivaca and starting to make short films about the organizing work that was done that sort of lead to the long format documentary. The reason I think that I find it really inspiring I think the border is a war zone. There are estimated to be at least 20,000 people that have died crossing the border since the 1990s. I think when you go there and see how militarized it is and you see the occupation of border patrol agents everywhere, how aggressive they are with the local community, how prevalent and omnipresent they are. I think it's really impactful and I think having come from the Northeast I was not aware of that before I went there and saw it. I think the thing that was really inspirational to me was to meet people like Carlota and Jackson and others who lived there and have been involved in this work pushing back against these huge government forces that are literally killing people. I think that that is so important and it's such important work because we can't sit silently by and let our government create this situation that it has created and just sit and watch that and do nothing. I think I find the compassion and the dedication of the people in Arivaca who are organizing very inspiring. I wanted to tell that story and I think living there and getting to be involved in that work also myself I think I wanted to work with people who were doing that work already to what was the story that they would want to see put out into the world. And so that's what we've tried. The film was made very much in collaboration with the members of People Helping People. We tried to be a collective like this is the story that we want to put forward as a group. I just did the work of sort of piecing it together but with the support and the guidance of all the people in the group.
Alexandra Arriaga: Going back to something you said, for those that have not seen the film yet, you mentioned that there's a lot of violence and almost brutality at the border. Could you illustrate some examples so we can understand better what you're referring to?
Eva Lewis: Carlota, I feel like you have a lot of powerful stories.
Carlota Wray: Like I said living in Arivaca all these years, over the years I have seen people dying on my porch, people dying in my backyard, people dying on the side of the road. It's too difficult to not do anything about it. This is somebody's son, somebody's husband, somebody's father. This is a human person that's just in bad shape out there. As a member of the community, as a resident, as a US citizen, I feel like it's my responsibility to listen to this. Pay attention to what's happening and to do something about it. What I'm saying is I needed to be educated more to how can I help? I have learned very clear the humanitarian aid is not a crime. It's my decision to help anyone that's in need, either at my door, in my backyard, or on the side of the road. I'm there to respond to this needs.
Eva Lewis: It's every single day in Arivaca there are people who show up in town who have been scattered by border patrol, helicopters, separated from their guide, lost by some other way, left behind. They show up, they have no idea where they are. They've been walking in the desert for five, 10, 15, sometimes 20 days. Lost without food, without clean water, sometimes with no water. It's really, really brutal. People who live in town, we see it all the time. We have a neighbor who a couple of weeks ago was walking her dog and her dog smelled something and decided to go off the path and they found human remains just right there, right next to where she was walking her dog. There is a crisis of death and there's a crisis of disappearance because many people who were dying, their remains are never recovered. The vast expanse of the desert it's hard to picture if you're here in the northeast because the landscape there is so much bigger than here. But we're talking about just thousands of miles. We're talking about this huge, huge area. There's so many people whose remains are never recovered and then their family never knows what happened to them. Even if their remains are recovered, they may never be identified. It's a crisis of death and also a crisis of disappearance.
Alexandra Arriaga: That's horrible. I'm listening to it, I'm horrified. How is that situation in Arivaca affecting the health of the public, the community in general or even the surrounding communities?
Carlota Wray: Personal affects me because I live there. I'm a resident in that town. If that's happening almost every day of my life, of course it's affecting me. What happens outside, like I said outside my yard, outside my porch, outside my road, it affects me because I encounter this. This person, they’re human just like me and you. So emotional affects me very much. Also, the BP that's around in our community and in our streets and everywhere also affects me. But I believe that I'm here for a reason and if I'm there to help anyone in any way in any situation, I'm there to help because I live in a community that we're very close community and we're there to support each other in anything, in any way. That includes anyone that comes to our doors.
Alexandra Arriaga: How did all those community members meet? Do you think that you help each other stay sane in these crazy times?
Carlota Wray: Like I said we are very close community. There's a few people that of course they don't totally agree with me but most of us, we have a good relationship. So we always pretty much take care of each other. My kids were born in that town and they grew up. Now they’re grown men and women and I still raising my grandkids and it's a good community. I won't change that community for nothing. It's a good community. I'm staying there because I feel the support and the love. We have meetings at the ACC Center and we talk about the situations. We stand up and talk about the situation. What can we do about the situation. I believe that we are a close community and we support each other in many ways.
Jackson Wray: Can I speak to the prior question? It's definitely related but having grown up there it's such a stark difference as it is now. I think really conceptually thinking about a border itself and the border line versus a border zone has really... it's played out in the town instead of considering the borders being this one point of entry and then that kind of scans across where the US-Mexico border meet. The border zone expands up to a hundred miles north of the space. It's so much bigger I think than folks really can kind of conceptualize especially if you're not from there or really haven't kind of been in that area for some time. Going back running into border patrol checkpoints and just the omnipresence that they hold has really created a different culture and it's troubled the kind of space that the community has held for so long because of their presence. I just think on a sociocultural level what that presence has done to people and how they kind of interact with their environment has shifted. If I already recognize that my I'm a first generation American and my mother walked here I already feel a different relationship because of that presence. It changes how really welcome my kind of validity as an individual there like what possibilities could happen if someone pulls me over and I'm a US citizen. I was born here. It's really troubled and changed up the space that I feel I'm able to hold because of that militarized zone. It's interjected within the town itself even though we are not on the border. It's just expanded so far north that it's kind of seeped into the communities there.
Eva Lewis: Yeah, it's like people think of the border as an east to west thing but really there's also this north to south geography of the border because of this border zone that's created by the checkpoints, by the surveillance towers, by the things... the fact that there's this zone that's patrolled very heavily by this armed occupying force, which is the US border patrol, which is one of the biggest policing forces in the country.
Alexandra Arriaga: I honestly I had no idea. You had just said when I thought about a border, I just imagined something, yeah, going east to west but I never imagined that it could go a hundred miles south to north. I mean I'm just trying to think about it. It would take you what like, almost two hours to drive through it?
Jackson Wray: It kind of blows your mind in thinking about how many border patrol agents there are. What their presence is in Tucson as well. If you're driving anywhere between really the border and in Tucson, you're going to encounter agents specifically at the checkpoints, which are set up at any kind of motorized access point. If you are leaving Nogales or Sasabe, it's a big presence that they hold there.
Eva Lewis: Especially for people of color like... Carlota, talk about what it's like for you going through those checkpoints. It's really a brutal... it's an emotional type of violence I think.
Carlota Wray: It was very difficult before. Now, it got a little easier but I still have to look through my car, make sure there's nothing is... I have not left any bags or anything in there. I still feel a little bit intimidated because there's agents armed at the checkpoint and I never know what's going to happen there. Supposedly they're just there to ask for citizenship right? But sometimes they go out to how are you? Something about the weather or something where you coming from. I don't answer any of those questions because I believe that they're not there to ask any of those questions. I usually say if they ask the right questions, I will answer the right question. I never say anything other than identify myself. But I never know what can happen. When are they going to pull me over because of my brown color? Like I said many times, I'm very proud of my color. I won't change my color for anybody else. God gave me this color and it's very unique. I'm just another person that's going through there. I can feel the racial profiling in the place. I have seen it also when I go with my sister and they have to pull out their IDs and they have to look at this person that's standing there at the ID and then passing the ID back to them. Where are they going? Where they live? And it feels pretty wrong.
Alexandra Arriaga: It sounds wrong too.
Eva Lewis: Part of the organizing in Arivaca has been this campaign, which the film sort of follows the story of this campaign to remove the checkpoint on Arivaca Road. Part of that campaign was we began monitoring the checkpoint sort of like a cop watch because there was so much abuse happening. People getting pulled from their cars, people getting... older people with health conditions being held for hours in the hot sun. Just all this anecdotal accounts that we knew of people being racially profiled that we knew that that was happening but there was no evidence, no data. Border patrol doesn't release, there's no transparency in anything that they do. They don't release how many abuse complaints they've gotten or anything. We began setting up and watching the checkpoint and sent out data we collected to a statistician who analyzed it and showed that... and this was over hundreds of hours of monitoring the checkpoint that Latinos are 26 times more likely to be asked to show ID than white people and 20 times more likely to be pulled into secondary inspection and detained for longer at that particular checkpoint but of course at all checkpoints as well I'm sure it's the same.
Alexandra Arriaga: Yeah, it's awful to hear these things and when is it going to stop? It's definitely getting out of hand. Jackson in your case, you are an American citizen and yet you're subjected to these abuses. That's what it is.
Jackson Wray: It's like folks’ citizenship has different value and different weight depending on these other phenotypic things, how melanated you are, or if you have a slight accent. These are all things that kind of tip the balance and the weight of your citizenship. It's really disheartening and it's scary that that's in the hands of a different body that has this presence in the community that wasn't always there. It's definitely growing and becoming more hostile I think through the years.
Alexandra Arriaga: When in reality your citizenship should be determined by your birth certificate or your passport. It's as simple as you are or you're not. There's no inbetween or there's no gradient of Americanness.
Jackson Wray: Yes.
Eva Lewis: But at the same time, even if you're not a citizen, your life should still matter. The fact is, the border patrol are there at these checkpoints to shut down people's ability to come without papers into the country on a roadway. It's forcing them into the desert. It's forcing them away from the roads and that is what's killing people. These checkpoints are very far in land, some of them are 60, 70 miles north of the border. It's forcing people to walk. That's what we were talking about before. These border zones is forcing people to walk around these checkpoints and this is the strategy that's laid out by the US border patrol as their intentional strategy not to apprehend people by these methods but to push them out in the desert, which they say is a deterrent but when people are fleeing for their lives, when people have no economic options, when people's entire family is in the US and they've lived here for a long time, gotten deported, and have to come back because their family is here. There's so many reasons why so many people are coming across without papers. They're being forced into these areas that are extremely deadly because it's deemed that their life is less important than our immigration policies. So it's not just this gradient of within people who are citizens but it's this gradient of then the whole concept of you’re a citizen so therefore you should have rights and if you are not a citizen you don't even have the right to life.
Alexandra Arriaga: But correct me if I'm wrong, I think seeking asylum is legal, right?
Eva Lewis: Well, it is extremely difficult to seek asylum in certain Arizona ports right now the US Customs and Border Protection is literally turning asylum seekers away which is technically illegal but they're doing it. In other places, people are waiting for six months to even be able to present the port for asylum like in Tijuana that's I think something that's going on right now. At the Sonoyta Port in Lukeville in Arizona, they're literally not even accepting asylum seekers. In Arizona, people that we work with at the Florence Project which is a detention support for immigrants. One of the employees there told me that there's a 97% rate in Arizona courts that asylum cases get denied. That's different in other states but what they say at the Florence Project is they say Arizona is where asylum cases go to die. Often times even when people do present for asylum, the spend years incarcerated waiting for their case and at the end it will be denied and then they will be deported often to their death. So people think oh that there should be this legal path to citizenship but the truth is that that is not really the situation. It is for some people but there's also a lot class issues and other issues that go into whether or not that's actually a feasible reality for many, many people.
Alexandra Arriaga: Clearly, there's a lot of challenges and there's a lot of things that are going on. When you encountered these types of challenges while doing your work, by work I mean your filmmaking, your working with communities, your providing aid to those that are in need, when things just seem impossible and you feel like just packing up and going home, where does the motivation to keep going come from for you?
Carlota Wray: We can't stop. It's important to continue. it's inside you. Es necesario (it’s necessary), la lucha continúa (the fight goes on). Tenemos que continuar (we have to keep going). I believe I got a lot of this strength from my community, from my compañeros (teammates) of the humanitarian group, and God is the strength. I told people even after my mother passed away, I always remember and I always... I will never forget that my mother taught me to help the ones that needed a hand. She always told me to help the others that needed a hand because we never know when we’re going to need that hand. We never know what that situation is going to change for me and I want someone to be there for me. Even my mother's been gone for years, I miss her physical presence but her words and what she taught me is still here with me. That is never going to leave me and the faith and the strength in God of doing the right thing and doing what we believe is right and standing up for what we believe is right. It's not going to change for me. I always think about those things and it just give me the strength to keep going, to keep doing this. This work is important. This is necessary. So I'm here. I'm here and I'm not leaving.
Alexandra Arriaga: We're glad you are and I love what you said earlier, it's necessary, just your work is necessary and the fight must go on. Fully agree.
Carlota Wray: Another thing is we live in this beautiful community. It was very peaceful at the beginning. Everything was cool, everybody was in no one's business, doing gardening, taking kids to school and all that. But I believe that after 2008 when the wall was built and all this technology started around us and the checkpoints, I think that's when things started to get worse for immigrants. Again, it's a beautiful community and we used to be more peaceful. We loved that. But the situation changed. We just got in the middle with this situation and now it's a humanitarian crisis of people dying out there. People are dying out there today, right now. Nobody knows that they're out there wondering for days. If I live in that community and I'm living there because I'm in the way, it's like a callejón (alley), like where they come across our community as... we also don't have a choice other than responding to the need. Like I said I'm there to respond if I need to respond I will do whatever I need to do. I believe that every human person has the right to live their life- that's important. It matters to me. It should matter to everyone of us. We should care more about the people that's dying out there in these vast deserts and what are we doing about it. Are we doing something about it or we just a number more, another dot on the map. No, this is human beings that have dignity, they have the right to live, they have family that's waiting for them. So anyways, it gets pretty heavy in my heart when I talk about this. Sorry.
Jackson Wray: I keep a little yellow car, a children's toy, in my living room that I actually found when I was walking with my mother pretty close to my tia’s house. It just reminds me that families, fathers, mothers, children, they're fleeing hardships. Such severe poverty in their countries in Honduras, Mexico, El Salvador. Like there's a will to live and provide humanely. And that means that children, two year olds, mothers are bringing those children with them because there are no more options in the homes that they originally had or in the case of femicide, there's no life there to live and it's just a matter of time. The risk in the unknown just making the journey is worth going into the unknown then we're staying there. That is so powerful that we as community members who these individuals who are so driven to live and provide they come into contact with us and if we can organize and really support one another because that's how we all continue is just by relying on the person next to us and debriefing and getting strength and healing as well as just power from our organizers who are sitting across from us, next to us checking in with us and really kind of collectively using the brain power and whatever skills we all come with which is very varied. That's what makes it continue because the need is there and the violence that folks are experiencing, the varied ways that violence takes shape in these other countries is continuous. Us organizing in response to what that change is and the severity of it is the need and also we have to continue to support one another and continue to organize and also just share folks’ stories as we see them and what our needs are to provide the needs to them. I think that's what creates the larger effective change even outside of our little no street lights town. It's dirt roads and that's where the fight of a lot of this is taking shape. Expanding out, speaking to different people, even making this film is really an incredibly powerful tool for others to really understand the severity and the crisis that exists on the border and the border zone.
Alexandra Arriaga: Yeah, and I think it's very important work mainly because we need to start humanizing these cases and shining a light on all these people that may not be American but or might be American actually. But they are above all like you said, they're human beings and I think that people have a really hard time consolidating that when you leave your country and you are an immigrant you're not leaving because things are perfect, you're obviously you're leaving behind danger, violence, conditions that are just unheard of for Americans. I'm very glad that people like you guys are doing this work because it really is extremely important.
Eva Lewis: I wanted to add something. I think Jackson, what you were saying just reminds me that I feel like we always say, People Helping People, it's not just an organizing group that's doing organizing. It's also like a support group for us because like Carlota was saying before, people in Arivaca... I mean I personally came there to do border solidarity work because I wanted to learn about the border but most people came there... I mean Carlota and Jackson came there not to do that. They were there since before that border really existed in the way that it does now. I think that's most people are sort of caught in the cross-hairs of this. It's like collateral damage, the community of just being caught in the middle. It's like a disaster sweeping through a community and you don't choose to be there. I think people need support in dealing with that and I think as we're living in these dark times where I think the darkness... I mean the border is sort of the canary in the coal mine. A lot of these technologies, weaponized, military gear that was being used in Iraq and Afghanistan, is coming to the border and then from the border, it goes to police departments in New York. It goes to police departments in other parts of the country. That hundred mile border zone that we talked about before expands around the entire length of the country. This situation is a very acute crisis on the border but it has repercussions that can affect the lives of people throughout this country. I think as we're living in dark times and people are dealing and realizing more of how dire the political situation is, I think that that support is so important because it's not just about organizing to push back on these things but it's about supporting each other to be able to have hope and get through because that's what we all need to be able to do this.
Alexandra Arriaga: And so Carlota, you mentioned everything that was going on in Arivaca and clearly the situation is less than ideal. But my question to you is on a more positive note, what do you wish for the future of Arivaca and what do you hope for?
Carlota Wray: They militarized the zone. We need a Reforma Migratoria.
Alexandra Arriaga: Migration reforms.
Carlota Wray: We need to change this. This need not continue. This needs to stop. Like I said, it's not just another person dead on the side of the road because it's how far they make it. It needs to stop. What we need to do is where my question is we need the support, we need other people to get involved. Especially, political... a lot of the political circuses going on today, I don't understand. Of course, I don't know who does. But I think things need to change there because that's where the problem is and really I don't have the answer. But I want this to stop. It needs to stop. It's important to us to stop. We don't want anymore people dying out there in the desert full of crosses and names... no names, it's a padecido. What is this? I really want this to stop. That's what my heart wants too. I think us as humans beings, we all want this to stop but what are we going to do to stop this situation? But like I said in the meantime I'm there to help anyone that needs a hand. People Helping People are there to help. That's why we call ourselves, People Helping People in the border zone. We are PHP and I usually tell people, I love what I do.
Alexandra Arriaga: It's very important work. But I think by being here with the film and everything, I think there's light being shed in the situation. I think that the more people know about it, the more hopefully will get others involved and informed and hopefully they'll start a positive change for the community. For those that are maybe listening and they're really far away from where all this struggle is happening, some might be wondering how they can help or what they can do to get involved. If you could speak directly to our listeners right now, what is one thing you want them to remember from listening to this episode?
Carlota Wray: Well, we need the support in many ways, financially, a lot of things cost money. And like I said, the support of anyone that can do something about this situation. I went to a place a few days ago and this lady told me that today, young people are too involved in other things and they don't really care about the situation. I wanted to say that she got that wrong because I believe there's young people today that care. They care about this kind of situation and there's many young people that are out there doing something about different things because it's so many other things that are happening around us that not everybody is working with immigrants and refugees. But I know there's young people that care and they are going to do something about this. I know they are there. So when she told me the negative words, I don't let that affect me because in my heart I believe there's people that care about this situation and they are going to do something about this situation. I thank you and I appreciate each one of them. They're beautiful young people that care about this situation because I know they have a caring heart. And I know they’re going to do something about it.
Jackson Wray: Just really quick, I think individuals kind of researching and informing themselves about the ways that policy and law are coming short in individuals who are providing humanitarian aid is really critical. So just an awareness and a disservice when it comes to providing basic aid for humans on this earth in the ways that humanitarian aid workers are being criminalized in the process, really basic fundamental needs, really being kind of punished in the eyes of the law. I think folks understanding really what's happening and organizing against that and having conversations about the ways in which this needs to change and there needs to be both an awareness and an organizing shift to address the way that the law is coming up short when it comes to people in positions of power and how they view humanitarian aid and providing very basic services that folks need in order to continue to live. It's really disheartening and so troubling to see just recently the ways that the law has fallen short in those folks providing those basic needs. I think the conversations around that really need to come to the forefront and if folks can speak about it and speak truth and call them as they are that's the first real motion to effectively create change and really understand the hardships in addition to just providing this humanitarian aid in the border zone. There's also these ramifications for folks in the eyes of the law. It's a really multifaceted hardship and something that is really difficult to kind of do day-in and day-out is provide the basic needs but also to potentially face these consequences on a larger scale legally. Those conversations I think are one thing that I hope folks continue to get information on, are educated about, and really actively resist because the way the individuals are being treated is unjust.
Eva Lewis: I want to answer the last two questions if I may. I think in terms of what we want to see. I think demilitarization means, I think... Carlota said, Demilitarization and immigration reform and I think that's true. I think we need a unified movement throughout this country that does not accept any sort of immigration reform that comes with further militarization of the border because the border... even when DACA and DAPA was passed, they came with so many millions of dollars more towards militarizing the border. I think it's really important because the more that the border becomes militarized, the more that immigration is criminalized and it doesn't actually allow for real change in the immigration system to take hold. I think that that's a really important demand. We are part of a coalition of border communities that is trying to fight back against the troop deployment. We want the military withdrawn from the border. We want the respect of the rights of asylum seekers. Before when we were talking about asylum, one thing that I didn't mention is that it's also even if you are able to get a sponsor in a state where you have a better chance of having your case approved, the limits on what can qualify for asylum are very, very strict. It's a really limited population that can even qualify for asylum. There's not really other paths for a lot of people. We need people's basic rights to be respected, their right to life, their right to immigrate. Because the movement of people is a basic human reality. It's always through history. I think in terms of what we want to see, we want to see the borderlands restored to place that's not a war zone, not a militarized zone. And really to have immigration and the lives of immigrants not be criminalized and deemed unimportant. And in terms of the humanitarian aid like what Jackson was talking about for volunteers with the organization, No More Deaths were just convicted and are facing six months in prison for leaving water in the desert. No More Deaths has a solidarity statement that they're asking people to sign on to. So if you Google No More Deaths and go to their website, you can find the solidarity statement where we're asking that people sign on to support these four brave women who put water in one of the deadly corridors of the desert on a national wildlife refuge. But the government is saying it was illegal because it's bad for the environment while people are literally dying and they're about to build... extend the border wall through a butterfly sanctuary. The hypocrisy is absolutely amazing and the level of dehumanization is amazing and so really for listeners at home to sign onto the No More Deaths Solidarity Statement to go to phparivaca.org, that's phparivaca.org and support the work that People Helping People is doing providing humanitarian aid and crisis relief. If you have the capacity to sponsor an asylum seeker, there is a very big need for people not in border states to sponsor asylum seekers. There are a lot of immigrants in detention who need support throughout the country and there are groups, wonderful groups in different areas doing organizing around that. So in terms of speaking directly to listeners, I would just say, we need financial support, and go in your community and find the people who need material support on the ground and how you can plug in. Throughout the country, there's ways to do that. You can organize a screening of the film, Undeterredfilm.org. You can book a screening, you can... there's a part under book a screening, you can ask for a speaker to come and we will come to your town and speak. That's another way.
Alexandra Arriaga: Thank you for all the information. And finally, how can listeners also learn a little bit more about the film. You just mentioned the film's website but is there any other resource that you recommend?
Eva Lewis: Well, on that website for the film, we did put together an educational toolkit so if you're interested in screening the film, you can order a copy of the film and then there's discussion questions, there's a resource list, there's shortly going to be a FAQ, which has information for people who may not be super informed to be able to read and then feel like they can have a little bit more information to be able to lead a discussion following the film. The idea is really to have that be like to turn the film not just into entertainment but also into something that can be used as a tool for people to teach in their community about the crisis on the border and what's happening. The other thing is here at NYU, there is a group of students from the School of Global Public Health and also a couple of undergrad students who are working with us to create an educational curriculum for high school. That will eventually be available as well. That will use the film to teach about the border in high schools.
Alexandra Arriaga: Shout out to those NYU students. Thank you for doing that. Thank you guys so much for coming. Thank you, Eva, Carlota, Jackson. It's been such a pleasure having you here and really helping us understand better what's going on in Arivaca.
Eva Lewis: Thank you.
Jackson Wray: Thank you so much.
Carlota Wray: Thank you for having us.