Category: On Human Rights
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Field Note 2.2: Of ICE and Men
In this Field Note, I follow the ghostly echoes of California’s past — from Miwok and Chumash place names to masked raids by modern ICE agents. In a land shaped by snowmelt and migration, we ask: What happens when old names remain, but new dispossessions unfold? The rivers carry more than water. They carry tears.
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Field Note 2.1: The Wind Has No Papers
Not long after, we found ourselves witness to the tail end of the annual migration of California tortoiseshell butterflies, lifted upslope on Lassen’s invisible updrafts. Many had journeyed from northern Mexico and Baja California — without proper papers, their wings notwithstanding. And yet we do not call them “illegal.”
No Shortcuts to Now 