Charlottesville Mall Demonstration

Click above for a larger image

There was a demonstration during Fridays at Five this last week, on the Charlottesville Downtown Mall. It was to bring attention to the number of people dieing in the Arizona desert while attempting to get into the U. S. The demonstrators had signs and stood in a line across the Mall. Pedestrians moving up and down the Mall had to pass by the signs. I thought it was an effective way to get the message across without being too intrusive. The demonstrators were silent. They then moved down the mall and repeated the presentation, eventually leaving the signs at the Freedom of Speech Wall.

When I returned home I googled the topic and found that the number of deaths since the 1990’s was more than 4,000.

I spent a summer in a small town in the Sonoran Desert. My Aunt owned a trailer park about 15 miles from Sierra Vista, Arizona. It could be brutal in the summer. My Aunt warned me about hiking in the desert because distances can be easily misjudged.

Many of these border crossers pay people to bring them across the border. These are usually unscrupulous people that often strand their clients where they are unlikely to be found.

I think this is a humanitarian issue, regardless of the illegality of the immigration. Drones are being used in the area ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23925798/ ). Let’s hope they can be used to find these folks before the desert claims them.