Local activists go to border with supplies. Can you help?

Padi Selwyn is one of the founders of Preserve Rural Sonoma County. If you can make a donation this week to show support for her and her fellow activists, that would be great. Another asylum refugee died last week. 

On October 17, I will be traveling to south Texas with two friends from Sonoma County, Sharon Keating and Kate Luna, to volunteer at the border where over 1,000 people living in deplorable conditions on the streets are awaiting a chance to apply for asylum. 

Reuben and I have donated to organizations working with refugees and to help with legal aid, but now it is time for me to go

there to provide direct aid. So much help is needed on the ground that I can no longer sit on the sidelines. many asylum seekers have walked over 1,000 miles and have literally nothing but the clothes on their backs. (From Honduras to Texas is about 1,125 miles, to give you an example. Imagine walking from Boston to Miami or San Francisco to El Paso!)

Here is the situation:

If the separation of children from parents is not horrifying enough, Trump’s Remain in Mexico Program has created a horrendous

humanitarian crisis at the border. Asylum seekers are no longer allowed to apply for asylum when they enter the US. They are now sent back across the bridges to Mexico to await a kind of “lottery” to be able to submit application for asylum. People are now being told to wait in Mexico for up to 2 years.

We will be joining volunteers cooking, gathering supplies and then walking over the Gateway International Bridge into Matamoros,

Mexico, several times daily to deliver food, clothing, other basic human needs to those stranded there. We will also be teaching at the

Street School. Currently, over 1,000 asylum seekers are living on the streets with no access to housing, food, toilets, clean water

or medical services.  At this point, scarcity is the norm-there is not enough food or supplies to accommodate the expanding population arriving daily.

We will be serving those who have nothing and no way out. The shelters are at capacity. The number of people (largely families

with kids) has skyrocketed from 100 or so in July to 1,000 as of this week living on the streets.

 

The three main organizations working there are overwhelmed. They need larger commercial kitchen space to prepare dinners they deliver over the border every night, tents, tarps, sleeping bags, delivery wagons, warm clothing, food etc. Conditions are brutal.

So many people I speak with have been heartsick and looking for ways to help. A large part of what has compelled me is the

opportunity to offer others a more personal way to contribute.

We are raising money to provide emergency help–food, supplies, toiletries, etc.  There are also great needs for a medical tent,

additional storage capacity for supplies, trauma services, and more tents to house the growing numbers.  Whatever you can give

will go directly to emergency aid and supplies. My promise to you.

 

We are each paying for our own transportation and housing while we are at the border for 10 days so that every dollar we rasie will  be spent to bring some dignity and well-being to those in tremendous need. I will send an update on how the money

was used and what we witnessed when I return .  Our goal is to have as much impact as possible in our time there.

Please keep us in your thoughts as we go forth.

My heartfelt gratitude,

Padi

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