#High Desert Food and Farm Alliance

[dhyzenmedia]

Why Central Oregon World Food Day?

By Sharon Maier-Kennelly, HDFFA Executive Director In June, I was privileged to become the High Desert Food and Farm Alliance’s second Executive Director. The organization’s…

[life-smp-simulated]

Life SMP Simulated Season 2 is going to come at some point in the near future but IN THE MEANTIME the simulator spit out a season with only two sessions LOL and I thought it was funny so here it is for your viewing pleasure

A new version of the Life series has begun.

Jimmy and Pearl are soulmates. Impulse and Grian are soulmates. Skizz and Martyn are soulmates. Bdubs and Tango are soulmates. Ren and Joel are soulmates. Etho and Scott are soulmates. BigB and Cleo are soulmates.

Grian has 3 lives. Pearl has 3 lives. Bdubs has 3 lives. BigB has 3 lives. Impulse has 3 lives. Martyn has 3 lives. Ren has 3 lives. Tango has 3 lives. Etho has 3 lives. Scott has 3 lives. Joel has 3 lives. Skizz has 3 lives. Cleo has 3 lives. Jimmy has 3 lives.

Session 1

Bdubs comes across a dungeon. Tango shares resources with Martyn. Grian picks flowers. Etho obtains the enchanter. Cleo had their neck snapped by an Enderman. BigB died. Cleo and BigB have 2 life/lives left. Scott decides to set up home in a desert. Impulse creates an alliance with Jimmy. Cleo hatches a plan to kill Ren. Skizz was shot by a skeleton. Martyn died. Skizz and Martyn have 2 life/lives left. BigB tames some dogs. Skizz was knocked off their base by a phantom. Martyn died. Skizz and Martyn have 1 life/lives left. Scott hatches a plan to kill Tango. Ren suffocated in gravel whilst mining. Joel died. Ren and Joel have 2 life/lives left. Pearl makes a trap targeted at Grian. Martyn travels to the Nether. Cleo was shot to death by Skizz. BigB died. Cleo and BigB have 1 life/lives left. BigB loots a ruined portal. Etho finds diamonds. Bdubs is very sleep-deprived. Bdubs does not approve. Ren steals resources from Impulse. Jimmy crafts a set of armor. Bdubs explores the Nether with Joel. Tango had their throat slit by Martyn. Bdubs died. Tango and Bdubs have 2 life/lives left. Skizz tames some dogs. Scott steals resources from Pearl. Grian fishes for resources. Ren finds cats. BigB clears out a (dark oak) forest. Cleo starts breeding cows. Jimmy was blown up by a Creeper. Pearl died. Jimmy and Pearl have 2 life/lives left. Jimmy works on their base. Impulse burned to death in lava. Grian died. Impulse and Grian have 2 life/lives left.

Session 2

Bdubs is feeling lonely. Scott crafts a set of tools. Grian died while attempting to defuse a trap set by Cleo. Impulse died. Grian and Impulse have 1 life/lives left. Joel starts breeding cows. Tango clears out a (dark oak) forest. Etho was impaled by Skizz. Scott died. Etho and Scott have 2 life/lives left. Ren was mauled to death by Jellie pandas. Joel died. Ren and Joel have 1 life/lives left. Ren realizes they're low on food. Jimmy went off with a bang from a firework shot by BigB. Pearl died. Jimmy and Pearl have 1 life/lives left. Pearl was shot to death by Martyn. Jimmy died. Pearl and Jimmy have 0 life/lives left. Pearl was eliminated! Jimmy was eliminated! Scott was devoured by spiders. Etho died. Scott and Etho have 1 life/lives left. Skizz ran off a cliff trying to escape Scott. Martyn died. Skizz and Martyn have 0 life/lives left. Skizz was eliminated! Martyn was eliminated! Impulse creates a sheep farm. Scott died while attempting to defuse a trap set by Joel. Etho died. Scott and Etho have 0 life/lives left. Scott was eliminated! Etho was eliminated! Bdubs was impaled by Grian. Tango died. Bdubs and Tango have 1 life/lives left. Joel was pushed off a high place by Cleo. Ren died. Joel and Ren have 0 life/lives left. Joel was eliminated! Ren was eliminated! Cleo was burnt to a crisp whilst fighting Impulse. BigB died. Cleo and BigB have 0 life/lives left. Cleo was eliminated! BigB was eliminated! Tango was knocked off their base by a phantom. Bdubs died. Tango and Bdubs have 0 life/lives left. Tango was eliminated! Bdubs was eliminated! Impulse tames some dogs. Grian finds diamonds. Impulse decides to set up home in a desert. Grian comes across a dungeon. Grian fell out of the world. Impulse fell out of the world.

[farzanatradingcompany]

The Role of Fruits & Vegetables Importers in UAE Ensuring Fresh and Quality Produce

In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where lush greenery replaces a barren backdrop, paradoxes abound. The nation's committed network of importers of fruits and vegetables has made a substantial contribution to this transition. In this article, we'll examine the crucial part that these imports played in providing a steady supply of fresh, varied produce that enriched the country's culinary scene.

Various Options for Culinary Journey

The UAE's importers of fruits and vegetables are noteworthy for their dedication to diversity. Whether you're craving exotic vegetables like Thai eggplants and Japanese shiitake mushrooms or tropical fruits like mangoes and pineapples, UAE importers have you covered. With so many options, locals and businesses may experience international flavours and go on culinary journeys.

Supporting Food Security

The UAE has improved its food security significantly in recent years. Importers of fruits and vegetables have been crucial to these initiatives. They have improved the country's capacity to meet its food demands, even in the face of interruptions to the global supply chain, by diversifying sourcing regions and forging strategic alliances.

Quality Control

Farzana Fruits & vegetables Importer in UAE uphold strict requirements for quality control. Produce is thoroughly inspected to make sure it satisfies safety and quality standards before it is sold. This dedication to quality goes

beyond simply providing mouthwatering fruit; it also includes making sure that it is safe for consumption, promoting the health and wellbeing of the general people.

Sustainability-related Projects

In the UAE, several importers of fruits and vegetables are actively involved in sustainable practises. They place a high value on using ecologically friendly farming practises, cutting down on food waste, and introducing eco-friendly packaging techniques. This commitment to sustainability is in line with international initiatives to reduce the negative environmental effects of food production and distribution.

In conclusion, fruit and vegetable imports play a truly revolutionary role in the UAE. They enhance the nation's culinary scene and support food security by bringing the world's riches to the doorstep of the desert. These importers guarantee that locals and companies may enjoy the finest and freshest products from around the world thanks to their dedication to quality, diversity, sustainability, and year-round availability. Looking ahead, it is certain that importers of fruits and vegetables will continue to be essential in establishing the culinary climate and maintaining the security of the UAE's food supply.

[ledenews]

An OPEN LETTER to … Fans of the Former Downtown Wheeling …

To Daydreamers of the Darling Days of Downtown: It was as fun as your memories recall and, even though we were kids at the time, we’ll never forget THAT version of downtown Wheeling either. The stores, the billiard bars, the pawn shop’s guns and diamond rings, the theatres, the bikes in Becker’s, the restaurants, the train tracks, the ball gloves at Banov’s, the Big Boy statues, the Talking Christmas Tree, the unlocked alley doors, the music shops, the hot dogs and cheeseburgers and those quarter milkshakes at the lunch counter at G.C. Murphy’s. Of course, we ran between our hot spots like the Hamburger Inn, the Victoria Theatre, the back door of the Capitol Music Hall, and the showroom at Boury Inc. to play pinball, and there was the Teacher’s Store and Juniper and the Wharf and the Club Tower because it had those girlie portraits out front, too. We were the kids of Wheeling, and we cherish our memories, too, but now, as adults, it’s where we live and work and eat and see shows and bank and go to church. So, these days, it’s our downtown, and yes, it is very, very different along Main and Market streets back in those hey-day decades, but it’s not deserted as many suggest in their social media postings. Tumbleweeds don’t mosey down cob-webbed streets, day-time traffic is constantly brisk, and that white-flag mindset seems reserved for those no longer living here. So, we believe it might be useful to offer you this list compiled for your convenience. We may have missed a few, and for that we apologize, but it is our hope you realize today’s downtown mix of new and old represents a fight for a new future. Sincerely, People of the Present Downtown Wheeling A The Artisan Center, Adventures in Elegance B Bridge Tavern & Grill, Beyond Marketing, Board of Trade Building, Boury Lofts, Boswell Monument C Capital Theater, Community Foundation, Cardinal Printing, Clientele Art Gallery, Central Catholic High School, Catholic Charities, Comas Barber Shop D DiCarlo’s Pizza, Dyagon Alley, The Day Reporting Center, Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston E Elle and Jack's, Enterprise Car Rentals F Fort Henry Building, Felton CPA G Good Mansion Wines, Gompers and Associates, Grow Ohio Valley H The Health Plan, Hazlett, Burton and Watson, Helping Heroes, Harris Law Office I IC Care, Information Help Line K Kalkrueth Roofing, Kepner Funeral Home, L Lucky Candies M Mmm Popcorn, Mugshots, Main Street Bank, The Mother of Jones Center, Mills Group, Mull Center, Midge’s Kitchen, McLure Hotel, Medical Supply, N Neely’s Grocery, National Equipment, nail City Records, National Alliance on Mental Illness, O The Orrick Center, Ohio County Commission, Omni Strategic, Ohio Valley MMA, Omega Bar P Panda Chinese Kitchen, Public Market, Perry & Associates R River City, Rivers Edge, Regional Economic Development Partnership, Rachel’s on 16th, Route 40 Realty, Rich & Shirley’s Printing, S Stages, State Farm, Sarah's On Main, Steptoe and Johnson, 7-Eleven, Salvation Army, Stone Center, Smith Law, The Snake Club, Sexual Assault Help Center T Titos, Tacoholix, Table 304, Thrive, TaylorMade Printing, Truist Bank, Teamsters Local #697 U United Way of the Upper Ohio Valley, United States Government, Uniglobe, Undo’s Catering, United Bank V Vagabond Kitchen, Vineyard Church, Visiting Angels, Viper’s Billiards, Victoria Theatre, W Wheeling Chamber, WVU-Wheeling Clinic, Wheeling Coffee and Spice, Wesbanco Arena, W.Va. Northern Community College, Wesbanco Bank and Headquarters, WKKX, City of Wheeling, Williams Lea Tag, Wheeling National Heritage Area Corp., WVLY, Wheeling Office Supply, Wheeling Nailers, Wheeling Symphony, Wheeling Convention and Visitors Bureau, W.Va. DHHR, The Wig Store, W.Va. Independence Hall, WTRF TV7, Wheeling Food Mart, WTOV TV9, Y YWCA-Wheeling, Youth Services System Z Ziegenfelder’s (Art by Bob Dombrowski) https://ledenews.com/a-fat-cat-a-kid-named-paisley-and-a-hotel-across-the-street/ https://ledenews.com/wheeling-ohio-county-cvb-buys-former-wheeling-inn-property-for-1-7-million/ Read the full article

[duckyfruitbat]

Why Princess Peach?

The other day I was only physically present at work and I started thinking of Mario.  Specifically, of all the kingdoms that surround Bowsers volcano, why go for the princess who hasn’t even really been coronated.  Especially with a pudgy plumber always there that can bring down his entire army by hopping around.  So then I started thinking, there must be some advantage to taking over the Mushroom Kingdom.  Then it hit me, so come with me and let us hop into the mind of King Bowser Koopa and find the answers to our question.

So you are Bowser Koopa, King of the Koopa Kingdom.  Your people are cold blooded turtles so they need a warm place to live.  Now your father was no dummy, he put the kingdom in a hotspot to keep the people warm year round.  However there is one slight problem, the land is infertile.  The ground is scorched and unsafe for plants of really any kind except for the odd piranha plant.  With crops unable to be grown here the kingdom has no choice but to import nearly all foods.  With imports comes of course taxes and tariffs, so food prices can be a bit high.  

This is the kingdom you have inherited, great at keeping your people comfortable, but not so much fed.  So what is a king to do but expand the empire, real life history proves this to be the most profitable option.  Now what are the realestate options around the kingdom, and invasion is very much on the table.  Just beyond the border are the mountains.  These mountains are very high and go beyond the tree line, so not much of an option there.  There is an ocean just beyond that can provide bounties of fish.  This could keep the peoples protein needs in check, and open up great trade routes for this landlocked country, but remember you don’t want to keep importing food.  What about the surrounding kingdoms, the Thwomps and Whomps provide the materials and build most of the masonry on this side of the continent.  They are also a close ally so not really good for invasion.  The Boos are in better lands for farming, but they can easily defend themselves from guns and bombs, mostly because they are already dead and will fiercely defend their home.  Next up is the Bob-ombs...This is a really bad idea because of the fact that all the people in that kingdom are very familiar with firearms.  The Desert?  Forget about it, can’t feed a country with sand, towns and villages cling to the few rivers for a reason.  There is just not much around, but wait what is that in the lowlands, giant mushrooms growing up from gorges and the hills, lush grasslands and forests doting the landscape, there are even farms already so it won’t be much work to start up production.

This land is perfect for your plans, but wait there is one obstacle to the taking over.  This land is ruled by a princess, and the people love her.  She is kind to the people and the people express their gratitude.  So what is a king to do here?  The land is fertile enough to support giant mushrooms.  You could always execute the princess, with no ruler surely the kingdom will collapse and you can swoop in and make it your own.  Unfortunately their is another heir to this throne, and this heir already has a kingdom.  Princess Daisy is Princess Peach’s cousin and the reigning monarch of Sarasaland.  She would have no issue taking the Mushroom kingdom into her own, and she would waste no time in getting her revenge.  After that they won’t be calling it the Mushroom Kingdom only for the fungus. 

Wait, what about taking the princess prisoner for life.  Well then the people will never except you as their king, you will be nothing but a false king whom the people revolt against whenever things seem to be calming down.  The idea of the revolts could easily shift over to the Koopa people.  In this scenario, your days on the throne are numbered.

Hang on though, there is another option.  All the kingdoms in the area have some common laws, one of those being marriage.  If you somehow convince the princess to marry you, you’ll be the legitimate king of both lands.  No questions, she could rule by your side as queen, as your equal.  Do this right and all the kingdoms will have no choice but to accept it as true.  Even Daisy will have to concede.  The mushroom people will have their ruler still and will not revolt.  What would they revolt against, the queens husband?  There are no downsides to this plan, so what are we waiting for?  It is time to  court the princess.  

This is the thinking behind Bowsers initial invasion, court the princess, aquire a great asset for the kingdom.  Of course he forgot to factor in one import detail.  The princess is just not interested, it doesn’t seem to have initially been anything to do with politics.  That’s not to say she wouldn’t have anything to gain from such an arrangement.  The Koopa kingdom has a powerful military, no one would want to invade such a defended kingdom.  The princess however, has no interest in marriage as of present.  Bowser is not a fan of that, and instead of trying to make a strong alliance and friendship between the countries, he figured he would marry the princess by force, as seen in Mario Odyssey.  

With how Bowser invaded and took over in the first game, he almost got away with it too, that is until a certain red and green plumber duo found there way into the Mushroom Kingdom on that faithful day, permanately earning a spot on Bowser’s list.

[starcrossedkaiju]

Kingslayer AU: Chapter 14

This took a bit longer than I thought it would 😀 life kinda said lol to me for a while.

“Augh!” Scott cried out. He breathed in desperately, but his mouth filled with water.

Sitting up and rolling to his side, he coughed out a stream of water. Groaning when he finished. Scott sat up wearily, blocking the sun from his face.

It was warmer than usual. He was sitting in a waist high pool of water, around his shoulders as he was sitting down, which was a warm brown color. Behind him he could hear the roar of the river he had floated in from.

Scott rubbed his eyes and gauged the pain in his bruising shoulder. He felt like something was missing when he noticed.

“Tango?” He called out. A twinge of frantic concern escaped in his voice. Scott turned in every direction, scanning the surroundings for any sign of his friend.

What if they’d been separated in the river? What if his friend had drowned?

His anxiety was at its peak when another person sat up from under the water. Sputtering and flailing about, Tango had been hidden under the murky pond.

Scott fell backwards in surprise, his shock eased when he saw his friend, who looked alright enough. Tango seemed satisfied with the amount of water he discarded, looking up he met Scott’s eyes.

Tango’s eyes widened with relief, he laughed, it looked slightly painful, but he pulled the other into a tight embrace.

“Are you alright?” he pulled back, looking Scott over for any sign of harm.

“I’m fine, uh, except for the shoulder,” Scott replied.

“Oh, yeah,” Tango got to his feet. He held a hand out for the other to take.

Once they had waded to the mucky shore, Tango ordered Scott to enter the trees while he ran to the other side of the pond. Tango hastily did so, looking up and around the area. Scott could see a triumphant expression make it’s way onto his face.

“Come here,” Tango motioned when he got back to Scott, “look,” he pointed skywards.

Scott followed his line of sight up into the sky. Right above the trees, a line of grey smoke floated into the sky.

“What is it?” he asked.

Tango smiled, “The Crastle,” he exclaimed.

After a while of enduring wet socks through a lightly wooded area. The Crastle came into view. It was nearly sundown now, and Scott recognized where they were. Almost dead in front of the castle and it’s moat, the drawbridge was still down. For the sun was not gone yet.

Tango crouched in the last bit of trees, surveying the barren, icy field that housed the humble fort. Deciding they had to go at some point, he told Scott to come. They jogged low through the tall stretches of grass, then hastily across the drawbridge.

Kneeling behind a small decorative wall, Tango went to the door while Scott stayed in place. He knocked on the door politely, but hard enough to provoke any inhabitants to answer.

A few moments passed and a small circle of wood slid out of the door. A peephole, and an eye appeared in it. Tango leaned down to make his identity known, which may have been a stupid thing to do in hindsight. What if a member of Dogwarts had been visiting?

The door swung open. Cleo’s already wide eyes were impossibly wider. Although her face could not go pale, one could imagine that it did.

Quickly, all three rushed inside. The doors and windows were slammed shut and locked.

Without even a hello, Cleo whipped around to face the two fugitives. Hands poised on her hips.

“What on Earth are you two doing here?” she seethed. Her eyes were angry, her teeth gritted.

“We need help,” Tango replied. Putting his hands up in mock surrender.

Scott had never been aquatinted with the girl before. Cleo and her friend Bdubs lived a relatively secluded life in the Crastle together. They did not have to ask to be left alone, both were a force to be reckoned with when under threat.

Soldiers by nature, Cleo and Bdubs defended their small claim to a normal life with everything they could. Scott understood their seclusion. Had he not been doing the same?

“Yeah you do,” Cleo nearly laughed. Tango didn’t look very amused.

“Not funny, Cleo, we both almost died,” he said with a tired frown.

She dropped the mirthful expression. Nodding, “You shouldn’t have come here,” she looked away.

“Cleo. Please,” Tango reached for her thin hand, which was worn and frail looking from accumulating years of war and hardship.

Cleo’s eyes met his in a silent response. Not to his plea, she would never have said no to him.

“A week,” she bargained.

Scott felt like an outsider to their relationship. He knew they had been close for a long time. Then he knew of Cleo’s heartbroken anger towards the man for betraying their alliance. Even if he was pretending. Tango hid his truer feelings under various layers of hostility and irony. Now that they were all in the room together, it was obvious, at least in part, what had been eating away at his friend for the past months.

Back in the cow farm Scott always wondered why Tango made such an effort to help him through his guilt of lying to Jimmy. To Scott, there was no way anyone could understand what he was going through. Now though, he knew Tango was feeling the same way about the Crastle Folk.

“Thank you Cleo,” brightness returned to Tango’s eyes. He shook her hand gratefully.

A smile found its way onto the girl’s face as well. She pat him on the shoulders in place of a hug. They turned back to Scott, who was sat on a chest holding his shoulder.

“We should fix that,” Cleo pointed out the obvious.

After a bit of shuffling around in cabinets and chests, Cleo had started wrapping Scott’s arm in a strap of bandages. She talked about healing it up in no time, a healing potion once a day. Good as new. As long as he kept it in the cast.

She wrapped a piece of fabric around his neck to carry his Arm in, then gave him his first healing potion.

It was silent for a while. The three of them doing random tasks to pass the time, sweeping up the invisible dirt on the floor, examining the titles of a small collection of books on the countertop, and using one had to clean a wound.

A knock at the door halted the peaceful atmosphere. Tango and Scott instinctively found their ways to each others’ side. Suddenly aware of every curtained window.

Cleo quietly approached the door. She slid the peephole open slightly, squinting through. Turning around quickly, she whispered.

“It’s Impulse,” her expression was fearful.

Tango didn’t share her concern. At all. He smiled, going to the door.

“Alone?” he asked.

Cleo nodded.

“Let him in,” he said. Cleo looked at him like he had three heads.

He repeated himself and she hesitated, but she opened the door. Only slightly, so Impulse would only see her. They exchanged unintelligible words before Impulse was granted access to the Crastle.

He looked around. Scott and Tango both waved at him a bit awkwardly. Both of them immediately conscious of how haggard they must look.

Impulse sighed with relief. He put his sword down against the wall and went to meet his friends, pulling the both of the into a hug.

“Are you okay?” he studied each of their faces for any signs of being hurt, save for the now patched wound on Scott’s forehead and his broken shoulder.

“Somehow some way,” Scott muttered, retreating from the embrace.

This was the first time he was clearly able to see the other since their squabble at the desert battle. Impulse looked tired before anything else. Before relief or concern, he was clearly exhausted.

Scott looked away, a knowing part of him said “your fault,” which he made no effort to ignore.

“Impulse, I’m so sorry,” he admitted.

“It isn’t your fault. I’m the one who messed up, super bad. I understand how upset you are,” Scott worried with a strand of hair near the base of his head.

Impulse looked like he was forcing various thoughts off of his tongue, he simply said, “I’m glad you’re okay,” patting Scott on the shoulder.

He shifted his attention back to Tango. Scott backed away from the encounter, sitting on the staircase.

“What do we do now?” Impulse asked him.

Tango made a thoughtful face. His duty returned to him as he contemplated a new plan of action.

“Me and him will leave once it’s safe,” Tango gestured to himself and Scott, “we’ll hightail it to the Northern corner, in the border mountains. It will be safer there. Especially if we go underground,” he said.

Impulse nodded along, he asked, “when are we leaving?”

Tango hesitated, “you aren’t,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Impulse replied as if he’d been slapped.

“We’re going. We’ve been exposed, if I haven’t been as spy then I have as a traitor. Neither of us can stay here; but you can,” Tango said.

“You may have defied the Army at the trial today but you haven’t compromised yourself. Go back there and forget about the damn mission. Take care of him,” he ordered, hands coming to the other’s shoulders.

Impulse frowned deeply; but he nodded.

The moment was over seconds later. Impulse asked if he could stay for a while longer, just in case the Red Army showed up looking for them.

“Where should we stay while we’re here?” Scott asked Cleo.

She looked left in thought, then led them over to a double chest in the corner. It was full of many miscellaneous items. Broken pagers, cups, wood, and coal. Cleo lifted the bottom of the container up. All the contents came with it. They were glued to the surface.

Under the chest was a hole with a ladder. It went down some seven feet into what looked like a dark tunnel.

“Secret Tunnel!” Tango pumped his fist in the air, clearly amused.

Cleo and Impulse laughed along with him, clearly over a joke Scott didn’t understand.

Once everyone had clambered to the bottom of the pit, it became apparent what the “secret tunnel” truly was. There were rows of shelves lining the walls, each was stocked with various canned foods and bags of grain.

“Cleo! Have you been hoarding all the non-perishables on the entire map?” Scott exclaimed once he entered the cellar.

He picked up a can of corn, “How much of this do you have?”

Cleo stifled a laugh, “There’s still plenty being made in the village. It’s not my fault I actually take advantage of their generosity,” she said.

She plucked a can of carrots in gravy from one of the shelves, shaking it in his face. Scott grimaced at the prospect of eating carrots in gravy, but Cleo insisted they were fine heated up.

“So, this is home base, I’m assuming,” Tango said. He probably knew about the cellar already, having lived in the Crastle for a short time.

“Yes. For now. We could have given you the attic, but I wasn’t so sure you’d like to share it with the barn owls,” Cleo joked.

It was comforting that despite the circumstances, the small family-like clique could still be humorous with each other. The smiles of his servermates eased Scott’s racing mind. He leaned against a bare wall and slid to the dusty floor, near a furnace.

“It’s getting late, I need to leave,” Impulse piped up after an engaging back and forth about whether or not barn owls were actually in the attic, and if Tango was actually brave enough to go check.

The weight of a “goodbye” soured the mood immediately. Neither Scott, Tango, or Impulse knew how long it would be until they saw one another again. Nor did they know what unfortunate circumstances may arise while separated.

Tango shook Impulse’s hand, pulling it towards him and smiling reassuringly. Although it looked more like a grimace. Neither said goodbye, only good luck and be safe.

Scott’s heart dropped into the pit of his stomach, but when Impulse turned to him, he hung his head and hugged him; and they just stayed like that for a bit. Impulse ruffed up the other’s hair before pulling away. He shook Scott’s hand as well.

“I’ll be seeing you,” Scott said. Speaking it into existence.

“Soon”, is all Impulse replied before ascending the ladder. Cleo followed him to bid farewell.

The door upstairs shut and locked.

It was going to be a long winter.

[ahhvernin]

It's 2021 and one of my biggest pet peeves in life is on how companies advertise their food as "clean food" or "cleansing food" especially for vegan, vegetarian, allergen free or weight loss etc. You can argue about what it means to you but here's why I hate it with such a passion and it boils down to what food safety and its links to food poisoning is.

I come from an immigrant family who moved to the US, and one of their most told horror stories was when they lived in poverty and had to eat old, pass the prime, and spoiled food, where water, soil and air was polluted and dirty. Vegetables was cheaper than meat but dirty from where they grew and how it was handled. You could easily get food poisoning, you can wash all you want but if your water is dirty, your food is dirty.

They told me as a kid, the West is better and cleaner because the land, air and water are not as dirty, and the standard of handling and storing food is better, because where they came from the standards are not very high. So, to have my grandparents, English is their second language, ask me if they should stop eating fresh fruits, vegetables and unspoiled meat in favor of processed vegan and vegetarian foods or some random diet "gut cleansing" food because its advertised as "clean-food" is absurd and anger inducing. And shows a glaring reality where companies and people are so ignorant of what is the basic definition of "clean food" is to the poor and low income, that their first World privileged marketing and is literally re-triggering the fear of living in a food scarcity, food desert, eating dirty, spoiled contaminated food in people who spent a portion of their life time actually having to deal with dirty, spoiled contaminated food and hoping they wouldn't get sick from it.

Am I against vegan or vegetarian food dishes? No. Am I against gluten free, soy free, allergen free or even heirloom or organically grown foods? Absolutely not. All that shit is good. They cover sustainability, worker rights and wages, conservation, land preservation, food diversity, seed diversity, natural resources health, farmer rights, general well being etc

I just HATE it when food labels and companies call it "clean". Because you know there are going to be a susceptible demographic who don't understand your definition of "clean", and will literally go buy and eat it without understanding what it means to their health and wallet. My grandparents are old, they don't work, they worked all their lives, they raised, are still raising and caring for 3 generations. I just want them to be able to feel confident that they can go out and buy whatever vegetables, fruits, fish and meat they need, without worrying about if they are gonna get violently sick from it. They and everyone else in the world literally shouldn't have anxiety over whether or not the food is dirty with poison or parasites and whether or not its safe to consume. They shouldn't be worried about food poisoning. Just leave out the "clean" on your food label.

You can grow organic heirloom tomatoes and NOT be clean and be contaminated with E.coli even if you used plant based compost-that's why we have food recalls for salmonella, E.coli, Listeria, botulism etc from time to time. The company and some people's definition of "clean" is more than likely based on the farming, harvesting and processing practice methods, a world view or recognizable food ingredients, not the actual cleanliness and safety of a food product.

They have words to cover practices. Fair trade, animal cruelty free, Certified B, USDA certified organic, Rainforest Alliance, palm oil free, allergen, fish, nut, gluten, dairy free the list goes on.

Why do the food companies need "clean" and "cleansing" too? Their "clean" label doesn't mean sterile, safe to eat, washed, uv treated, heat treated or pasteurized.

[june-of-two-thousand-seventeen]

{REPORT}. Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

The report on global land use and agriculture from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change comes amid accelerating deforestation in the Amazon.

Efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and the impacts of global warming will fall significantly short without drastic changes in global land use, agriculture and human diets, leading researchers to warn in a high-level report commissioned by the United Nations.

The special report on climate and land by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) describes plant-based diets as a major opportunity for mitigating and adapting to climate change ― and includes a policy recommendation to reduce meat consumption.

On 8 August, the IPCC released a summary of the report, which is designed to inform upcoming climate negotiations amidst the worsening global climate crisis. More than 100 experts compiled the report in recent months, around half of whom hail from developing countries.

“We don’t want to tell people what to eat,” says Hans-Otto Pörtner, an ecologist who co-chairs the IPCC’s working group on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. “But it would indeed be beneficial, for both climate and human health, if people in many rich countries consumed less meat, and if politics would create appropriate incentives to that effect.”

Researchers also note the relevance of the report to tropical rainforests, where concerns are mounting about accelerating rates of deforestation. The Amazon rainforests is a huge carbon sink that acts to cool global temperature, but rates of deforestation are rising, in part due to the policies and actions of the government of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Unstopped, deforestation could turn much of the remaining Amazon forests into a degraded type of desert, possibly releasing over 50 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere in 30 to 50 years, says Carlos Nobre, a climate scientist at the University of São Paolo in Brazil. “That's very worrying,” he says.

“Unfortunately, some countries don’t seem to understand the dire need of stopping deforestation in the tropics,” says Pörtner. “We cannot force any government to interfere. But we hope that our report will sufficiently influence public opinion to that effect.”

Paris goals

While fossil fuel burning for energy generation and transport garners the most attention, activities relating to land management, including agriculture and forestry, produce almost a quarter of heat-trapping gases. The race to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels ― the goal of the international Paris climate agreement reached in 2015 ― might be a lost battle unless the land is used in a more sustainable and climate-friendly way, the latest IPCC report says.

The report highlights the need to preserve and restore forests, which soak up carbon from the air, and peatlands, which release carbon if dug up. Cattle raised on pastures of cleared woodland are particularly emission-intensive, it says. This practice often comes with large-scale deforestation such as in Brazil or Colombia. Cows also produce large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as they digest their food.

The report states with high confidence that balanced diets featuring plant-based, and sustainably-produced animal-sourced, food “present major opportunities for adaptation and mitigation while generating significant co-benefits in terms of human health”.

By 2050, dietary changes could free millions of square kilometers of land, and reduce global CO2 emissions by up to eight billion tonnes per year, relative to business as usual, the scientists estimate.

“It’s really exciting that the IPCC is getting such a strong message across,” says Ruth Richardson, the Toronto, Canada-based executive director at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, strategic coalitions of philanthropic foundations. “We need a radical transformation, not incremental shifts, towards global land use and food system that serves our climate needs.”

Careful management

The report cautions that land must remain productive to feed a rising world population. Warming enhances plant growth in some regions, but in others ― including northern Eurasia, parts of North America, Central Asia and tropical Africa ― increasing water stress seems to reduce the rate of photosynthesis. So the use of biofuel crops and the creation of new forests― seen as measures with the potential to mitigate global warming ― must be carefully managed to avoid the risk of food shortage and biodiversity loss, the report says.

Farmers and communities around the world must also reckon with more intense rainfall, floods and droughts resulting from climate change warns the IPCC. Land degradation and expanding deserts threaten to affect food security, increase poverty and drive migration, the report says.

About a quarter of the Earth’s land area appears to suffer soil degradation already ― and climate change is expected to make things worse, particularly in low-lying coastal areas, river deltas, drylands, and permafrost areas. Sea level rise is adding to coastal erosion in some regions, the report says.

Industrialized farming practices are responsible for much of the observed soil erosion and pollution, says Andre Laperrière, the Oxford, UK-based executive director of Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition, an initiative to make relevant scientific information accessible worldwide.

The report might provide a much-needed, authoritative call to action, he says. “The biggest hurdle we face is to try and teach about half a billion farmers globally to re-work their agricultural model to be carbon sensitive.“

Nobre also hopes that the IPCC’s voice will give greater prominence to land use issues in upcoming climate talks. “I think that the policy implications of the report will be positive in terms of pushing all tropical countries to aim at reducing deforestation rates,” he says.

Regular assessments

Since 1990, the IPCC has regularly assessed the scientific literature, producing comprehensive reports every six years, and special reports on specific aspects of climate change ― such as today’s― at irregular intervals.

A special report released last year concluded that global greenhouse-gas emissions which hit an all-time high of more than 37 billion tonnes in 2018 must sharply decline in the very near future to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees ― and that this will require drastic action without further delay. The IPCC’s next special report, about the ocean and ice sheets in a changing climate, is due next month.

Governments from across the world will consider the IPCC’s latest findings at a UN climate summit next month in New York. The next round of climate talks of parties to the Paris agreement will then take place in December in Santiago, Chile.

António Guterres, the UN’s climate secretary, said last week that it is “absolutely essential” to implement that landmark agreement ― and “to do so with an enhanced ambition”.

“We need to mainstream climate change risks across all decisions,” he said. “That is why I am telling leaders don’t come to the summit with beautiful speeches.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02409-7

[microsoftedgy69]

TMI Thursday.

Here’s entirely too much information:

Guano (from Spanish guano, from Quechua: wanu) is the accumulated excrement of seabirds and bats. As a manure, guano is a highly effective fertilizer due to its exceptionally high content of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium: nutrients essential for plant growth. Guano was also, to a lesser extent, sought for the production of gunpowder and other explosive materials. The 19th-century guano trade played a pivotal role in the development of modern input-intensive farming, but its demand began to decline after the discovery of the Haber-Bosch process of nitrogen fixing led to the production of synthetic fertilizers. The demand for guano spurred the human colonization of remote bird islands in many parts of the world. During the 20th century, guano-producing birds became an important target of conservation programs and influenced the development of environmental consciousness. Today, guano is increasingly sought after by organic farmers.[1]

Contents

1Composition

2History

3Sourcing

4Properties

5In popular culture

6See also

7References

8Further reading

9External links

8.1Africa

8.2Chile

8.3Peru

8.4Documents

Composition[edit]

Paul Szpak has co-authored several journal articles claiming that seabird guano consists of nitrogen-rich ammonium nitrate and urate, phosphates, as well as some earth salts and impurities, and that unleached guano from favored locales, such as the Chincha Islandsoff the coast of Peru, typically contains 8 to 16 percent nitrogen (the majority of which is uric acid), 8 to 12 percent equivalent phosphoric acid, and 2 to 3 percent equivalent potash.[2][3]

However, The Association of American Plant Food Control Officers (AAPFCO) defines Seabird guano as the hardened excrement from marine birds, which contains no organic matter or nitrogen and is a source of phosphates P2O5: "P- Hydroxylapatite - is a naturally-formed phosphate rock mineral with the formula Ca5(PO4)3(OH). The Fluorine content is less than 1%."[4]

Bat guano is fecal excrement from bats. Commercially harvested bat guano is used as an organic fertilizer.[5][6] All commercially sold bat guano is derived from insect-eating bats.[7]A study was done that demonstrated that, for fruit bats and insect bats, the composition of their guano was largely the same, and differed mainly based on their diet.[8]

History[edit]

Chincha Islands where guano was found in abundance. Mining was done on site and ships transported it to Europe.

Mining guano in the

Chincha Islands

off the central coast of

Peru

c. 1860.

Advertisement for guano, 1884

The word "guano" originates from the Andean indigenous language Quechua, which refers to any form of dung used as an agricultural fertilizer. Archaeological evidence suggests that Andean people have collected guano from small islands and points located off the desert coast of Peru for use as a soil amendment for well over 1,500 years. Spanish colonial documents suggest that the rulers of the Inca Empire assigned great value to guano, restricted access to it, and punished any disturbance of the birds with death. The Guanay cormorant has historically been the most abundant and important producer of guano. Other important guano producing species off the coast of Peru are the Peruvian pelican and the Peruvian booby.[1][3]

In November 1802, Alexander von Humboldt first encountered guano and began investigating its fertilizing properties at Callao in Peru, and his subsequent writings on this topic made the subject well known in Europe. During the guano boom of the nineteenth century, the vast majority of seabird guano was harvested from Peruvian guano islands, but large quantities were also exported from the Caribbean, atolls in the Central Pacific, and islands off the coast of Namibia, Oman, Patagonia, and Baja California. At that time, massive deposits of guano existed on some islands, in some cases more than 50 m deep.[9] In this context the United States passed the Guano Islands Act in 1856, which gave U.S. citizens discovering a source of guano on an unclaimed island exclusive rights to the deposits. Nine of these islands are still officially U.S. territories.[10] Control over guano played a central role in the Chincha Islands War (1864–1866) between Spain and a Peruvian-Chilean alliance. Indentured workers from China played an important role in guano harvest. The first group of 79 Chinese workers arrived in Peru in 1849; by the time that trade ended a quarter of a century later, over 100,000 of their fellow countrymen had been imported. There is no documentary evidence that enslaved Pacific Islanders participated in guano mining.[11] Between 1847 and 1873, there was a significant increase in Peruvian guano exports, and the revenue from this momentarily ended the fiscal necessity of the colonial head tax.[12]

After 1870, the use of Peruvian guano as a fertilizer was eclipsed by saltpeter in the form of caliche extraction from the interior of the Atacama Desert, not far from the guano areas. During the War of the Pacific (1879–1883) Chile seized much of the guano as well as Peru's nitrate-producing area, enabling its national treasury to grow by 900% between 1879 and 1902 thanks to taxes coming from the newly acquired lands.[13] Contrary to popular belief, seabird guano does not have high concentrations of nitrates, and was never important to the production of explosives; bat and cave-bird deposits have been processed to produce gunpowder, however. High-grade rock phosphate deposits are derived from the remobilization of phosphate from bird guano into underlying rocks such as limestone.[14] In 1990 a group of French researchers, from isotope studies, proposed a marine sedimentation origin for some high-grade phosphate deposits on Nauru.[15][16]

Since 1909, when the Peruvian government took over guano extraction for use by Peru farmers, the industry has relied on production by living populations of marine birds. U.S. ornithologists Robert Cushman Murphy and William Vogt promoted the Peruvian industry internationally as a supreme example of wildlife conservation, while also drawing attention to its vulnerability to the El Niño phenomenon. South Africa independently developed its own guano industry based on sustained-yield production from marine birds during this period, as well. Both industries eventually collapsed due to pressure from overfishing.[1]The importance of guano deposits to agriculture elsewhere in the world faded after 1909 when Fritz Haber developed the Haber-Bosch process of industrial nitrogen fixation, which today generates the ammonia-based fertilizer responsible for sustaining an estimated one-third of the Earth's population.[17]

DNA testing has suggested that new potato varieties imported alongside Peruvian seabird guano in 1842 brought a virulent strain of potato blight that began the Irish Potato Famine.[18][19]

Sourcing[edit]

A

herring gull

(

Larus argentatus

) excreting waste near

Île-de-Bréhat

.

The ideal type of guano is found in exceptionally dry climates, as rainwater volatilizes and leaches nitrogen-containing ammonia from guano. In order to support large colonies of marine birds and the fish they feed on, these islands must be adjacent to regions of intense marine upwelling, such as those along the eastern boundaries of the Pacific and South Atlantic Oceans.[9]

Bat guano is usually mined in caves and this mining is associated with a corresponding loss of troglobytic biota and diminishing of biodiversity. Guano deposits support a great variety of cave-adapted invertebrates, that rely on bat feces as their sole source of nutrition. In addition to the biological component, deep guano deposits from birds and bats contain local paleoclimatic records and evidence of other environmental changes in strata that have built up over thousands of years, which are unrecoverable once disturbed.[20]However, when done with caution, extraction of guano can be done alongside marine bird colonies without causing them significant harm.[21][22]

Post-depositional decomposition and ammonia volatilization of penguin guano also plays an important role in the evolution of ornithogenic sediments in the cold and arid environment of Antarctica (McMurdo Sound of the Ross Sea region, East Antarctica).[23]

Properties[edit]

In agriculture and gardening guano has a number of uses, including as: soil builder, lawn treatments, fungicide (when fed to plants through the leaves), nematicide (decomposing microbes help control nematodes), and as composting activator (nutrients and microbes speed up decomposition).[24]

High in nitrogen, guano was also refined in the early 20th century into a precursor to explosives. This caused guano islands to be of strategic significance before the First World War.

In popular culture[edit]

"Guano's historical significance was as much cultural as it was ecological and economic."[25] References to guano in popular culture are an important sign of this cultural influence, especially regarding the ongoing relationship between guano and colonialism. In his 1845 poem "Guanosong", Joseph Victor von Scheffel used a humorous verse to take a position in the then-popular polemic against Hegel's Naturphilosophie. The poem starts with an allusion to Heinrich Heine's Lorelei and may be sung to the same tune.[26] The poem ends however with the blunt statement of a Swabian rapeseed farmer from Böblingen who praises the seagulls of Peru as providing better manure even than his fellow countryman Hegel. This refuted the widespread Enlightenment belief that nature in the New World was inferior to the Old World. The poem has been translated by, among others, Charles Godfrey Leland.[27]

In Joseph Conrad's 1900 novel Lord Jim the characters Chester and Captain Robinson attempt to recruit the eponymous lead character for an expedition harvesting guano.

The setting of Ian Fleming's 1958 installation in the James Bond series Dr. No is a Caribbean guano island, and the villain dies at the end buried in guano.

In Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr. Strangelove, Colonel "Bat" Guano (Keenan Wynn) leads an attack on the airbase responsible for sending a nuclear attack order to bomb the Soviet Union.

The 1994 film Men of War centers on a band of mercenaries who are hired by an investment firm to seize a tropical island for its extensive guano deposits.

In the 1995 film Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Jim Carrey's character attempts to save an African tribe from being dispossessed of a fortune in bat guano.

Hungarian painter Judit Reigl had a series of paintings between 1958-1964. She used to protect the floor of her atelier with old and ruined canvasses. When she moved out, she discovered that over these years the paintings developed an interesting surface, and she carved her "Guano painting" from these.

[queerpyracy]

“Definitions are important because whoever gets to define a problem gets to define its solution,” says Dara Cooper, activist, organizer, writer, and co-founder of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance (NBFJA). “Black communities are often beholden to white [power structures] and their definitions, so they’re also beholden to their solutions,” she adds.

Cooper is redefining problems in food systems across the country and looking at ways that communities of color can reclaim, redesign, and reimagine their own foodways.

In a recent report titled “Reframing Food Hubs: Food Hubs, Racial Equity, and Self-Determination in the South,” Cooper writes: “If we want a truly transformed system—a truly just system—we must commit to divesting from our current system, naming race, and ultimately destroying what we know as a system of white supremacy that does not benefit the majority of the population.”

The report is the result of four months that Cooper spent traveling across the South, interviewing farmers, food hub leaders, and community organizers to identify the most pressing solutions to transform food hubs—popular models for distributing local food more effectively—for greater racial equity.

“In my mind’s eye, the report is aimed at the practitioners of this work, people of color who never get to see themselves in the mainstream narrative, who felt invisible,” she says. But she also wants the larger food justice community to see the report, too, in hopes that it convinces people to see new solutions to old problems.

Earlier this year, Cooper was named a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award honoree for her work, which she describes as “rooted in resistance, self-determination, and, quite frankly, survival.” She sees herself as a conduit for organizations and communities that are working to find community-based solutions to problems.

Cooper started working in food justice 15 years ago, after noticing children on their way to school stopping at a gas station in Chicago for breakfast. “They were eating Cheetos with five-day old hamburger meat and plastic-looking cheese and that was what they had access to. That didn’t seem right to me,” she remembers. At the time she was working to help low-income residents in Chicago do tax preparation focusing on earned income tax credits. But after seeing the lack of food options many families faced, she decided to shift her focus to food justice.

Civil Eats recently spoke with Cooper about the NBJFA, what inspires her food justice work, and her hopes for the future.

What are some of the guiding principles of your work?

All the work I do is about liberation. I focus on food sovereignty, land rights, and land injustice in my role with NBJFA. I work with three other organizers and a larger network of food organizations focusing on food justice, youth leadership, elders in our communities, working towards creating self-determining food economies, and land justice. We mobilize to protect Black people from losing their land, and we work to promote indigenous sovereignty.

What does land injustice look like?

There are historical and contemporary laws that have separated Black people from land, and my work is about how we can reclaim the system and move to a more collective system. We look at using co-op grocery stores and land trusts to deepen our agency and our means to create and design food systems that give us full dignity and agency. Native peoples and Black communities have always had to think about community-based ways of protecting one another and we have to think cooperatively when facing the system. In a group you have more power.

You’ve talked about your work to end “food apartheid,” instead of using the better-known term “food deserts.” Can you explain your choice of language?

One of the things that I’m aware of is all of the ways that Black people experience violence in our country. [Lack of healthy] food is a deep-rooted form of violence. Junk food is concentrated in Black communities, and fast food industries are concentrated there, too. We have research saying kids need nutrition to develop proper brain functions, and when they don’t have access to food with nutrients, that’s violence. We see high heart disease in our communities, and that’s by design. We use the term “food apartheid” instead of “food deserts” because it’s violence that has created this system.

The musician Moby recently wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal about how the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) shouldn’t be allowed to pay for junk food. What are your thoughts on that?

I’ve been in arguments with people about this for many years. This conversation is so layered, and it’s absurd to point the finger at individual choice. When you do that, it can be classist, racist, and paternalistic. When you do that and you don’t mention legislation that makes junk food cheap, you don’t challenge the industries that profit off of this.

I went to South Africa and I saw “crisps,” or what we call chips, were really expensive, and a bag of spinach was really cheap. It made me think about our system in America and how it’s the opposite here. When I went to Jamaica, I saw fruit trees everywhere, and they belong to everyone; they’re in service of the island. Being out of the country has really allowed me to see our capitalist-driven food system and its consequences more clearly.

I’d say to Moby he needs to check himself, his research, and his privilege. We need to point the finger at our systems.

What are you seeing change as part of your work?

I have the great privilege of knowing people that are doing [food justice] work, and we bring these people together to design national strategy. We’ve been focusing on Black co-op work and [helping] Black communities be able to organize themselves.

Solutions [associated with the term “food deserts”] tend to focus only on [adding more] grocery stores, but that’s too narrow—we need to look at all of the different ways communities meet their retail needs like community gardens, dinner swaps, mobile markets, buying clubs… I’ve even experienced senior centers coming together to carpool to local farms and grocery stores. We want to have a more expansive definition of what that can look like.

We understand that ultimately if we want anything to change with our food system, we have to address the land question. We really want strong land reform advocacy that prioritizes creating ancestral connection to the land instead of ownership. Capitalism creates an extractive relationship with the land and makes it about what we can get instead of how we can sustain ourselves and the land at the same time.

I think about our work on a continuum. We have emergency situations where we have to help a farmer keep their land, and we have to think more collectively [over longer time frames] about how we make sure we’re not repeating the same exploitative system. How can we make sure future generations have the land as well?

There are many people thinking about how to create land trusts. We also want to see this in urban areas, since urban farmers are losing their land too. Black Dirt Farm Collective is doing amazing things in that space and urban farmers are organizing.

What does a completely reimagined food system look like to you? What do you dream of seeing in the future?

It’s a system that’s much more creative, not capitalism-centered, with more tax dollars redistributed so communities can benefit from land owned by communities. I also want to see communities organizing at a larger scale, training more farmers, and creating a culture of good food. All of the junk food advertising would shift to okra, collard greens, all of the beautiful things we enjoy when we’re connected to the land. I want to see a shift to thinking about the sustainability of the planet. I want to see the people who grow, pick, and package our foods be able to support their families.

I hope to see that we can really make the connections between [the many ways] capitalism is failing us. We need to center joy and fairness if we care about our children’s children. Quick judgments about SNAP recipients are deviations from conversations that actually create change. Our food system is a direct reflection of how we show love for one another, and there’s always an opportunity to show that you care about people.

[obinna09]

Uganda faces food shortage as coronavirus disrupts locust fight Desert locusts swarm into Uganda from neighbouring Kenya, threatening food security and livelihoods. by Samuel Egadu Okiror 09 Apr 2020 GMT+3 Kampala, Uganda - Farmers in Uganda are bracing for a fresh onslaught of desert locusts after two swarms entered the country from neighbouring Kenya last week, threatening to destroy crops and intensify hunger amid the struggle to contain the coronavirus pandemic. Countries across East Africa are battling the worst locust outbreak in decades, with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warning on Wednesday that the situation remained "extremely alarming" as hopper bands and an increasing number of new swarms form in parts of the region. "This represents an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods because it coincides with the beginning of the long rains and the planting season," it said on Wednesday. More: East Africa locust outbreak sparks calls for international help In Pictures: Desert locusts swarm parts of East Africa Coronavirus: Which countries have confirmed new cases? In Uganda, the latest insect invasion came through the eastern border district of Amudat on April 3, officials said. Unlike previous swarms of mature, less ravaging insects that crossed into the country in February, the new arrivals comprises insects at a "growth stage" that have the "potential to destroy vegetation wherever they go", said Vincent Ssempijja, Uganda's agriculture minister. "The nymphs and young locust have high affinity for food. This may pose an imminent danger to food security and livelihoods," he added. Desert locust, Uganda/PLEASE DO NOT USE People of Ongino sub-county in Kumi district chasing away the locusts from their gardens [Godfrey Ojore/Al Jazeera] Agnes Kirabo, executive director of the Food Rights Alliance, said "this new exodus of swarms is more destructive and a big threat" to food security. "Farmers have no other way of deriving a livelihood except their farms," she added. "To farmers, it's not a loss of food but a loss of life. This is very tragic and a big threat to an already less resilient agriculture sector and food sy (at Kampala, Uganda) https://www.instagram.com/p/B-2E-Cgg8O_/?igshid=qi6xl3eg1k4f

[michaelwalshblog-blog]

No one has ever died from a pot overdose, but the DEA is taking no chances

A man holds up a marijuana cigarette during a rally against drug trafficking and in favour for the legalization of self-cultivation of marijuana for medicinal and recreational purposes in Santiago, Chile April 20, 2017. (Photo: Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) admits that no one ha­s ever died from a marijuana overdose but still won’t remove the substance from its list of Schedule I drugs — the same classification as heroin.

“No deaths from overdose of marijuana have been reported,” the DEA wrote in its 2017 Drugs of Abuse resource guide, which was published last month. The 2015 edition has similar language.

For context, roughly 2,200 people die from alcohol poisoning each year in the United States — six per day.

Despite its relative safety, marijuana remains one of the most strictly prohibited drugs in the country under federal law, even as increasing numbers of states have moved toward legalization. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and DEA classify it as a Schedule I substance, meaning there’s a “high potential for abuse,” no currently “accepted medical use in treatment” and “a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision.”

Michele Leonhart, the former head of the DEA, infamously refused to say whether heroin is worse than marijuana for someone’s health while testifying before Congress in June 2012. She would dodge the question by simply saying, “I believe all illegal drugs are bad.”

For the record, heroin is far more harmful than marijuana. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that overdose deaths from heroin in the U.S. have more than quadrupled since 2010 — killing nearly 13,000 in 2015. Opioid addiction is by some accounts the country’s most urgent public health crisis.

In this June 28, 2017, photo, marijuana plants grow at the Desert Grown Farms cultivation facility in Las Vegas. Frenzied activity at these facilities have been focused on one goal: Getting ready for the start of recreational marijuana sales Saturday in Nevada. (Photo: John Locher/AP)

Schedule I drug

Acting DEA Administrator Chuck Rosenberg wrote a letter rejecting petitions for rescheduling marijuana in August 2016. In the letter, he conceded that marijuana is “less dangerous than some substances in other schedules” and that this “strikes some people as odd.” (It does strike many as odd that cocaine, for instance, is a Schedule II substance because of its potential as a topical anesthetic.)

But Rosenberg said the criteria for pot’s inclusion in Schedule I is not its “relative danger.”

“In that sense, drug scheduling is unlike the Saffir-Simpson scale or the Richter scale,” Rosenberg wrote. “Movement up those two scales indicates increasing severity and damage (for hurricanes and earthquakes, respectively); not so with drug scheduling. It is best not to think of drug scheduling as an escalating ‘danger’ scale – rather, specific statutory criteria (based on medical and scientific evidence) determine into which schedule a substance is placed.”

A spokesperson for DEA told Yahoo News that “judicial precedent” established a five-part test to determine whether marijuana has a “currently accepted medical use in treatment,” serving as a differentiating factor between Schedule I and II.

The five parts are as follows: the drug’s chemistry is known and reproducible, there are adequate safety studies, there are adequate and well-controlled studies proving efficacy, the drug is accepted by qualified experts and the scientific evidence is widely available.

A participant practices rolling a joint at the Cannabis Carnivalus 4/20 event in Seattle, Washington, U.S. on April 20, 2014. (Photo: Jason Redmond/Reuters)

Legal medical marijuana’s relationship to the opioid epidemic

As attitudes toward marijuana in the U.S. change, the backlash to its strict classification at the federal level is growing. Critics of current marijuana laws argue that the pharmaceutical industry’s greed and government bureaucracy have undermined research that would allow the substance to help fight the opioid epidemic.

Rather than being a gateway drug to harder substances, as health-education classes have taught for decades, preliminary studies suggest that legal medication marijuana might be associated with fewer opioid prescriptions and overdoses. Even the National Institute on Drug Abuse recognizes this correlation, although more evidence is still needed to confirm the finding.

A study from November 2015, for instance, titled “Do Medical Marijuana Laws Reduce Addiction and Deaths Related to Pain Killers?” found that legal protection for medical marijuana dispensaries was correlated with fewer opioid prescriptions, instances of opioid-abuse and admissions into opioid addiction treatment programs.

Pharmaceutical companies that sell opioids have been lobbying to keep medical marijuana illegal. Not coincidentally, legal medical marijuana cuts into their sales.

W. David and Ashley Bradford, a father-daughter pair of public policy researchers at the University of Georgia, conducted two studies on the frequency of prescriptions for various drugs between states with or without legalized medical marijuana. They looked at drugs for anxiety, depression, glaucoma, nausea, psychosis, seizures, sleep disorders, spasticity and pain.

“What we found was that when states turned on medical marijuana laws, the prescribing for pain medications fell enormously, by about 1,800 daily doses per doctor per year. That’s very significant statistically,” W. David Bradford told Yahoo News.

W. David and Ashley Bradford’s study found that state’s with legalized medical marijuana saw a significant drop in prescriptions for other pain medications.

In 2013, states with medical marijuana saved the U.S. government about $165 million in Medicare payments for all nine categories of drugs. They calculated that if all states had medical marijuana, Medicare would have spent about $468 million less.

Since that paper came out, the Bradfords gathered two additional years of data and redid their analysis, paying attention to whether states used dispensaries. The article with their new findings is under review for publication.

“If states had turned on dispensary-based medical marijuana laws in 2015, Medicare could’ve saved about $1.7 billion,” he said. “That’s a big reduction in use. And that’s all pain medication. About 30-40 percent of that is opiates.”

Government hurdles to research

Small-scale observational studies suggest that marijuana has therapeutic value in a medical context. However, the FDA requires large-scale clinical trials involving thousands of human participants to confirm its benefits and harms before removing it from Schedule I.

For years, advocates for marijuana legalization said they faced a Catch 22: the federal government’s strict regulation of marijuana prevented the very research the government required to demonstrate that it shouldn’t be regulated so strictly.

An October 2015 report from the Brookings Institution, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C., titled, “Ending the U.S. government’s war on medical marijuana research,” corroborated that statutory, regulatory, bureaucratic and cultural barriers are stifling scientific research on the substance.

“It is time for the federal government to recognize the serious public policy risks born from limited medical, public health, and pharmaceutical research into cannabis and its use,” wrote John Hudak and Grace Wallack, the study’s authors.

Simply put, the federal government’s restrictions have held the scientific community back and forced doctors and patients to operate on a “learn-as-you go” basis.

In August 2016, the DEA removed a major barrier by announcing it would expand the number of places permitted to grow medical marijuana to test its potential beneficial purposes.

Morgan Fox, a spokesperson for the Marijuana Policy Project, a pro-legalization nonprofit, would like marijuana to be removed from the schedule altogether and treated like alcohol at the federal level.

“It is good to see that the DEA is making an attempt at scientific legitimacy instead of using its traditional fear tactics. Hopefully it will contribute to an honest, realistic conversation on drug policy going forward,” Fox told Yahoo News.

Bert De Loera smokes marijuana at the launch of Privee Social Club, an exclusive cannabis users club, on March 23, 2017 in the Venice section of Los Angeles, Calif. (Photo: David McNews/AFP/Getty Images)

The war on drug’s dubious legacy

A study from the Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union found that arrests for possessing small amounts of marijuana for personal use exceeded arrests for all violent crimes in 2015. According to the report, African-American adults smoke pot at similar rates to their white counterparts but are nearly four times more likely to arrested for possessing the drug.

According to the Drug Policy Alliance, which promotes drug policies founded in science and human rights, the U.S. spends more than $5 billion per year in the “war on drugs.” Over the past four decades, the U.S. government has spent over $1 trillion to fight drugs. Judging from the current heroin epidemic, this strategy has been of little help other than swelling the size of the country’s prison population, which is the largest in the world.

Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and philosopher who opposes the war on drugs, says that it never should have been waged in the first place.

“I can think of no right more fundamental than the right to peacefully steward the contents of one’s own consciousness,” he said on his “Waking Up” podcast. “The fact that we pointlessly ruin the lives of nonviolent drug users by incarcerating them, at enormous expense, constitutes one of the great moral failures of our time.”

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Photos: In Mosul, the war is never over, even when the shooting stops

[anniekoh]

Three fresh off the presses books at OxyFood17 Migrating Food Cultures conference.

Big Hunger: The Unholy Alliance between Corporate America and Anti-Hunger Groups (2017) Andrew Fisher

Food banks and food pantries have proliferated in response to an economic emergency. The loss of manufacturing jobs combined with the recession of the early 1980s and Reagan administration cutbacks in federal programs led to an explosion in the growth of food charity. This was meant to be a stopgap measure, but the jobs never came back, and the “emergency food system” became an industry. In Big Hunger, Andrew Fisher takes a critical look at the business of hunger and offers a new vision for the anti-hunger movement. From one perspective, anti-hunger leaders have been extraordinarily effective. Food charity is embedded in American civil society, and federal food programs have remained intact while other anti-poverty programs have been eliminated or slashed. But anti-hunger advocates are missing an essential element of the problem: economic inequality driven by low wages. Reliant on corporate donations of food and money, anti-hunger organizations have failed to hold business accountable for offshoring jobs, cutting benefits, exploiting workers and rural communities, and resisting wage increases. They have become part of a “hunger industrial complex” that seems as self-perpetuating as the more famous military-industrial complex. Fisher lays out a vision that encompasses a broader definition of hunger characterized by a focus on public health, economic justice, and economic democracy. He points to the work of numerous grassroots organizations that are leading the way in these fields as models for the rest of the anti-hunger sector. It is only through approaches like these that we can hope to end hunger, not just manage it.

Food, Health, and Culture in Latino Los Angeles (2016) Sarah Portnoy

Despite the expansion of Latino cuisine's popularity in Los Angeles and the celebrity of many Latino chefs, there is a stark divide between what is available at restaurants and food trucks and what is available to many low-income, urban Latinos who live in food deserts. In these areas, access to healthy, affordable, culturally appropriate foods is a daily challenge. Food-related diseases, particularly diabetes and obesity, plague these communities. In the face of this crisis, grassroots organizations, policy-makers and local residents are working to improve access and affordability through a growing embrace of traditional cuisine, an emergent interest in the farm-to-table movement, and the work of local organizations. Angelinos are creating alternatives to the industrial food system that offer hope for Latino food culture and health in Los Angeles and beyond. This book provides an overview of contemporary L.A.’s Latino food culture, introducing some of the most important chefs in the Latino food scene, and discussing the history and impact of Latino street food on culinary variety in Los Angeles. Along with food culture, the book also discusses alternative sources of healthy food for low-income communities: farmers markets, community and school gardens, urban farms, and new neighborhood markets that work to address the inequalities in access and affordability for Latino residents. By making the connection between Latino food culture and the Latino communities’ food related health issues, this study approaches the issue from a unique perspective

Discriminating Taste: How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution (2017) S. Margot Finn

For the past four decades, increasing numbers of Americans have started paying greater attention to the food they eat, buying organic vegetables, drinking fine wines, and seeking out exotic cuisines. Yet they are often equally passionate about the items they refuse to eat: processed foods, generic brands, high-carb meals. While they may care deeply about issues like nutrition and sustainable agriculture, these discriminating diners also seek to differentiate themselves from the unrefined eater, the common person who lives on junk food. Discriminating Taste argues that the rise of gourmet, ethnic, diet, and organic foods must be understood in tandem with the ever-widening income inequality gap. Offering an illuminating historical perspective on our current food trends, S. Margot Finn draws numerous parallels with the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, an era infamous for its class divisions, when gourmet dinners, international cuisines, slimming diets, and pure foods first became fads. Examining a diverse set of cultural touchstones ranging from Ratatouille to The Biggest Loser, Finn identifies the key ways that “good food” has become conflated with high status. She also considers how these taste hierarchies serve as a distraction, leading middle-class professionals to focus on small acts of glamorous and virtuous consumption while ignoring their class’s larger economic stagnation. A provocative look at the ideology of contemporary food culture, Discriminating Taste teaches us to question the maxim that you are what you eat.

[welcometoyouredoom]

20 Fearless Groups Fighting on the Frontlines

Here are 20 fearless groups fighting on the frontlines who aren’t crippled or muted by their allegiance to favorite politicians, political parties or big politically-connected donors and foundations.

Alliance for the Wild Rockies P. O. Box 505 Helena, MT 59624 https://allianceforthewildrockies.org/

From the grizzly to the bull trout, the grey wolf to the lynx, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies is the last line of defense for the largest swath of unprotected wild lands in North America.

Anti-Police Terror Project Oakland, California http://www.antipoliceterrorproject.org

Beatings, taserings, illegal arrests, chokeholds, and shootings are a daily occurrence in urban America. The police won’t police themselves. With Trump in power, the Justice Department will probably stop doing even cursory investigations of such brutal actions. The Anti Police-Terror Project is building a replicable and sustainable model to end state-sanctioned murder and violence against Black, Brown, and poor people.

Beyond Nuclear 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 400 Takoma Park, MD 20912 http://www.beyondnuclear.org/

Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abandon both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic.

Buffalo Field Campaign PO Box 957 West Yellowstone, MT 59758 1-406-646-0070 http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/

The annual slaughter of buffalo that migrate out of Yellowstone Park is one of the more horrific traditions in practice in the West today. Buffalo Field Campaign is perhaps the only group working tirelessly to defend the right of bison to wander to lower elevations during winter, without the threat of being killed by Montana bureaucrats.

Campaign to End the Death Penalty PO Box 25730 Chicago, IL 60625 http://www.nodeathpenalty.org

The Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP) is the premier national grassroots organization dedicated to the abolition of capital punishment with active chapters and members across the United States—including California, Texas, Delaware, New York, and Chicago. The campaign has placed those who have experienced the horrors of death row first hand–death row prisoners themselves and their family members–should be at the forefront of their movement, arguing that those experiences help to shape their political strategies.

Civil Liberties Defense Center 259 E 5th Ave, Ste 300 A Eugene, OR 97401 (541)687-9180 http://cldc.org/

Increasingly the Civil Liberties Defense Center, a small, non-profit law firm based in Eugene, Oregon, has become the last line of defense for radical activists in America during this age of government repression and prosecutorial crack-downs on dissent.  CLDC has led the legal fight against the McCarthy-like Green Scare attack on the constitutional rights of environmental and animal rights activists. They have defended the rights of Rastafarians to practice their religious rituals in prison. They successfully defended a mosque against the FBI’s first-ever attempt to subpoena religious records. CLDC has also developed  and distributed much-needed “Know Your Rights” outreach material, and presented more than 150 “Know Your Rights” trainings.

Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund P.O. Box 360 Mercersburg, PA 17236 http://celdf.org

Communities facing fracking, pipelines, factory farms, and other threats are recognizing that these seemingly “single” issue threats share something in common – the community doesn’t have the legal authority to say “No” to them. The existing structure of law ensures that people cannot govern their own communities and act as stewards of the environment, while protecting corporate “rights” and interests over those of communities and nature.

Family Farm Defenders P.O Box 1772 Madison, Wisconsin 53701 http://familyfarmers.org

Family Farm Defenders mission is to create a farmer-controlled and consumer-oriented food and fiber system, based upon democratically controlled institutions that empower farmers to speak for and respect themselves in their quest for social and economic justice. To this end, FFD supports sustainable agriculture, farm worker rights, animal welfare, consumer safety, fair trade, and food sovereignty.  FFD has also worked to create opportunities for farmers to join together in new cooperative marketing endeavors and to bridge the socioeconomic gap that often exists between rural and urban communities.

Fatal Encounters 3375 San Mateo Ave. Reno, NV 89509-5046 http://www.fatalencounters.org

Fatal Encounters is an incredibly vital project by D. Brian Burghart, the editor/publisher of the Reno News & Review, to create a national database of out how many people are killed by law enforcement, why they were killed, and whether training and policies can be modified to decrease the number of officer-involved deaths. Fatal Encounters’ efforts to collect information about officer-involved homicides going back to January 1, 2000, is completely funded by donations.

Guardians of Our Ancestors Legacy (GOAL) P.O. Box 30000 #360 Jackson, Wy, 83002 http://www.goaltribal.org

GOAL, the Tribal Coalition to Protect the Grizzly, may be the last best hope to save the grizzly. This fierce, small, grossly underfunded outfit has pulled together over 40 tribal nations in an effort to keep the Interior Department from removing the grizzly from the Endangered Species list.  With many of the big green groups missing-in-action, GOAL has mounted a powerful legal and cultural defense of the bear, arguing that allowing trophy hunting of the grizzly infringes on tribal sovereignty and violates the federal trust responsibility by disregarding tribal interests and pursuing a policy that benefits three states over a coalition of tribes from Montana to Arizona.

Israeli Committee Against Housing Demolitions (USA) PO Box 8118 New York, New York 10116 http://icahdusa.org

Since 1967 and the beginning of the Occupation, the Israeli government has demolished over 28,000 houses belonging to Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. These demolitions are part of a web of policies designed to force Palestinians off their own land to make room for expanding Israeli settlements, construct a 26-foot high “separation barrier” that cuts deep into Palestinian territory, create a network of Israeli-only bypass roads, and generally “thin” Jerusalem of its Palestinian inhabitants. Largely obscured in U.S. politics and the media. ICAHD-USA works to educate the U.S. public about the realities of the Israeli Occupation.

Living Rivers PO Box 466 Moab UT 84532 http://livingrivers.org

From the Rocky Mountains through seven states and Mexico, the Colorado River is the artery of the desert southwest. Its canyons, ecology and heritage render an international treasure. However, ignorance, greed and complacency are robbing the Colorado of its ability to sustain life. Living Rivers empowers a movement to instill a new ethic of achieving ecological restoration, balanced with meeting human needs. They work to: restore inundated river canyons, wetlands and the delta and repeal the antiquated laws which represent the river’s death sentence.

Los Alamos Study Group 2901 Summit Pl. NE Albuquerque, NM 87106 http://www.lasg.org/contact.htm

Since 1989, the Los Alamos Study Group community—our staff and board, volunteers, interns, and supporters—has consistently provided vital leadership on nuclear disarmament and related issues. Their work includes research and scholarship , education of decisionmakers, providing an information clearinghouse for journalists, organizing, litigating, and advertising, with particular emphasis on the education and training of young activists and scholars.

Middle East Children’s Alliance 1101 Eighth Street, Suite 100 Berkeley, CA 94710 US https://www.mecaforpeace.org

The Middle East Children’s Alliance is a non-profit organization working for the rights of children in the Middle East by sending  humanitarian aid, supporting projects for children and educating North American and international communities about the effects of the US foreign policy on children in the region.

Migrant Justice 294 N. Winooski Ave, Ste. 130, Burlington, VT, 05401 http://migrantjustice.net

The seeds of Migrant Justice were planted in 2009 after young dairy worker José Obeth Santiz Cruz was pulled into a mechanized gutter scraper and was strangled to death by his own clothing. This tragedy inspired the production of the documentary film Silenced Voices and led to the formation of a solidarity collective organizing to partner with farmworkers to gather the community to share food, discuss community problems, envision solutions and take collective action.

Nevada Desert Experience 1420 W Bartlett Ave Las Vegas, Nevada 89106-2226 http://www.nevadadesertexperience.org

Fighting drones at Creech Air Base, nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site and radioactive waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, Nevada Desert Experience is trying to keep the Great Basin from becoming a national sacrifice zone for the Nuclear-Military-Industrial Complex.

Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign 174 W. Diamond St. Philadelphia, PA 19122 http://economichumanrights.org/

The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign is building a movement that unites the poor across color lines. Poverty afflicts Americans of all colors. Daily more and more of us are downsized and impoverished. We share a common interest in uniting against the prevailing conditions and around our vision of a society where we all have the right to health care, housing, living wage jobs, and access to quality primary, secondary, and higher education.

Solitary Watch Community Futures Collective: Attn. Solitary Watch 221 Idora Ave., Vallejo, CA 94591. http://solitarywatch.com

While polls show that a decisive majority of Americans oppose the use of torture under any circumstances, even on foreign terrorism suspects, the conditions in U.S. prisons and jails, which at times transgress the boundaries of humane treatment, have produced little outcry. The widespread practice of solitary confinement, in particular, has received scant media attention, and has yet to find a firm place in the public discourse or on political platforms. Solitary Watch is a web-based project that brings the widespread use of solitary confinement out of the shadows and into the light of the public square. Their mission is to provide the public—as well as practicing attorneys, legal scholars, law enforcement and corrections officers, policymakers, educators, advocates, people in prison and their families—with the first centralized source of unfolding news, original reporting, firsthand accounts, and background research on solitary confinement in the United States.

Stand With Standing Rock Standing Rock Sioux Tribe #1 N. Standing Rock Avenue Fort Yates, ND 58538 http://standwithstandingrock.net/donate/

The battle at Standing Rock isn’t over. In fact, it’s just beginning.

Voices For Creative Nonviolence 1249 W. Argyle St. #2 Chicago, Illinois 60640 773-878-3815 http://vcnv.org/

Since Obama’s election, the anti-war movement in the United States has withered away, even as the wars and interventions have expanded with rising body counts. Yet one group has never wavered. You’ll find activists with Voices for Creative Nonviolence leading protests at the White House, blocking the entry to Drone Operational Centers, occupying nuclear missile silos, educating inside US prisons,  and organizing for peace inside war zones, from Afghanistan to Syria. Most crucially, Voices for Creative Nonviolence recognizes that war is waged by many means. Almost alone among US anti-war groups, Voices For Creative Nonviolence is mounting a resistance to the economic war machine.

[isolavirtuosa]

Starting Over (For Real?) 17-18

[fanfiction] NaruSasu

Read the previous parts here.

- 17 -

  “You seem really cheerful,” Sai commented as we moved through the desert.

“Do I?” Naruto asked cheerfully.

“Well, of course, that’s the reason I said it,” Sai said.  “You seem like a man who is getting laid.”

I dug my fingers into Naruto’s shoulder.

He grimaced.  “Uh, well, uh.  What?”

Sai just smiled.

“Be less happy,” I growled into Naruto’s ear.

He turned back to give me an incredulous look.  “You are like the most horrible person I have ever met.”

My smile got nasty.  “You want to see horrible?”

“No!” he said, facing forward again, not that it mattered.  There was nothing in front of us for miles, just endless expanses of sand.

We’d left Iwa behind without much to show for it.  Now we were almost to Suna, running low on food and motivation, and for some inexplicable reason still travelling with my would-be-assassin.

Apparently no ninjas seemed to see the value in trying to take over the desert in the middle of a famine, leaving the Land of Wind fairly intact compared to Iwa.

When we reached Suna, we were greeted by two of the three Sand siblings at the gate.

“Wouldn’t believe it if I wasn’t seeing it with my own eyes,” Temari commented, looking the three of us up and down.

“What’s not to believe?” Naruto asked cheerfully.

“Well, we can start with the Uchiha attached to your back like a koala,” Kankurou said, pointing at me.

I raised my chin a little higher and exuded haughtiness.

“I’m his horse,” Naruto explained.

Temari half-smiled.  “I can see that.  We weren’t really expecting a diplomatic party so soon, especially not one consisting of a missing nin, a spy, and… you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Naruto asked, scratching his nose.

Temari rolled her eyes.  “Gaara will be thrilled to see you.”  She motioned for the guards to open the gates.

“He’s doing okay?” Naruto asked.

“He’s doing great,” Kankurou lied.

We started to enter the village, and I felt my body twitching to call up Susanoo.  I hated presenting myself as so vulnerable and helpless.  I wasn’t either of those things.

“Neigh,” Naruto said.

I pinched his cheek and he laughed.  I thumbed over the red skin before letting my hand drop to his shoulder, holding on.

“You can park in the kage residence for the night,” Kankurou said, leading us there.

Suna seemed to be thriving.  There was some damage from the God Tree, but teams of ninjas were working on repairing them.  The shops on the main street were all open, and though I had very little interest in food beyond its necessity to keep my body functioning, the aromas wafting out of the stalls were surprisingly tantalizing.

“Sasuke, ohmigod, buy me ramen,” Naruto panted, standing in front of the stand and salivating.

“Later,” I said.

He looked at me over his shoulder, and it was so pathetic that we somehow found ourselves sitting down and eating ramen.

“Why do you have so much food?” I asked Temari as we waited for our order.

“This is the desert,” she said, like it was obvious.

I stared at her.

She stared back.

“Shouldn’t that mean you have less food than the rest of us?” Naruto asked helpfully.

“No, it means that we’re smarter and better at farming than the rest of you,” she replied, accepting her bowl from the chef.

“But who was doing the farming for the last two years?” Naruto asked, which was probably his last participation in the conversation as he broke apart his chopsticks and immediately started slurping up his noodles.

“Our smarter and better-trained villagers who weren’t taken into the tree,” she said.

“I’m sure a lot of other villages would be very interested in your smarter and better farming techniques,” Sai observed before loading his mouth with ramen.

Temari sniffed.  “I’m sure they’d be more interested in stealing our surplus, which is why we have Suna on lockdown.”

“You let us in,” I commented.

“You’re with Naruto,” she said, like that was the only explanation that was needed.

Being with Naruto wasn’t enough to get an audience with the kazekage, though.

“I think the kazekage hasn’t recovered from being in the tree, yet,” Sai whispered to me as we were settling into our room.

“What do you mean?” I asked in a normal tone of voice because we were alone.

“I mean,” he said, still whispering, “that he was taken to Konoha to recover, kept under lock and key, and moved to Suna a week later in the dead of night.”

“Why wouldn’t they keep a kage separated from the rest of the rabble?” I asked with a shrug.

Sai smiled at me.

“Don’t do that,” I said.

He stopped.

“Just say it clearly.”

“The ANBU think that the kazekage started to turn into a white zetsu.”

“...what?”

Sai shrugged.  “It’s only a rumor.”

“Why would the kazekage be the only ninja to be turned into a white zetsu?”

“Who says he’s the only one?”

“I don’t know, maybe you could just straightforwardly share all of your information.”

“I could.”

I looked at him.

“Oh, by the way,” he said suddenly.  “All of the high-ranking officials in Iwa have seen your missing arm, and Temari and Kankurou have seen it, so people will probably start putting two and two together.”

“Now Hyuuga and his merry band of followers are going to want me even more dead?”

“Yep.”

“Great.”

“Are you being sarcastic?” Sai asked.

“Yes.”

“Ah.  So it is not great.”

“Honestly, I don’t give a fuck.  It’s nothing new.”

“It’s a little new, and I think you give a few fucks.”

I looked at him.

He looked back at me.

I ‘accidentally’ ran over his foot as I rolled past him.

“That’s fine,” he said.  “I understand.”

My head whipped around to face him.  “What do you understand?”

“You,” he said.

I was back to seeing why Sai was so irritating.  “What are you still doing here, anyway?  If you’re not going to kill me, then go crawling back to Konoha.”

Sai faltered at that.  “Yes, that’s probably the best course of action.”

We stared at each other before I pushed my chair to the windowsill and used it to help me stand, feeling my legs wobble underneath me.  I struggled through a few steps.  “This is probably your only chance to kill me.”

“I wouldn’t do that to Naruto,” he said with an easy shrug.

“Even to save him from me?”

“He’s so in love he can’t see straight.  If you were dead, he would be even more consumed by you.”

I almost fell on my face, forcing as much chakra into my legs as I could spare to keep me upright.

Sai noticed.  “You love him, too, you know.”

I rolled my eyes.

“And that’s why the world is in the mess that it’s in.”

“...how so?”

“You know exactly how so.  If Naruto had been able to kill you, we wouldn’t have lost the last year and a half to an illusion.”

“I think that’s more on Naruto than it is on me.”

“And if you had been able to kill him, I don’t think we would have lost that time, either.”

“I would have killed the kages.”

Sai shrugged.

“I’m starting to suspect that you’re not the good little Konoha ninja that you purport yourself to be,” I said, lowering myself back into my chair.  My attempts at standing were making me look stupider than the chair did.

“I don’t know what I am,” he said, and it was completely straightforward and honest.

The room fell quiet and we both regarded one another seriously.

Then Naruto came bursting into the room.  “You know, they’ve got like every kind of ramen, they’ve got miso and shouyu and shio and tonko-” he paused, looking between us.  “Were you two… talking?”

“No,” we both said.

“Oh, uh, well, anyway, let’s stay here forever,” he said, flopping down on one of the futons that Sai had just carefully laid out.

“I tried to kill the kazekage,” I pointed out.

“More than once,” Sai added.

“More than once.”

“Gaara doesn’t care about that,” Naruto said, waving it off.  Then his face went serious.

“How is the kazekage?” Sai asked.

Naruto was silent.

We both looked at him.

“I can’t talk about it,” he finally said, getting up.

Sai and I exchanged a look.

Naruto caught us and frowned.

When we were all lying in our futons, ready to sleep, he finally brought it up again.  “Gaara’s still… recovering from everything.”

“I think there will be an attempted coup soon,” Sai commented.

“What?” Naruto said.

“It’s the same in Konoha and Iwa,” I agreed.  “The entire ninja power structure is under attack.  Suna will probably get a brief respite internally because the people are fed, but they’ll face external threats coming for their surplus.”

“That’s… dumb,” Naruto said.

“Insightful,” I murmured.

He growled and flopped his arm at me, smacking me in the chest.

I guffawed.

“Jerk,” he muttered, leaving his arm there for some reason.  “Man, what are we gonna do?”

“Move on?” I suggested.

He smacked me again.

“Sasuke has a point,” Sai put in.

“What happened to the ninja alliance?” Naruto growled.  “We all need to be helping each other out.”

“Oh, yeah, I should be helping out all these people who want me dead,” I said.

“The only one who wants you dead is Hyuuga,” Naruto protested.

“Ha.”

“Whaddya mean, ‘ha’?!”

“I think it was an ironic laugh,” Sai said.  “To show his contempt for what you said.”

Naruto’s fingers tightened on my shirt.

I sighed, resting my hand over his briefly before removing it from my proximity.  “We need to look out for ourselves, Naruto.”

“Do you even know me at all?” he muttered.

“Yes, which is why I’m telling you this.”

He wasn’t convinced, but we headed out east the next day.

 - 18 -

  When Naruto came back from his watch, I could feel him looming outside of my tent.

“Idiot,” I grumbled, which he took as permission to come in.  “It’s Sai’s watch, isn’t it?”

He nodded, his blue eyes all wide and puppy-like.

I stared at him.

“I just…”

I stared harder.

“I wanna talk,” he said, and it wasn’t believable at all, but I beckoned him over.

“What do you want to talk about?” was about all I could say before his lips were pressed very insistently to mine.

“Hi,” he said, sliding into my sleeping bag and zipping it back up.

“Hi,” I replied, unzipping the bag.  “It’s hot,” I added, nudging him away.

Naruto whined, keeping one leg intertwined with mine while the other flopped out of the sleeping bag.  “I missed you.”

“We’re together almost every minute of every day.”

“Yeah, but we’re not like… together.”

I sighed, trying not to drown in his eyes.  “If you want to make out, then just say so.”

“I want to make out,” he said sincerely.  “But I was serious before, I want to talk to you.”

“About?”

He kissed me and it was an automatic reaction to kiss him back.  He pulled back and I found myself pulling him back in.  This went on for some time before he pulled enough away to rest his chin on my chest.  “Um, so,” he started, “I’m gonna stop in Konoha before we go to Water.”

“No you’re not,” I said, frowning.

“I want to see Baa-chan,” he said, letting his finger run along my cheek.  “I need to… have some closure.”

“Closure to what?” I asked.  He wasn’t going to say what I thought he was going to say.

He knew I knew.  “Sasuke.  It’ll be the last time.”

“Don’t start with that.”

“I’m leaving the village.  With you.  Permanently.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Probably, but it’s what’s happening,” he said, his voice taking on a more authoritative tone that simultaneously annoyed and turned me on.

“Okay, ruin your life,” I said, trying to sound as disinterested as possible.

“Good, I will,” he agreed.

Our lips gravitated together.  A few times.

“Are you leaving Sai there?” I asked, mouth still close enough to touch.

Naruto eliminated the distance for a moment.  “Mm, no, he’s gonna stay with you.”

“Why would he do that?  If he doesn’t assassinate me, then the ANBU will know he’s a traitor…”  Then I knew.  “He’s not going back to Konoha, either, is he?”

“I can’t ask him to play the spy anymore,” Naruto said seriously.  “That’s not who he is now, ya know?”

“You don’t get to decide that.”

“No, I don’t, but I can tell he doesn’t want to go back to Konoha, so I’m going to talk to him after I finish arguing with you about going back by myself.”

“Oh, were we arguing?”

“Well, you’re about to go off on how I can’t travel by myself because I can’t do jutsu, blah blah blah.”

“If you already know why you can’t, then why are you bothering to bring it up?”

“Because I’m going to Konoha alone.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Sasuke.”

“Moron.”

“Rude,” he said, pinching my cheek.

“What if you’re attacked?” I growled, swatting him away.

“Who’s going to attack me in Konoha?”

“Rogue ninjas.  Bandits.  People who blame you for the Infinite Tsukuyomi.  Ninjas who want to make a name for themselves.”

“Yeah, yeah, fine, whatever.  I’m not completely defenseless.”

“You are absolutely, positively, completely defenseless.”

“I can do Sage Mode.  I can… run away…”

“Idiot.”

He leaned up and kissed my forehead.  “Don’t make that face.  It’s adorable how much you worry about me, but it’s really not necessary.”

My eyes narrowed.

“Sasuke.  Love.  Come on.”

“That’s a new one,” I complained.

“Huh?” Naruto said, then smiled slowly.  “Yeah, I’m testing it out.  It’s how I feel about you, so it’s the perfect nickname.”

“Dumbass.”

“No,” he said firmly.  “You don’t get to call me that anymore.”

“Then what should I call you?” I asked, genuinely perplexed.

“Just call me by my name, jeez,” he complained.

I looked him straight in his eyes.  “Naruto.”

His smile was easy.  “See?  Was that so hard?”

“It’s a stupid name.”

“Ughhhh,” he groaned.  “Enough, already.  We all get it.”

I didn’t dare say ‘get what?’ because I knew he’d have an answer that would see right through me.  So I tried not to hide behind the insults for a moment, settling my hand on the back of his neck and pulling him closer again.  “Naruto,” I repeated.

“Sasuke,” he agreed as we gravitated together again.

It was definitely too hot in this damn sleeping bag.

Naruto laughed when I threw it off of us.

“We’re supposed to be sleeping, you know,” I informed him as his lips chased after mine.

“I know, love,” he hummed apologetically against my mouth.  “I just wanted to… talk.”

“Talk.”

“Mm,” he hummed, shifting to kiss along my jaw.  “You want me to let you sleep?”

“Well, you seem kind of up,” I said, dragging my hand up his thigh and brushing lightly over the bulge there.

Naruto gasped and turned red.

I liked that.  “Sit up.”

He obediently scampered into a sitting position.

I liked that more.  “Good boy,” I said, pushing myself up to meet him.

If he had a tail, it would have been wagging.  He buried his face in my neck, nuzzling and rubbing.

It was adorable, and I momentarily lost focus.  I took a breath and nudged him back into an upright position.  I held him there with a hand in his hair, looking into his eyes.  “I’m going to touch you,” I informed him.

“I am going to be touched,” he agreed.

I looked at him.  He definitely did not get it.  “I’m going to touch you,” I repeated, letting go of his hair and letting my hand drop to his lap.

Naruto’s eyes suddenly went full-bedroom.

I felt the heat creep up my neck as he covered my hand with his, rubbing it up and down.  My lips parted involuntarily.

He leaned in, breathing into me more than kissing, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

I pulled out his waistband and slid my hand inside, gripping loosely.

His head dropped back and I almost thought he was going to fall over.  His arm scrambled around my waist, holding me for dear life.  “Sasuke,” he groaned.

I answered him by focusing on the task at hand, tightening my grip and flicking my wrist.

Naruto clearly had no shame, moaning and rocking his hips.

I tried not to get distracted.  He was very responsive, and it was easy to figure out what he liked, so I focused on his reactions.

“Sas’... Sas’... Sasuke, I’m gonna…” he whimpered, seeming helpless.

“It’s okay, Naruto,” I soothed him.  “I want you to.”

“Sasuke… Sasuke… I love you, Sasuke.”

I rolled my eyes.  Of course Uzumaki Naruto had to try and make a handjob romantic.  “Just shut up and come already.”

His dick twitched in my hand, because of course insults turned him on no matter how much he tried to tell me they didn’t.

“Naruto,” I said, soothing him with kisses until he’d made a mess of my hand.

His body leaned heavily against mine as he finally fell quiet and just tried to catch his breath.

I kissed the top of his head.  “This is disgusting,” I informed him.

“Huh…?” he said, sluggish and dream-like.

I pulled my hand out of his pants and waved it in his face.

His smile got very goofy.

“That took forever,” I complained.  “Get me a towel or something,” I added, shoving at his shoulder to get him to sit up.

“Can’t I bask for a minute?”

“No.”

He kissed my collarbone, humming into my skin.

I felt warm and contented, too.  But the dry semen on my hand needed to be removed.  “Move,” I ordered, and he did.

He came back a moment later with some water and his dick still hanging out of his pants.

I shook my head.

He looked down, confused, then let out an embarrassed laugh and put himself away.

“You need to change,” I informed him.

“Later,” he said, taking my hand like it was the most precious thing in the world and cleaning his nasty jizz off of it.  He proceeded to kiss my palm, staring into my eyes adoringly.

“Go to hell,” I mumbled, shoving him away and getting back into my sleeping bag.

“If you keep pushing me away, I might disappear,” he said, laughing like it was a joke.

It wasn’t a joke, and I let him put his sleeping bag next to mine while we slept.

[thisdaynews]

Joe Arpaio’s Surprising Legacy in Arizona

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/joe-arpaios-surprising-legacy-in-arizona/

Joe Arpaio’s Surprising Legacy in Arizona

PHOENIX — In the City Council chambers here, a squat, round room that evokes the traditional Navajo home known as a “hogan,” Carlos Garcia is easy to spot. His chestnut hair, long and limp, is perennially fastened in a ponytail that hangs like a string halfway down his back. His feet are shielded by a pair of weathered sneakers. One afternoon last month, he showed up for work clad in a black golf-style shirt—“That’s the most dressed up you’re going to see me,” he quipped—with the words “City of Phoenix Councilman Carlos Garcia” embroidered over his heart.

Garcia joined the council in March, but his style remains as casual as it was during his time protesting a mother’s impending deportation in front of the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in 2017, or chanting into a bullhorn outside the federal courthouse where Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio stood trial that same year, accused of racially profiling Latinos.

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“One of my elders a long time ago told me, ‘If you’re going to be a public servant, you have to be ready when you wake up in the morning to meet with the governor and to go talk to ajornalero,” Garcia says, using the Spanish word for day laborer. The elder challenged him to use the way he dresses to telegraph who he really cares for—“Is it your priority,” the elder asked, “that you dress up to impress the governor?”

“My priority is to make sure people feel comfortable with me,” Garcia says.

By “people,” he means the people of color who for years have stood as targets of the politics of Arpaio and Jan Brewer, the former Republican governor of Arizona. Arpaio, perhaps Arizona’s most nationally famous politician, rode to fame in the 1990s with his draconian jail policies and then into President Donald Trump’s favor with his tough anti-immigrant posture. Brewer, as governor,in 2010 signed into law the nation’s toughest immigration bill, SB 1070, powering up the “attrition through enforcement” strategy championed by some on the right to drive illegal immigrants out of the United States.

Nearly 10 years later, Garcia is part of a new wave of Latino politicians in Arizona who have entered politics in response to those policies—a legacy that Arpaio and Brewer likely did not expect. In a state that once compelled police officers to ask about the citizenship status of the people they pulled over and barred undocumented immigrants from getting driver’s licenses and paying in-state tuition at public universities, a growing number of Latino activists are using the lessons they learned in organizing against the immigration crackdown to catapult themselves into elected state and local office.

Garcia was born in Cananea, Mexico, about 30 miles south of the border, and lived without papers in the United States until age 14. For years, he ran the Puente Human Rights Movement, one of the most aggressive immigrant-rights groups in the state. But after five of his family members were deported beginning in 2009 and one was sent to Eloy, a privately run immigration detention center southeast of Phoenix, he says, “I got left with no options. And that’s what has pushed someone like me to actually run for office.”

He is not alone. In the past 10 months, Betty Guardado, a hotel housekeeper-turned-union organizer, took her seat on the nonpartisan Phoenix City Council alongside Garcia. Raquel Terán, the former Arizona director for the civic engagement organization Mi Familia Vota, joined the state House of Representatives as a Democrat. On Tuesday, Regina Romero, a child of Mexican immigrants who was the first woman elected to the Tucson City Council, became that city’s first Latina mayor. To replace her on the council, voters chose Lane Santa Cruz, who grew up in one of the poorest and most heavily Hispanic corners of Tucson and, armed with a Ph.D. in education, worked for more than 10 years as an advocate for her neighbors, many of them undocumented as her parents once were.

Arizona,long considered the home base of tough-minded Western conservatism, has been drifting leftward for a few years now. In 2012, the Supreme Court significantly weakened the “show me your papers” law. Brewer left office in 2014, and in 2016, Arpaio was voted out and escaped prison only because Trump pardoned him a year later, after he was found guilty of contempt for defying a federal judge’s orders to stop singling out Latinos. (At 87, Arpaio is running for sheriff in Maricopa County again, but his candidacy is considered a long shot.) The state’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey, has publicly rejected Trump’s idea of denying green cards to people who receive government benefits and questioned recent immigration raids in Mississippi food-processing plants.

Yet this new wave of Latino politicians represents another shift in Arizona politics. While Arizona has had a number of Latino politicians before, this new group has emerged specifically from the statewide push against undocumented immigrants. They have moved past the well-worn formula of increasing Latino participation in elections, though that too is part of their strategy. They’re building on their activism—protests, civil disobedience, grassroots organizing—to enter the halls of political power, and doing so largely without help from the Democratic Party.

“This is about stepping into the electoral space and saying, ‘Hey, not only can we put pressure from the outside, but we can infiltrate these systems and do something radically different,’” Santa Cruz says. “It sounds very subversive, but it is not. This is the way through the front door.”

Their arrival hasn’t come without challenges. They have struggled to find middle ground between their in-your-face style of activism and the more measured ways that are necessary to build alliances. They remain the targets of the anti-immigrant sentiment in Arizona, where Trump has a loyal base of supporters. Even in the Democratic stronghold of Tucson, there were signs on Tuesday that voters are willing to go only so far: A proposal to designate it a sanctuary city was soundly rejected at the polls, in part because many feared the designation could invite retaliation from the Trump administration and the Republican majority in the state Legislature.

“Our goal is to at least dismantle this system that was created to hurt our people and to get rid of us, and that takes time,” Garcia says. “But brown people are coming out, and now we have the numbers and the organization in place to be able to turn the tables in our favor exactly because we have a seat at the table.”

***

Mexicans and, later, immigrantsfrom other parts of Latin America have played important roles in Arizona’s development. They worked on the system of canals that delivered a steady supply of water to farmers and, today, plant and harvest greens along the border to feed most of the United States in the winter. They dug the desert to carve out the streets of Phoenix and, now, build the high-rises that are transforming this city’s skyline.

Latinos, however, have long struggled for equal access and equal rights in Arizona. Their resistance took shape in the labor unions that opposed legislation in 1914 threatening to ban non-English speakers from working in mines, and then a dual-wage system that paid Mexicans less for doing the same work as Anglos. It manifested itself in court, when, three years beforeBrown v. Board of Education, Latino leaders in the city of Tolleson, then a farming outpost west of Phoenix, successfully defeated Anglo school officials who believed Mexican Americans were inferior and, because of that, deserved to be segregated from white students.

In “The State of Latino Arizona,” a report published in 2009, Christine Marín, a historian, archivist and professor emerita at Arizona State University, writes about these early generations of activists who, in the late 1800s and early 1990s, mobilized in groups with names like “El Centro Radical Mexicano” (The Mexican Radical Center); “Liga Protectora Latina” (Latino Protective League); and “Los Conquistadores” (The Conquerors).

Decades later, in 1969, Congressman Raúl Grijalva, then a college student at the University of Arizona, co-founded the Mexican American Liberation Committee, which organized school walkouts in Phoenix and Tucson to protest overcrowding and the absence of bilingual classes and courses on Mexican culture. “We were fighting for equity. We were fighting for our identities, fighting to give our community power to change our lives,” says Grijalva, a Democrat from Tucson, where he was the first Latino to serve on a school board.

The defiance that grew out of the Brewer-and-Arpaio era represents a new chapter in the history of Latino activism in Arizona. Some 15 years ago, anger over illegal immigration rose in the state, fueled by the record number of migrants apprehended along the border. Activists like Garcia trained their focus away from Washington, weaving together a network of local organizations that taught the people whose lives were affected by Arizona’s heavy-handed enforcement how to fight back.

Groups like Garcia’s Puente, founded in 2007 in response to an agreement allowing Arpaio’s deputies to act as federal immigration agents, held weekly classes to teach undocumented immigrants what to do if they were stopped by the police. Lucha—which stands for Living United for Change in Arizona and means “struggle” in Spanish—trained teenagers who had lost a parent to deportation to use their stories to get voters on their side. In Tucson, volunteers created “redes de protección,” or safety nets, for people who needed money to post bail for detained relatives or for child care if they were detained themselves. Their advocacy contributed to the voter-approved expansion of worker protection laws in 2016, which included the largest minimum-wage increase in the country, and legally mandated paid sick days for all employees in the state.

Now, these activists say, they want to move past opposing those who have opposed them, and to be defined by the positive changes they make. They’ve worked on that together, counting on the same coalitions of grassroots groups that registered record number of Latinos ahead of the last presidential election, carrying out voter mobilization drives and spreading the word on issues of common interest, such as workers’ rights, better schools and safer neighborhoods.

“What really woke us up as a community were the anti-immigrant laws here in Arizona, and it was Arpaio, and it was Jan Brewer, and it was those anti-immigrant policies that they were pushing—that’s what took us to the streets,” says Romero of Tucson, who grew up speaking English and Spanish in the rural city of Somerton, near where Arizona meets Mexico and California. “But we also realized that if we wanted to change the systems that have oppressed us, we had to do it from the inside. We had to change the faces of these policymakers in Arizona.”

They ran their political campaigns as they ran their grassroots groups, drafting people into leadership positions who didn’t have much political experience but did have knowledge of communities and the issues they face. Some, like Santa Cruz, are alumni of New American Leaders, a national program that prepares children and grandchildren of immigrants for elected office; Terán has been an instructor there. As candidates, they joined forces to knock on doors and raise money in communities that are not often the targets of establishment politics.

And they rode into office over the past year by building on the success of the yearslong efforts at voter mobilization that followed SB 1070. According to a report released earlier this year by the Latino Vote Project, a network of advocacy groups, 75 percent of Latino voters in Arizona cast their ballots for a Democrat in 2018, a 22-point increase from 2014, which helped to tip the political scales in Arizona to the left at the national, state and local level.

“The point isn’t just winning. It’s what we do after, and that’s on all of us,” says Marisa Franco, co-founder of Mijente, an online organizing platform that has its roots on the anti-immigrant battles in Arizona. “But we’re actually starting to lay tracks of an alternative direction, an alternative way forward.”

***

Arizona is changing fast.One in three of its residents is Latino, and Latinos are the fastest-growing segment of its population, putting the state on track to become majority-minority by 2030, 15 years ahead of the rest of the country. Latinos are already the majority in Arizona’s public schools, which are also among the poorest performing schools in the country. That’s one of the state’s biggest tests for the future: how to prepare the next generation of Latino leaders if the institutions that serve them are flawed.

While this new cadre of Latino elected officials is finally in the position to make laws and ordinances to improve the lives of fellow immigrants and children of immigrants, they say they’re finding it’s a lot harder to push the same issues now that they’re in power because they’re not yet fully trusted: Voters who put them in office are wary that they will forget where they came from now that they’re in politics, and their colleagues see them as potential adversaries.

At the meeting that brought a semi-dressed-up Garcia to the council’s chambers last month, council members had convened to consider a civilian oversight board for the Phoenix Police Department, whose officers fired on more people than officers from any other police force in the United States last year. Increasing accountability among local police is the issue Garcia most aggressively campaigned on, a stance that the city’s powerful police union has taken as a deliberate act of defiance.

When Garcia wore a T-shirt that read “End Police Brutality” in June, the union posted on its Facebook page a picture of his arrest during an immigrant rights’ protest in 2017 and asked, “Does he serve the best interests of the people who reside in the nation’s fifth largest and fastest growing city?” When he traveled to El Paso, Texas, last week, the union used his own Facebook Live feed to question his commitment to his constituents. A few weeks ago, Garcia was criticized—not just by the union, but also by plenty of online commenters—for confronting a pair of Arizona State University police officers who had pulled him over on the edge of the campus, telling him that the license plate of the car he was driving had been suspended.

“I don’t believe you have jurisdiction,” Garcia said before handing the officers his driver’s license and asking them to hurry because he had a meeting to go to.

At the council meeting, Garcia squeezed his lips as he listenedto his colleague Sal DiCiccio, a build-the-wall kind of Trump supporter who is the most conservative voice in the council. “There’s a perception among some that our police officers are bad when I don’t believe that that’s true,” DiCiccio said. “I think that our police officers have done everything admirably well. They’re just amazing individuals, and quite frankly there’s just a lot of B.S. that’s happening toward them right now. And I think that’s just wrong.”

“We have a very different understanding of where we’re at,” Garcia retorted. “I believe we’re already in that crisis of confidence.” Garcia was measured in his tone. He seemed to be struggling to find the right approach to building partnerships that don’t compromise his convictions. (This month, the council will meet again on the oversight board, this time to hear community input.)

One thing these activists-turned politicians don’t want to be is one-offs. They’re trying to create political roots by hiring people like Adriana Garcia Maximiliano, a once-undocumented immigrant from Mexico who trained first- and second-generation Americans to run for office and is now, at age 27, Carlos Garcia’s policy director. They want to change the face of Arizona’s politics much as the growth of the Latino population is inevitably changing the face of the state.

One Sunday morning this fall, Maximiliano stood under a Palo Verde tree, one of 20-some Latino and black activists who had gathered to raise money for Santa Cruz at the home of Marisa Franco. The get-together was more neighborhood party than fundraiser—these were longtime friends, united by a shared heritage and common goal.

In a blood-red shirt adorned by colorful indigenous crosses, a tattoo of the brother she lost to a drug overdose covering her right arm, Santa Cruz listened as, one by one, people gave her the reasons they were behind her.

Franco: “We need to have people like you that are strong and willing to take positions that are best for our communities.”

Maximiliano: “We do need a lot of folks who are willing to change shit up and do things differently.”

Terán: “I’m here because the state is changing, and as the state changes, we don’t have time to have imperfect allies.”

Then came Garcia, who was wearing a crimson T-shirt with a picture of the Tejano superstar Selena. He and Santa Cruz went to the same high school in Tucson. “I was a little gangster,” he said, “getting into a lot of trouble. Lane was a tennis rock star, big in her church.” They reunited in college, when both of them joined MEChA, a Mexican-American student group founded in the turbulent 1960s.

“We raised our families together, talked about organizing together,” he said. “And now in the very lonely world of running for office and governing, I think it’s a privilege to have someone like you, Lane, to share this space with.”

On Tuesday, they celebrated her victory together. “Now,” Garcia says, “we have work to do.”

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