The Environment

Within a 60 mile radius of Tucson is the greatest variety of flora and fauna in the contiguous United States, due to variations in elevation, and in having both a winter and summer rainy season. We are surrounded by 4 dramatic mountain ranges, and within 30 miles of downtown Tucson you can be in either Sonoran desert, ranges of saguaro cactus, ironwood bosques, or ponderosa pine and oak forest on the mountains.

There is a full forest here of columnar cactus, the giant saguaro, the largest in the world. The don't grow "arms" until they are about 70 years old, and they survive til over 150, perhaps 250. They grow only in Arizona, and in Sonora, Mexico. They begin life as a seed the size of a poppy seed, and grow under a nurse tree, usually a palo verde or an ironwood or mesquite. The large garland of waxy white blossoms face the sky, and they are pollinated by bats who see them reflecting moonlight below. The fruits are red, and the juice of the fruit is like a sweeter watermelon juice, and ferments into a pulque. When the saguaro dies, from lightning strike or hard winter freeze, it takes as much as two years for the last slow moving sap to traverse the body, which weighs tons, and thus another seed crop or two, of a million seeds each, can be produced. The skeleton of woody saguaro ribs will be left behind, and hundreds of saguaros germinate, to be an inch tall after 5 years growth, and one will make it to maturity.

Saguaros look like they could survive anything, but their roots are wide and shallow, and off road vehicles can weaken them til they don't withstand their natural challenges, and overgrazing or the introduction of exotic plants, can deny them a place where they can begin life.

If you get outside the city at night, the stars are fantastic. We have two internationally acclaimed observatories within 80 miles. One of our local Green leaders is an astronomer.

On the southern reaches of the city is the beginning of the second largest (in territory) native American nation, the Tohono Odom (formerly called the Papago.) The Tohono Odom nation is both in the US and in Mexico. [The largest nation is the two state nation of the Dine (Navajo), which is primarily Arizona, but also in New Mexico. This nation is about a 600 mile drive from here, in the NE corner of the state, so is not a sidetrip-- unless you plan significant time, and rent or bring a car. Arizona is home to 26 native American nations.

The other nation which local to Tucson are the Yacqui people, who came to Arizona from Mexico during late territorial times, and only received US recognition as a tribe in the 1960's.

We are 65 miles from la frontera, the border with Mexico. but you can't take a rental car across the border. You might consider ecotourism
(www.laruta.org) la ruta de sonora ecotourism assn, Mexico, or
(www.borderlinks.org) see Mexico through a social justice lens. Or you can take a Greyhound (1-800-231-2222) south, and walk across, just to look around the bordertown of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. (Have ID to get
back!) Either way, when you cross the border, if you walk one block to
the right, just after you step into Mexico, you see The Wall. There are
white crosses painted on it, and warnings, and someone has written the message that a border can be either a barrier or a bridge...

A decade ago, not one person died crossing between the US and Arizona.
The year before that only two did. Then came two things: NAFTA, and The Wall. The Wall was not the result of policy decisions, like NAFTA . It came to be there because the US military had a huge number of 30 foot by 30 foot metal landing pads left over from the First Gulf War, in storage, and a bureaucrat suggested that the government could save storage fees by building a wall along urban border corridors. And that would cut back on undocumented immigration, because no one would be desperate enough to try to cross, on foot, hundreds of miles of roadless desert, where summer temperatures top 120 degrees.

For the last several years, around 300 corpses a year have been found in the desert, just along the Arizona corridor. Count in California, New Mexico, Texas, it amounts to several thousand corpses. Dying of dehydration is a terrible thing. We'd like to talk with Greens about it. About what we can do. After you've been here, and seen the presentation we'd like to make for you, so that you have good information upon which to base your ideas.

There is a political environment as well. We are a red state, but one marked by crazy rightwing ideologs, and real mavericks, and a tradition of the people leading in ways that no one expects. For example, we'd like to talk about Clean Elections laws. Arizona has the best in the nation, and a Green helped set it up. We'd also like to talk to you about ballot measures, and running them, because we have experienced
Greens who can do workshops on that. Ballot measures here legalized
medical marijuana twice, and expanded healthcare for the poor, and brought us clean elections. In conservative Arizona.

We'd like to hear from you about changing ballot access laws, and running signature gathering campaigns, and recruiting and keeping Green Party activists and candidates. We've got a lot we'd like to share, and a lot we'd like to learn.

Gathering signatures for ballot status is stunningly wearying drudgery, and we'd like any hints on making it easier, or less often. We've succeeded at it twice, but then it slips away from us again.

There is so much more we could talk about, to bring you here: museums, sights, history, diversity, music, cervezas, foods...

Bienvenido a nuestro mundo en Arizona. Nuestra ciudad es su ciudad.

Welcome to our world in Arizona. Our city is your city.