COMMUNITY EVENT JULY 31
Come to hear from a local Markleeville resident who has been to the Mexican border this past month. A 20-30 minute slide presentation followed by questions and answers.
July 31, 2019 at Alpine County Library Time: 12-1:30 PM
"The Migration Crisis: A First Hand Account from the Southwest Borderlands"
The news is filled with horror stories of death at the U.S.-Mexican border and inhumane conditions in migrant detention camps. Why is this happening? Why now? And what can we do to alleviate the suffering of those who risked their lives and the lives of their
children to seek refuge while still respecting our national border?
In an effort to find answers to these questions, Bev Crawford (Markleeville resident) has traveled to Turkey, Germany, Israel, and last month, to the Tucson Sector of the U.S. border patrol in Southern Arizona. There she spoke with border guards, CBP agents, migrants, aid workers, people living in the Tucson community, and members of an anti-immigration group.
In her talk, she will provide a brief overview of the global migration crisis and
changes in migration patterns and US immigration policy that have led to the current crisis in the United States. She will also suggest and "crowdsource" ways to both protect human rights and national borders.
Bev Crawford is Professor emerita of
Political Science and Political Economy at UC Berkeley and the former Director
of Berkeley’s Center for German and European Studies . She specializes in
International Relations with a focus on migration. In 2015 she received
fellowships from the Turkish National Science Foundation and from the European
Commission to study the demographics of the
refugee crisis in Turkey and Europe,
and became an "accidental volunteer" along with colleagues from Yasar University,
providing aid to refugees living on the streets in Izmir, Turkey. In
2016 she tutored Syrian and Afghan refugees in Berlin, Germany; the following
year she worked with Sudanese refugees
in
Israel, and most recently she helped to provide aid to migrants crossing the
U.S.
border into Arizona. She divides her time between Markleeville and Berkeley and
occasionally teaches courses at UC Berkeley so that her brain will not turn to
mush.