“Tucson Eat Yourself” by Dan Grossman
Shutterstock AI-generated nightmare image of Tucson, Arizona
Tucson Eat Yourself
Hotel Congress, where I met Gabriella, was the only thing left in Tucson that I recognized after 30 years. That was the last time I visited Tucson. I didn’t know Gabriella. I hadn’t ever met her before. But my friend Bill suggested her to me as someone with an in-depth knowledge of the sanctuary movement and as someone I should talk to. Short blonde hair, tan skin, she looked like she had spent much of her life in the Arizona sun. As a Unitarian minister in a westside Tucson congregation, she wanted none of what she told me to be on the record. Nevertheless, as we drank our coffees in the Congress’ Cup Cafe, she dove into the history of the sanctuary movement in Tucson, which hit its stride in the 1980s. She went into more detail than I wanted or needed. I wanted to tell her about my experiences on the border with the nonprofits on the border. I wanted to tell her about these nonprofits inspired by the sanctuary movement. But I had a hard time getting a word in edgewise. Which made me wonder if I had anything to say, anything worth saying. She told me we should go to “Tucson Meet Yourself,” a festival taking place a couple blocks away from Hotel Congress. As we started walking, as the sky darkened, I was feeling hemmed in by all the new apartment blocks everywhere. There had been an explosion of upscale housing in the city that was pushing Hispanic households out of the impact zone. Despite this, Hispanic culture was well represented in Tucson Meet Yourself. Actually, just about every cultural/artistic tradition in the world was represented. Jewish Klezmer. Japanese Ikebana. Russian Balalaika. Congolese seamstresses. Hopi woodcarving. Gabriella was into the Polynesian folk dancing. The group representing this tradition was Halau Hula O Ualani. Just the sight of the women on the stage, decked out in colorful dresses, lit up Gabriella’s face with a broad smile. Frankly, their moves made me yawn—the dancers seemed lethargic to me—but the crowd seemed as devoted as 80s era Deadheads. Gabriella found an open seat near a friend of hers in the dense crowd. I was thinking maybe there was an aspect of female solidarity that was beyond my capacity as a male-identifying person to understand as I sat down on a stool in front of the lighting control board. The guy behind the board said to me, “Dude, get off the stool now!” I spotted another available seat but a woman behind me who looked like an elderly version of Ellen Degeneres tapped me on the shoulder, and then used that hand to point two fingers to her eyes. This was to say I was in her field of vision. So I stood up. It was then I realized I was missing my steno book, which had all my notes from October 10 to the present that I had taken on the border, while volunteering for Humane Borders, and while visiting the Mexican border towns of Sonoyta and Nogales. I felt that I had not only lost my steno book but lost the plot in this soup of global unity. I told Gabriella, who seemed like she was following her bliss, that I needed to go back to Hotel Congress, and that I’d try to make it back. That was, actually, a lie. After I recovered my steno book, I drove back to my hotel. I would make it a point to get out of Tucson as soon as possible. But I would soon discover other Tucsons. That is, I’d soon see (or see again) other cities through the light of what I had just seen in Tucson. El Paso, the international gateway city, enclosed by barbed wire and bollard fencing. San Antonio holding onto its Alamo pride. Austin, with its burgeoning skyline under construction and reconstruction, clinging to the confederacy. St. Louis, with its arch welcoming no one to nowhere. My home city of Indianapolis. Home to so many in the shadows, so many reaching towards the light.
