My Love Fast

I started a fast today to stand in solidarity with people across the nation to move for reforms to the nation’s immigration laws. I was moved to action when I first came to Arizona. Fell in love with the place. Was in love with my new husband. I had just left my family. Was content to discover a new place. I started to know about the deaths in the desert immediately. I was a student of human rights! I started to go to the frontera frequently. Mostly I wanted to help. Didn’t know how or what, but I went. The early images for me were of seas of migrant people waiting to be delivered. And I mean literally waiting to be delivered across the border from the US to Mexico. I can never forget, and will always remember the wounds on people’s feet. Torn and bleeding. Skin, flesh, and bone. I took pictures to a national public health conference, and received attention and good conversation with other activists. Was even hit on in the worst way. I felt that I was delivering a message to the nation’s best public health minds. Surely, once people saw the pictures I had, and that it was happening on American soil, they too would be galvanized and we would build a public health work force to solve this humanitarian crisis.

I guess it was the wrong crowd at the wrong time. I found my kindred people on the frontera. Those who made it their work to be in service always. Everywhere. So on the frontera, I sit with people, serve food, ask how they are feeling and ask about their feet. Nurses hustle in the medical unit corridor to wrap feet with mole skin. Dangerous wounds that are also deadly. A diabetic woman with skin torn from her heels expressed how she really didn’t know she would be walking in the desert like that. She said she would never do that again. Actually, the realities that the great many faced were not far off from those they imagined. To prepare, women bought birth control for the journey, just in case. Children found themselves alone in the darknesses of the desert. Wandering a border that was not even in between countries they knew anything about. Even those of us who love it, traverse only willingly. I got the sense that not everyone was willing. Kind of like in some public health initiatives.

On the opposite side of the aid station, a parking lot made of dirt threw around dust from about 100 people waiting to give “rides” to the migrants. They weren’t taxis. Also in that small space of the aid station, coyote parking lot, fence, buses of migrants, we had the luck to have the National Guard, Border Patrol, Mexican Police, and the Federales, all surrounding the 400 or so migrants who walked back into Mexico with bleeding feet.

The public health force never materialized. My plans changed.

Today I fast in solidarity with over 170 Asian American and Pacific Islander people and families to move our nation toward a just system of law, humanitarian protection, and rights for migrants and all those who seek life elsewhere. I am proud to represent the entities that I work on behalf of: Asian Pacific Community in Action, the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, Health Through Action Arizona. And for all Arizonans – we could have changed this earlier. Don’t stand down now. Arise.

National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum napawf.org
NO More Deaths nmd.org
Humaneborders.org
Asian Pacific Community in Action apcaaz.org
Health Through Action Arizona htaaarizona.com
AIM for Equity facebook.com/aimforequity
National Council of Asian Pacific Americans – ncapaonline.org
We Belong Together webelongtogether.org


Zeenat Hasan, Health Through Action Director
Asian Pacific Community in Action