SPREAD KNOWLEDGE, NOT FEAR.
join the Hope Knows No Borders
book club & Webinar series
A learning community, spanning borders of geography, politics, faith traditions, and the coincidence of birth, facilitated by Dora Rodriguez, author of Dora: A Daughter of Unforgiving Terrain, and Sarah Towle, author of Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands.
We aim to engage one and all in a collective journey of discovery as we dive into texts, documentaries, and other creative works that are like beacons of hope, lighting the way through these deeply troubling times and compelling us all to do better.
We meet (mostly) on the 4th Sunday of every month, 2:30-4:00 pm ET, via Zoom.
All discussions are thematically driven with suggested readings posted here in advance of each monthly meet-up. Discussions are video recorded for Book Club members, then shared with the public as audio tales on Sarah’s podcast: From The Borderlands.
Next Event:
The ecological impacts of the boondoggle border wall
SEPTEMBER 28, 2025, 2:30-4:00 pm ET
The first section of the latest stretch of border wall now rises from the desert sands of Arizona's San Rafael Valley. It is expected to cut straight across the valley to the Coronado National Monument, a unique biological hotspot, according to Erick Meza. I can attest. I spent time there while on my book launch tour with Crossing the Line this time last year.
Russ McSpadden calls it “the most important wildlife corridor left in Arizona connected to Mexico … the most important corridor for jaguars."
The monolithic steel barrier, painted black to retain the desert heat so that it might burn a human hand, is the “nail in the coffin” for biodiversity in the region. Though erected to thwart human migration through measures most cruel, the border wall blocks animal routes, destroys habitats, threatens species, disturbs wildlife, halts genetic interchange, depletes irreplaceable artesian groundwater aquifers, disrupts the integrity of borderland communities, tramples cultural protections, and shreds environment-saving legislative precedent, all as it robs budgets for schools and rural hospitals.
This is also not an area typically traversed by humans, particularly now that crossings are at a historic low. The border wall, like much of the US immigration system, aids only the demagogues and profiteers that feed on government contracts. In this case, the sole winner of this debacle is Colorado-based Fisher Sand & Gravel, awarded $334 million to build the wall after Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem waived dozens of environmental laws to make it happen. Sadly, she wasn’t the first government official to run roughshod over both laws and the natural world. Friendship Park, once a beautiful binational garden spanning the barrier between Tijuana and San Ysidro, was reduced to rubble by the president who promised, “There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration,” then trounced twenty-three environmental and cultural protections to extend “the former guy’s” monstrosity across Starr County, Texas. Indeed, the windfall Fisher Sand & Gravel now enjoys was funded under Biden’s watch by a 2021 congressional appropriation.
How does this happen? Join me in conversation with Erick and Russ to learn about the endangered Endangerment Doctrine, the increasingly precarious Roadless Rule, and artesian water systems. Find out how the same law, dating to 1996, harms both people and wildlife alike. Meet our friends from the San Rafael Valley, whom Erick and Russ know so well. We are all so focused on ICE impunity. But we need to understand what it means to disrupt a wildlife corridor. So that we can help Erick and Russ to stop it. If it’s not already too late.
Click the image to register.
ENJOY THE RECORDINGS OF OUR previous meet-ups:
August 3, 2025: On Global Apartheid & the New Jim Code
As I write in Chapter 25 of Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, what began in 1980 as an “Emergency Influx Shelter” set up in Krome, Florida, has metastasized into a living, breathing many-headed Hydra that decides who gets to move, and who doesn’t, as it deters, detects, divides, detains, deports, destroys, and disappears human beings for profit. The same bipartisan logic that brought us Angel and Ellis Island detention camps remains with us to this day in large part because there’s HUGE money to be made.
Who makes bank at the intersection of migration and so-called “security”? Discover the answer in this discussion, which gives new meaning to the phrase, “The border crossed us.”
June 22, 2025: On Writing to Change the World
In this engaging conversation facilitated by Abbey, we dig into the craft of writing to inspire movements. Taking Mary Pipher’s book Writing the Change the World as her point of inspiration, Abbey leads Dora and me in a discussion of the transformative power of storytelling to touch hearts, change minds, and turn outrage into action.
I’d like to think that this workshop speaks to the power of the art and the creative process to aid the resistance against the rise of fascism in the US and elsewhere today.
May 25, 2025: We ask the question: Is there an invasion at the US-Mexico border? and we determine that…
In light of recent events in LA and their continuing aftermath, this webinar playback could not be more timely. Though our discussion centered on the militarization of the borderlands as a prelude to invoking the Insurrection Act and declaring martial law, we also reminded participants that the militarization is taking place all over the country and in particular in the 100-mile constitution-free zone policed by Homeland "Security" forces.
LA is now poised to be occupied by not just "security" forces in collaboration with LAPD, but federalized National Guard and possibly the Marines. I put to you that this was intentional — Trump & Co want their violence to lead to violence so they can declare war on their own citizens in time for Trump's North Korea-style military parade. Are we looking at a new Tiananmen Square massacre? We'll see in just a few days.
April 27, 2025: On Shifting the Paradigm By FINDING THE WORDS TO TOUCH HEARTS & CHANGE MINDS
“I'm Not an Alien. I Don't Bleed Green." I Bleed Red Just Like You.”
Sarah and Dora together in Organ Pipe National Monument paying respects at Dora’s “sacred spot” where the Sanctuary Movement was born, now immortalized by Alvaro Enciso’s commemorative crosses.
In this workshop, Dora and I take as our starting point that language matters (it’s not “just semantics”) because words and phrases influence thought. And the dehumanizing, anti-immigrant rhetoric of our politicians, parroted by the media — both right-wing and mainstream — has enabled the fascist takeover of US democracy. Meeting this historic moment head-on, we call for a language revolution that reclaims the narrative and tugs the nation back to its senses. To accomplish this, we provide tools and resources for touching the hearts and changing the minds of folks we meet at the dinner party, in the grocery store line, on the bus, etc., who are brainwashed… and don’t even know it.
It is a regime, for example, not an administration. They are abducting our friends and neighbors, not arresting them. They are imprisoning them, not detaining them; trafficking and disappearing them, not deporting them, to concentration camps and torture chambers. This makes Trump & Co and their Gestapo — ICE and Customs and Border Protection — the true terrorists in this tale. And who wants to be complicit in that level of cruelty?
March 30, 2025: On Offering Sanctuary & Building Railroads
”We’re Not the Statue of Liberty Country.”
As the ICE Gestapo fills its 200+ prison Gulag with our neighbors, family, colleagues, and friends abducted off the streets and forcibly disappeared by US federal agents, featured speaker Reverend John Fife, co-padre of the 1980s Sanctuary Movement, and sanctuary providers Reverends Babs Miller and Jim Rigby, share with us when the movement began and why and how to revive it to meet the demands of today.
The time is NOW, they urge us, to call this country to its conscience, or melt down Lady Liberty.
