I should be taking a nap...

Just a note to let y'all know I'm back in NY safely; didn't sleep much on the bus, so need to catch a few Zs before class tonight.

It was a pretty wild weekend! My presentation at the conference went well, despite having to completely shift my approach at the last minute when I realized that the audience had zero background in social theory. The other people on my panel included the Human Rescources director for Cargill (poultry plant), a woman who works for Homeland Security, and two computer science guys who happen to be highly educated South Americans teaching Spanish at the university pontificating about how Spanglish is a "degeneration" of Spanish (like Spanish wasn't a "degenerate" version of Latin! Come on!) So, just a little bizarre.

Then Friday night I had the *lovely* experience of going to a meeting of the Minute Men Civil Defense League, who were trying to help a group of locals start their own grassroots movement to "save the Valley" from immigration. The local activists had been, well, active, though, and the crowd was probably 70% pro-immigrant. Terry and I agreed that the discourse from the anti-immigrant group was basically vicious racism disguised under a rhetoric of rationality and even humanitarian concerns. I'm going to write at least 2 course papers on this so it was very interesting, but at the same time what sticks with me most was afterwards I saw my good friend from Guatemala, a nurse and mother of 2 college students who gives of herself constantly for others. I asked her "how are you?" and she said, "My heart hurts."