Day of the Dead shrine I created to remember family members. (Photo and shrine by Pamela Powers)

Personal memorial shrines are not seen much in the part of the country where I grew up. Giant, gleaming white Calvinistic crosses, yes. Individual shrines with statues, candles, flowers, momentos, not so much (or at least not outside of the cemetery).

In the 30 years that I have lived in Tucson, I have grown to value and admire this cultural tradition. Some shrines around town– like the one on Greasewood near Pima College, the ghost bike at Mountain and Fort Lowell, the magnificent display for Gabrielle Giffords in front of UMC, and others– are unique, well-maintained remembrances.

The Carlos Lamadrid Shrine, erected by the US-Mexico border fence where he was shot to death, is particularly poignant. I don’t know much about Carlos except what I have read in the newspaper. He was a 19-year-old, Latino community college student who grew up in Douglas and was in the wrong place at the wrong time with a large quantity of marijuana.

Carlos is one of hundreds of people who have died on the US-Mexico border. Crossers, drug mules, gangsters, cartel customers, ranchers, border patrol agents, children… all gone.

The Border Patrol wants Carlos’ family to remove the shrine near Douglas obstensibly to rebuild the fence. I think they want that shrine gone because they want everyone to forget about Carlos and the lives lost on the border.

What if everyone who lost a loved one on the border erected a shrine along the border fence? Think about it. Hundreds of shrines, thousands of flowers, photos, candles, momentos. What a beautiful remembrance and poignant message that would be.

Death on the border is not about drugs, money, security, jobs or violence; it’s about life on the border.

Back in July, I reported that the Border Patrol ordered removal of a shrine in memory of 19-year-old, US citizen Carlos Lamadrid, who was shot by the Border Patrol in March 2011.

Yes, Carlos was running marijuana along the border, but he was a US citizen and a human being. He didn’t deserve to die. The Border Patrol wants us to forget they killed him. Here’s a link to the latest story in the Arizona Daily Star. Note Carlos’ family is suing the US government for wrongful death.

A few weeks ago, I posted a story about a border activist who captured the Border Patrol scouring her property and adjacent land and the eventual arrest of one man. Less that 24 hours after posting her video on You Tube (and publication of the video on the TucsonCitizen.com), the videographer began receiving notices from YouTube that they had received privacy complaints about her video.

As you can see from the blank spot in my blog post, her video was pulled from YouTube.

Unfortunately for the Border Patrol who wanted to suppress loneprotestor’s video, the American Civil Liberties Union said she had the right under the First Amendment to film their actions and publish her video on You Tube. Above is the remake of her original video.

Here is her statement about Part Dos…

BANNED FROM YOUTUBE. Was it the dogs and chickens? The plainclothes agents with the latex gloves? Or was it the young detainee with the bloody nose? First Amendment protections were designed to keep the government and its officers from abusing absolute power. This video contains a remake of a benign video that was removed from YouTube at the request of Border Patrol. The original video was intended to show that life on the U.S.-Mexican border is not the ‘war zone’ as is portrayed in the corporate media. However, the new video is now properly censored and annotated, with a left-wing liberal bias.

Hurray for the First Amendment.

If you’re an activist and an amateur videographer and you see Border Patrol agents wandering around your property inspecting footprints (that happen to be yours), what do you do?

Get out your video camera and start filming, of course.

Or at least that’s what Alison McLeod, Southern Arizona Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) field organizer, did last week.

When McLeod spotted Border Patrol agents snooping on and around her property on foot, on horseback, in SUVs, and in a helicopter, she started filming and asking questions. McLeod’s curiosity lead her to the site of an arrest of a man with a bloody nose (presumably a Mexican national, since he was handcuffed).

Not 24 hours after she posted the above video to her You Tube channel, McLeod received a notice from You Tube that “someone” (ahem, like the feds) complained to them about it. Below is the e-mail she received. In addition, a Border Patrol representative visited her house the same day– unannounced and uninvited.

Dear loneprotestor, This is to notify you that we have received a privacy complaint from an individual regarding your content:
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Video URLs:

The information reported as violating privacy is at 2_55-5_30
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We would like to give you an opportunity to review the content in question and remove any personal information that may be used to uniquely identify or contact the complainant. You have 48 hours to take action on the complaint. If you remove the alleged violation from the site within the 48 hours, the complaint filed will then be closed. If the potential privacy violation remains on the site after 48 hours, the complaint will be reviewed by the YouTube Team and may be removed pursuant to our Privacy Guidelines (http://www.youtube.com/t/privacy_guidelines). For content to
be considered for removal, an individual must be uniquely identifiable by image, voice, full name, Social Security number, bank account number or contact information (e.g., home address, email address). Examples that
would not violate our privacy guidelines include gamer tags, avatar names, and address information in which the individual is not named. We also take public interest, newsworthiness, and consent into account when determining
if content should be removed for a privacy violation. If the alleged violation is located within the video itself, you may have to remove the video completely…

Politicians and other public servants are becoming increasingly annoyed by amateurs photographers and citizen journalists with video cameras and video-enabled smart phones because they’re catching people in the act of… whatever… and posting videos on You Tube and blogs.

With the demise of investigative journalism in the US, we need the wild and woolly world of citizen journalism and amateur videos to keep government servants honest. If unlimited, secret corporate campaign contributions are considered “protected speech”, then so are amateur videos, still photos, and blog posts.

This powerful video by Bisbee activist Alison McLeod brought tears to my eyes.