by Becky Wildman-Tobriner

Justice on wheels

JUST SOUTH OF San Diego, the cityscape vanishes from the horizon, the land becomes desert, and the first of three parallel fences appears, built of brown corrugated steel landing pads left over from the Vietnam War. Extending into the Pacific Ocean in an unnatural collision of elements, it's marked by intermittent motion detectors and surveillance spotlights that assist the armed U.S. Border Patrol waiting in trucks. According to the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, some 2,400 people have died since 1994 trying to cross over, victims of drowning, heat, suffocation, homicide, and other unnatural causes.

I found myself facing this imposing barrier last August at the end of a two-week ride down the California coast with Bike-Aid. Organized by human rights group Global Exchange with the goal of raising money for various of the group's social justice campaigns and covering about 75 miles a day, Bike-Aid gives its participants the opportunity to meet with social justice organizations down the length of the coast, finding links between local issues and globalization along the way. The ride is now in its 3rd year (a cross-country version is in its 19th), and this year's participants are fundraising in preparation for setting off July 26, with proceeds going toward an environmental justice ride for Bay Area youth.

Last summer, after hitting up Great Aunt Sally once-removed and leading doughnut drives on college campuses, we kicked off our Bike-Aid trip with a two-day orientation and some quality riding. We spent a day in Salinas, where our host, the Citizenship Project, taught us about its Liberty School, modeled after the Mississippi "Freedom Schools" of the '60s. A center for worker and immigrant rights, the school encourages participation in politics and civil rights struggles and offers instruction in passing the U.S. citizenship test. In the afternoon we met a soldier who'd returned from Iraq to take his test so his wife wouldn't be deported.

The next morning we rode by artichoke and strawberry fields where mostly undocumented migrants, whose workdays had started at 4 a.m. and might not end until dusk, wore bandannas over their mouths for protection from the pesticides. In San Luis Obispo a representative from the Vandenberg Action Coalition talked about the Vandenberg Aerospace Operation Center, the largest U.S. Space Command facility in the world. The base can't be cleared for a launch if personnel find trespassers, so the coalition leads back-country expeditions there as nonviolent resistance to military operations.

Once in Tijuana, we met with the Center for Information for Workers of the Maquiladoras (CITTAC) and Casa de la Mujer, another worker advocacy group. By CITTAC's count, there are about 250,000 workers in the maquiladoras of Baja California, largely women being paid around $28 to $45 a week, according to peace and social justice group the American Friends Service Committee. To get hired, they take a pregnancy test and sign an agreement asserting they won't get pregnant. It has no legal weight, but the women believe it does and undergo unsafe abortions to comply.

Later we met with organizers in Chilpancingo, a community at the foot of a plateau where a company called Metales y Derivados used to recycle used car and boat batteries – breaking them open, melting the extracted lead into bricks, and shipping them to the States. When the company shut down in 1994, it left behind 8,500 tons of toxins, according to community organizers. When it rains, lead slides down the hill into Chilpancingo, where 1,000 workers and their children live in ramshackle, makeshift homes. Kids used to play in the river, before it turned a putrid green color. Mexican arrest warrants for Metales y Derivados owner Jose Kahn might as well not exist, given that he lives in the suburbs of San Diego, comfortably on the other side of the wall.

I nursed my sore throat, which I was told is one of the consequences of visiting Chilpancingo, and I thought about my friend and fellow Bike-Aid participant Mike, a noncitizen who opted not to cross into Tijuana and risk deportation on the way back in. Later I took a deep breath as I crossed back over without any hassle. The government's cowboy diplomacy may send me back to school to study environmental justice.

If you go

Summer '04 rides June 13-Aug. 17, San Francisco-Washington, D.C. $150 application fee, $3,600 fundraising. July 26-Aug. 8, S.F.-Mexico. $150 application fee, $1,000 fundraising. June 28-July 3, California Central Valley-coast. $100 application fee, $500 fundraising. Contact Bike-Aid director Kien Chou at 1-800-RIDE-808, ext. 350, or go to www.globalexchange.org/getInvolved/bikeaid.

Related Web sites www.stopgatekeeper.org, environmentalhealth.org/Metales1.html#Metales, www.corpwatch.org, www.newcitizen.org.

Where to eat Try the strawberry shortcake at unionized, organic strawberry farm Swanson Berry, on Highway 1 just north of Santa Cruz.