***********FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***********
MOCK WALL STUDENTS ACCUSED OF INCITEMENT
Students Slammed By Critics for Demonizing U.S. Border Patrol and Israeli Military in Mock Theatre
Media Contacts -- UA No Más Muertes/No More Deaths (NMM):
Francisco Baires: 520-991-7151 /
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Gabriel Matthew Schivone: 520-302-6006 /
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One of the highlighted activities that remain in performance while the wall will still be up next week will be mock theatre depicting U.S. and Israeli acts of brutalization, from family separation, to raids, detention and deportation, to premeditated killing of civilians living under Israeli military and apartheid occupation.
Some allege the theatre to be demonizing and offensive in its depictions of Israeli soldiers and U.S. Border Patrol/ICE forces, dehumanizing them as villains. Also that it may incite hostility with government agencies.
UA NMM Coordinator, Gabriel Schivone, responded to critics: “In recent history, the United States and Israel have made names for themselves dropping fire on hundreds of people, incinerating them, in Gaza and Iraq using U.S.-made White Phosphorous, according to Amnesty International – and Americans are largely silent. At the same, the U.S. essentially turns the deadly terrain of the AZ-Sonora desert into a weapon, effectively creating an open grave into which hundreds of migrants and indigenous peoples are massacred every year and hardly anyone renders a whisper. Yet some people are outraged when a bunch of students dramatize these ugly abuses to push awareness? Such critics should consider what ‘obscenity’ really is, focus on the life-and-death issues we’re exposing in theatre and join us in offering viable alternatives to end death and suffering from Arizona to Palestine.”
One of the anonymous actors, who will be fully costumed as U.S. Border Patrol (fit with a mock pig snout), was born in Nogales, Sonora, and is a permanent resident of the U.S. and UA Raza Studies student, justified his participation in the theatre: “Desperate times call for extreme measures,” he said. “Yeah it may be dehumanizing in a conceptual way but it doesn’t equate with the actual violent dehumanization we face every day.”
Mexican-American Studies student, Pricila Rodriguez, will be one of the actors submitting to simulated brutalization at the hands of U.S. Patrol and Israeli military. “I think the theatre actually brings the issues comically to the forefront where people don’t really see the brutality and the horror. Satirical comedy is thought-provoking because it opens up dialogue in different ways by displaying what’s happening on a daily basis in the desert and the cities, whether in Arizona or in Israeli-occupied Palestine.
Another actor and No More Deaths Tucson general group volunteer, Carly Rexroad, uses her experiences from NMD’s desert aid program to inform her role in the protest theatre: “One of the experiences that stays with me is when a young migrant woman miscarried in our aid station in Agua Prieta [on the AZ-Sonora border] in July, 2008. She had told us she’d walked for four days before being picked up by Border Patrol, who refused to give her food or water – and denied her medical treatment when she complained of bleeding and stomach cramps. That, among many other systematic abuses NMD has documented, is why I’m out there using provocative theatre to make people think about deeper issues of a disgusting policy that dehumanizes everyone it touches, including the victimizers.”
AZ Jewish Voice for Peace co-coordinator and Anthropology and Linguistics graduate student, Bryan James Gordon, explains the dramatic method behind the mock theatre: “Satire is not only about playing with what is ordinarily serious….For the exploited, satire is about emotional catharsis: seeing those whom one fears humiliated is a way of rejecting or being able to throw off that fear, if even momentarily and in drama.”
The mock theatre will occur on Wednesday, March 30, beginning around 11:30am. Call 520-302-6006 for more details.
TUCSON AZ (USA) – Students in UA No Más Muertes (NMM) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) – the student groups that captured national attention by erecting the country’s largest mock apartheid wall – have mostly received favorable response from the local community. But from pro-Israeli occupation and College Republican groups on campus, the mock wall students have been fending off furious opposition all week – and they just keep pulling out all the stops.
