Connect the Dots

The 1951 Refugee Convention defines a refugee as: “someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.”  The book ‘Refugee’ follows the story of three young refugees and their families that h ave all been forced to leave their home country for one reason or another. While this book is considered fiction, many elements of the stories are based in fact. The stories also reflect current refugee issues that are being experienced all around the globe. One story follows the journey of a Syrian boy, named Mahmoud, who is fleeing the violence in his home country with his parents, brother and sister. While there are many elements of the story that still ring true in today’s day and age, there was one specific moment in Mahmoud’s journey that really brought home the struggle that refugees are facing today. In the b

http://time.com/5134390/francisco-cantu-the-line-becomes-a-river-border-patrol/ Nowadays when we think of borders and border patrol we likely envision the US/ Mexico border. That border has been at the fore front of American media and political debate for a few years now. President Donald Trump wants to build a wall along that very border. What we probably don’t think about are the borders between the states in the US. Borders that even now are being patrolled. Texas , North Carolina, and Arizona are a few examples of states that currently have their own border patrols.   In the book The Grapes of Wrath the Joad family came up against a blockade on the California border. The blockade was there not to keep immigrants out, but to keep out the likes of the Joads and all other US citizens who were fleeing their homes due to the drought and dust that had taken over the Midwest. This issue hasn’t stayed in the Dust Bowl ear with Bum Blockades. If anything it has just become more co

https://www.usbr.gov/projects/index.php?id=504  Almost 97% of the world’s water is salty or undrinkable and 2% is locked in glaciers and ice caps. That means that all living things on the Earth rely on just 1% of the world’s total water supply. The book The Water Knife paints a vibrant picture of what life may look like in the near future if our climate problems aren’t addressed soon. The author Paolo Bacigalupi hones in on life in the Western states of the U.S.-- namely Arizona, and to a lesser extent, Nevada and California.   He describes a world where water is entirely too scarce to support life in the regions that were originally desert. The author makes many mentions of the Central Arizona Water Project (CAP) and its fictitious destruction in his novel. Turns out the CAP is real, and I decided I wanted to learn more about it. Firstly, in the early 1900s, seven states who share the Colorado River Basin settled on how they were going to share the water. They ended

http://www.artic.edu/blog/2012/11/20/the-dust-bowl The book The Grapes of Wrath follows the story of the Joad family, and of all of the migrant families, during the dust bowl era. In the Grapes of Wrath the migrant families who are forced from their land are treated very poorly by the people they meet along their journey, and when they reach their destination that is California.  Throughout the novel the migrants are treated badly by everyone they come into contact with. The people and the authorities do things to dehumanize the migrants in their minds and in real life. People often called the migrants Oakies and Reds. They automatically assumed they were there to try to steal or beg, and their unkempt appearances were further fuel to the fire ( chapter 15). They were targeted by police in California, and they were accused of spreading disease and violence. The migrants made homes in “Hoovervilles”(chapter 19) and sheriffs burned those homes to the ground(chapter 20).  Th