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In the first of a two part series, James travels to Lochiel, Arizona, to interview land defenders occupying a historic cottonwood known as grandmother tree in order to prevent the tree being destroyed as part of a two layer border wall being built through the region.
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Next week.
An hour's drive from the nearest pavement, down a long and winding dirt road that cuts through the Coronado National Forest, after leaving little mountain town of Patagonia, lies some of the most beautiful cattle country I've ever seen in the United States. When you think of southern Arizona, you probably think of saguaros, sand dunes, large mesas and scorching temperatures.
Within La Keel after the monsoon season, my drive was accompanied by views of rolling green hills, mesquite-covered slopes and giant cottonwoods granting shade and a sense of majesty to the landscape. Cresting one hill after another, I was greeted with endless rolling meadows, Views to the south of mountains, huge cottonwoods, Angus cattle and horses. It looks like the pastoral idyll that people who haven't worked in farming think that farming is. This isn't wilderness, or land untouched by human hands. It's a place where Yaqui and the Ottom people and other indigenous people have.
Lived and passed through for millennia.
It's the valley where the European settlers first entered what we now call the South West, and where some of those settlers have lived and raised cattle for more than a century and a half. Nonetheless, it's a beautiful country, and the intensively farmed cattle I saw on my way east from San Diego will probably dream of living out their lives here, not under solar shades in the desert.
To the south, across the wall, is the town of Kostolitsky. It's named for the Russian-Mexican soldier who earned the right to have a valley of someone else's land named after him by participating in the oppression of the Yaki and their revolutionary comrades, as well as putting down the miners' strike at the US-owned mine in Kananea, Kostolitsky, who came to the continent in the Russian navy, which he then deserted, became one of Porfirio Díaz' s most potent enforcers, punishing the working people who fought alongside Díaz at the Battle of Puebla for cresting the general's right to rule as a dictator, and the indigenous people of the region for defending their lands, water, and communities. Pancho Villa used to rustle cattle from these ranches.
And it was Villa and the revolution that eventually displaced Kostolitsky from the region, if not the map. and he fled to Los Angeles, where he became an FBI agent. Anyway, enough about historical assholes. For more than a century, people and cattle and castle rustlers could pass through this valley, more or less like they always had. A raindrop that falls in Laquille, in the USA, runs into Mexico. And the mule deer doe and her fawn I watched in a meadow on my way down could, for now, jump a barbed wire fence and make a journey that would require me to drive several hours and bring my passport.
But as I came up over the last hill before Laquille, I set eyes on the reason I was here. And the reason that deer and the jaguars who move through here might soon be cut off from the pond she was drinking from and the meadow she was grazing in. The mountains that I can see are actually in Mexico. But this landscape is just like people run cattle with, I'm sure there are barbed wire fences, I can just see one, but it's not visibly broken up. in the same way that so many of our landscapes are, right?
By property ownership. And so it seems very contiguous.
And then I'm at the.
Crest of one line of ridges I'm about to drop off.
I can see another ridge line ahead of me, and on the top of that ridge line runs the border wall. And it's the only wall, the only barrier that's visible from here, right? I can see some power lines. A couple of times I've seen people running windmills right through a well or whatever. But it's otherwise just the only intrusion on this beautiful landscape.
Close to that wall is the town of Lekil. It's not much of a town, but it does have a small one-room schoolhouse that I hopped out to explore.
Just walking up to the schoolhouse here. There's a tiny one-room schoolhouse here. And then it looks like there's a little outdoor cupboard area where the kids eat. With like two, three picnic-style tables. And that has a picture of the mountains and the desert and a wagon train. The toy, the odd symbol, sometimes called the man in the maze.
The schoolhouse is painted red.
I don't know.
I think it's a museum. It says property maintained by the Patagonian Museum Arizona.
Yeah.
Just a single room kind of adobe structure.
I'm not here for the schoolhouse though or the ghost town tourism stuff people do far too much on YouTube these days. Just to the south of town lies or lay I should say a towering cottonwood tree and a beautiful meadow. This tree grandmother tree, was until a few months ago part of a stand of cottonwoods that spanned the border from north to south, giving shade to people and cattle and a home to birds and animals. Now this tree, like the others, lies in a tangled mess on the floor. Not felled, bucked up and used for lumber like a commercial species might be, but pushed and pulled over by an excavator with their twisted root balls poking out the ground. grandmother tree stood for months longer
than her siblings. Because for more than two months, someone put their body between a centuries-old cottonwood tree and the people who wanted to destroy it. And that's why I'm here. I initially missed the turn to Camp of Shad because it was behind a closed gate. In Arizona and most places in this country, I don't go about opening gates because people get mad if you let their cattle out or come onto their land. and people in this country have lots of guns. But in this case, the gate I opened was one that wasn't supposed to keep me out.
The landowners of the land where Grandmother Tree sits welcome the tree sitter and the people camping in their meadow. They don't want the border wall either, and they were happy to host the folks willing to put their bodies and freedom on the line to defend this beautiful valley. The camp, when I was there, included the large cook tent, ground tents, community tents and individual tents for sleeping. Mostly people hung out in the cook tent or the community tent, and they work on improving them, making compost, cooking food, or talking and building community. The tents are impressive, large structures, built with rain and sun in mind. The kitchen, the washing station, and the pantry are well organised and well labelled.
This is a camp built to last. On the land where they're camping, they aren't trespassing, which significantly reduces the legal tools available to evict them. But even if they were, the local sheriff doesn't want the war here, and he said he wouldn't arrest them for doing what they're doing. However, Border Patrol can enter private land this close to the border, just not homes on that land. The 60-foot region just to the north of the border, the Roosevelt Reservation, can also be closed by the federal government. At least, they think it can. We'll talk more about that next week. However, this is a rare tree sit that everybody here wants.
Everybody that is, apart from the border war contractors, the border patrol, and the federal land management agencies, trying to weaponise rules designed to protect public land against the people who are currently defending it.
But I don't want to talk about cops right now.
First, I want to hear from some of the people willing to take their time and their energy to defend something so beautiful from something so hideous. I interviewed several people at the camp. We'll hear from them all today. So let's have them introduce themselves.
Hi, my name is Philip.
I live in the southwest.
I'm a supporter of the Lokeal Tree Sit Encampment.
My name's Ryan.
I'm 32 years old. I'm Petra.
We're in Lokeal, Arizona, which is the southmost and smallest county in Arizona.
There are many more people at the camp. These are just three of them who wanted to sit down with me and explain what was happening here and why. What was happening when I was there was that the border war was being stopped. And in this episode, I want to start with how things were in those moments. And the next episode, I want to talk to you about how the state responded. I think it would be sad to define this whole movement and the months it lasted, and it continues to last at this point, by the tragedy that happened in early October. Instead, this week, I want to talk about the hideous, cruel, and ugly scar on the planet, this machine for killing people who come here to ask us for help, and how its progress
was halted by people sitting on a platform in a tree, and how for months they did what the Democrats, massive NGOs, and lawsuits did not manage to do. With the support of their community on the ground, and local people, they made that wall stop. For more than 70 days, a time in which miles of wall could have been built, the wall has not been built here. That means two more months for migratory animals to pass. And two more months for people here to hope for a result in the midterms that changes the composition of Congress. Two more months for Congressional Democrats to grow a backbone and work out how to use that theoretical midterm result to stop this.
We all know how the last one will go, but Here we are anyway. The goal here isn't just to stop the war, and it shouldn't be. All of us, wherever we are, should aim higher than that. Until every inch of this wall is torn down, every foot of razor wire dragged away, and every single person who waived our protections, destroyed sacred things, and violated our community with the land held accountable, we shouldn't stop. There was a time when even Ronald Reagan wanted walls torn down. But today it seems that on this, as with many other issues of immigration, the Democratic Party and of course the Republicans have both outflanked him to the right. But right now, we have to do the best we can to limit
the damage done. And that doesn't mean voting and crossing our fingers for the people who have spent this entire century moving to the right on immigration to do something. And the best I've seen anyone do, anywhere along this hideous barrier which dominated the view to the south for the seven hours I drove along it yesterday, was right in this little meadow. Ed Abbey once wrote that the idea of wilderness needs no defence, it only needs defenders.
Lakia isn't a wilderness, federal or otherwise. But all of our land can't defend itself. It needs someone to defend it. Along the border, people willing to defend the land, the trees, the plants and the animals, have been hard to find. Up and down the border wall, we've seen lawsuits, law waivers, public comments and continued construction. But this time around, very little has been able to stop fissure sand and gravel from destroying beautiful places all along the southern border. But in Likil, for a couple of months, construction didn't happen.
I arrived in Likil one afternoon after taking an extended tour of the region due to some confusion on my part regarding annotations on the hand-drawn map I was using.
It's okay, I enjoyed seeing the country.
I arrived just in time for the tail end of a hurricane which was blowing through the region, complete with torrential rain. All the first night and the next day, rain poured down on our little camp. And despite the rain and the cold, people took care of one another. And the person in the tree, who is referred to as Tree, because this was about something much bigger than any one person.
In L'Aquille, for L'Aquille, there's a lot at stake. Here's Philip explaining that.
I think a lot of people coming to the desert would be surprised at how green it is, especially at the end of monsoon season. I mean, the communities of trees that are hundreds of years old are healthy and thriving, aside from where they're being destroyed by the border construction. There is such a rich ecosystem of bugs and insects.
The snakes are huge and eating really well. So, you know, it's an area where life is thriving, like in an overall, you know, global system that is kind of collapsing and failing. So it's, you know, from an ecological point of view, there's a lot worth fighting for here. But, you know, from what we've, I know of the community and the neighbors here, people feel like this wall is going right through their town and their community. I mean, the power pole goes right across the border to the houses on the other side, like they're paying the same power bills. And, you know, going before this artificial separation, you know, kids going to the same schools, going to the same cookouts, involved in the same businesses. So it's literally just tearing
a community apart in a way that's arbitrary and artificial.
That community support is a big factor in why folks in the camp were able to slow down construction. For months, it seemed as if the war was bearing down on Likil. Coming for these ranches and their homes, coming for those cottonwoods, this meadow, The places the jaguars and the deer would cross. And everything else is beautiful here.
There's an incredible view to Mexico and a beautiful meadow in that direction. But if I look a little bit left, there is a border wall that has been constructed right almost up to the point of the tree set. And when I first got here, it was on the horizon, and then every day it was so much closer. And to see it stop there was one of the things that really kept me at this place. It stopped there, and for now, the view to Mexico and the entry to Mexico is still beautiful and still open.
It stopped because of people who came here, the people who supported them, and the community that stood behind them. Indeed, at one point, there was a tree set on both sides of the border.
The first one was the American one, as I understand, and then a Mexican tree set started and a mexican camp started and i was here while that was happening the full binational tree set and it was beautiful um we were having dinner across the border you know they brought out a bondo one time and we were all dancing and it was so beautiful so that mexican tree set still sits up there but is now empty because the federales and other agencies i don't know too well were called in and they made several threats to the tree sitters and campers. And as far as I know, they stood strong against those threats to themselves. And then they made a threat to basically that that property wouldn't be able to sell its cattle anymore. And so the
camp and the tree sit were asked to leave. But everything is still intact there, all the beautiful signs and the tree sit itself, because those people are still in support and still part of this community.
Walking through Laquille, I could see the platform on the Mexican side, overhanging the border road. as the tree leaned towards the other trees that had grown alongside for centuries. Just a hundred yards or so to the east, the wall construction had stopped. Thirty-foot black pillars, with the new design, complete with anti-climb plate, are standing there, staring down the tree and the people defending it. Of course, people have sat in trees for decades, but this situation in Lakira is unique, as is the mix.
Of people here.
Some of them are experienced forest defenders. Others, like Ryan, are here for the first time.
My partner told me about it through social media. I believe it was through social media. It might have been through... The Guardian had an article on this.
Nice.
And, like, what took you from, that's cool, to, like, I'm going to come?
Well, we had some time taking off work where we were going to go on a vacation, but... This seemed more impactful. It seemed like something we could contribute to. We're celebrating our anniversary while we're down here, so we thought this was an appropriate way to give back.
Oh, yeah.
I think that's really great. Do you have, like, concerns or worries?
Like, what was your thought process from, like, when your partner raised it to deciding to come down here with them?
Yeah, I was very concerned and worried about this trip. At first, when an idea gets suggested, you think, okay, yeah, that is an idea, but it will evolve into doing something sometimes. You get serious about it, and that's overcoming a lot of reasons you can tell yourself no. But understandably, there are a lot of things you could be concerned about.
You could invent some things, but there's also really real risks that you're facing.
But despite his concerns, Ryan decided to come. So did his partner. So did Philip and Petra. and the 20-odd people I met there in the middle of the week. This is a unique opportunity for resistance. Along thousands of miles to the border, there have been efforts to slow down the war. But the conditions in this little town, in this little meadow, under this massive tree, came together to make it possible for these people to stop this war right here. On the best days, there are less than a hundred of them. I asked Philip what he would have said to people in the position Ryan was in, to help them come down to L'Oreal, or to feel empowered wherever they are.
I would say that that's the story of almost everybody in movement, that there are very few people who were raised in households where their parents were, you know, Black Panthers or Liberation Army veterans or whatever, and most people were raised outside of movement and came to understand the way the world is is wrong and have beliefs that need to be addressed. Octavia Butler once wrote that belief initiates and guides action, or it does nothing. So if we're not actually acting on our beliefs and principles, are they really our beliefs and principles? And so if people feel strongly that they believe something is wrong.
Movements are open to those people and yeah, they shouldn't feel like they're being weird. They shouldn't feel like it's unusual to just show up in a space where there's an open call. You're invited to come to the Lak'il camp. And a lot of people have come before you that are in your same shoes, that didn't know anybody, that had never done anything like this before. And they are here, they have been here, they're plugged in, they come and go, they have great experiences. And that's how movements are sustained.
And the more people do that, the more we change the landscape of what is possible.
Likiel in particular presented a unique opportunity without some of the usual risks of state violence. Albeit it's close to the border, the community and its choices don't matter. Because as we will see, even landowners don't have rights when the Trump administration really wants to build this wall.
This is a unique opportunity because the sheriff has remained in the background and has been outspoken for years about how the idea of building a wall through this community is wrong-headed and doesn't want to be involved in supporting it.
So, of course....
Yeah, in a lot of land defense campaigns, if it's in public lands and the Forest Service is having a hard time dealing with people, their go-to move is to call the cops. And in this situation, that's not happening. And additionally, in this situation, we are directly adjacent to public lands on private land, and the landowners here and basically every single one of their neighbors also are offended by the wall and feel disappointed. grateful that people are coming to defend this territory from desecration and accordingly there's spaces here that are a lot less risky to inhabit than in a lot of land defense campaigns this is private land that no one can come on without permission or a warrant and The public lands where the wall
goes through down the road from here are well off the beaten path and aren't really traveled or commuted by many forest service employees or authorities. So there's a lot of space to hold the camp in a good way, in a safe way, and it feels like the camp accordingly is a little more luxurious than a lot of camps would otherwise be. There's been a lot of infrastructure that's been set up and built. There's been opportunities to bring in building materials and equipment that is expected to be maintained and not at risk of being confiscated or raided at any moment. So it makes the experience feel a lot more embedded in It makes the space feel, like, richly inhabited in a way that a lot of camps feel ephemeral or intentionally temporary.
Talking of things that are temporary, here's a short advertising break. MUSIC A few years ago, I translated a piece by a French anarchist who fought in Spain. It's one of my favourite pieces of writing about the revolutionary moment, about liberation. It's one of the things I think about when I remember the friends and the pieces of myself I've left behind in my own experiences of war and revolution.
This part, in particular, has stayed with me. Quote.
In the foxholes dug into the hillsides of Aragon, men live fraternally and dangerously. without the need for hope, because they were living fully conscious of being what they had always wanted to be. We have tried to enter into a dialogue with them, with the dead, to preserve whatever of their truth can be useful.
For the survivors and the living.
There's an ellipsis here where I've skipped his description of some of those people. Of all these, and thousands of others, all that remains are trace chemicals, the residues of bodies burned with petrol, and the memory of brotherhood. We were shown proof, that a collective life with neither God nor Master was possible. Alongside people as they actually are in the context of the world such as people have made it.
It is possible.
I feel the same way about these encampments, about our mutual aid in the desert, and the other spaces where we have seized back a little space from the state. In these places, we don't just defend a tree or a valley, or feed and care for migrants. We show ourselves in a world we can live alongside each other, without gods or masters, and that we can take care of each other without controlling each other.
What do.
You guys think?
Is that a good idea?
As the rain poured down on some of the larger tents, water started pooling on the canopies.
They were so weighed down, we worried they might collapse. So together, without.
Anyone in charge, people rolled some logs in a tarp to make a drain, piled dirt high enough to give it a slope, and cut the back out of a gallon water jug to make a downspout.
That moved the water out of the tent and into the meadow.
In camps like this, we share so much more than space. We share our goals, our hopes, and our ways of getting there. I think these spaces can maybe feel a little intimidating if you haven't been in them. I don't think it helps so many people's experience of leftist community as what they find on x.com or bsky.app or whatever.
Because mostly that's actually the opposite of what community is. And a place like this, maybe we can call it a liberated space. It's the opposite of that. People hold each other so tightly when they can break free of the society and the state, which tries so hard to break us of our love for one another.
Here's Philip again.
Yeah, there's a magic that happens in an encampment that is really a sustaining force for movement and resistance politics to continue forward. That is apart from a decisive victory of the campaign. So in most resistance struggles, whether their top line goal is achieved or not, the way that people hold each other through the struggle and are not recreating the dominant form of social organization we're forced into in mainstream life, that break and that opportunity to live in a different way, in a good way, that's both more aligned with the land and the spirits of, like, those that came before us to like resist the forces that are destroying the world and breaking us, to be building something that's communal and positive on the ground with
each other, to be holding each other up in a good way, challenging each other to push our, you know, comfort zones and our boundaries and and escalate struggle uh but to do so while holding each other safely and not dominating one another is not something that people are living in most day in and day out lives in most places in the u.s so it's an opportunity i think to like both build the world we want to see.
But in doing so, it's like sustaining an energy and giving these experiences that are contagious or that people want in their lives so badly that it brings people back to the next struggle. And when people share of their experiences, of course, it can be crushing and heartbreaking if campaigns don't achieve their big goals. but people remember what it was like to be part of them in such a way that the movement is sustained and resistance lives on.
What's special about these places is that we have a chance to build the world we want in the world we live in, to show ourselves and others it can work, and to challenge ourselves to care for each other more, and the planet more, and to let that care propel us to act to defend each other in the places we love. It's a spirit I'm familiar with, I felt it in the streets of Qamishla, in the mountains of Kurdistan, with friends in the liberated zones in the revolution in Myanmar, in the twin cities, and in the desert here. A few years ago, some friends and I were in an old youth centre late at night, cleaning dishes from the dinner we'd served hundreds of migrants and preparing breakfast for them.
Someone pulled up in the darkness to drop off some supplies. Hey, they shouted, who's in charge? I have some donations. We all just looked at each other, and then someone said, everyone. It seems trite or corny, but that's how things were then. That is how things can be. We can do amazing things together without anyone in charge. We can take care of each other without controlling each other. But sometimes it does help to have periodic reminders. One of the things that's lovely about these spaces is having the time and space to take care of other people. to make them some tea, help repair their tent, or find them some warm clothes. Lak'il is blessedly without cell phone signal, and without the constant buzzing of phones, people can connect with
each other in a way that's hard to achieve on a screen. As Philip says, the things we learn and remember here don't have to stop here. Tekoshe Piling, an Italian fighter in Rojava who was killed in the battle against the Islamic State, put this beautifully in his martyrdom letter. Every storm begins with a single raindrop, he wrote, knowing the letter would only be read in the event of his death.
Make sure you're that raindrop. In these spaces, we can make hundreds of little raindrops. Next week, I want to talk about the repression the camp is facing, what happened to Grandmother Tree, and the real danger that could be coming soon. But for now, as I write this, there's still one cottonwood standing in Lakeel, hanging over the border, and dozens of people ready to defend it. As I drove away, I looked in my mirror, and I wondered if I'd see those cottonwoods again next time I was here.
It turns out I won't.
But even if I don't, the cottonwoods were part of a grove, and those other trees are gone now, or at least uprooted. But even those trees, in defiance of the state and the war, are refusing to give up entirely.
The tree sit is in a beautiful, centuries-old cottonwood tree. And sadly, several of its neighbor trees were felled, but not hauled away or chipped. And there's new growth on those trees. Even though their large trunk bodies are on the ground, their root systems are not completely uprooted. And from the trunks of these trees, new growth springs. So there's a chance that these trees and their hundreds-year-old roots will continue to grow forever in a new shape and a new form if we give them the opportunity.
Natural Cause is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for natural causes listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
