Arizona

Launch: on community participation

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Community participation. It’s become such a catch phrase that making it solidify when you stop to really look at it can be tricky, like trying to see synergy or social networking. Yet it was an excitingly tangible part of the event I covered Saturday, the official launch of the Colibri Center for Human Rights which included the Tucson premiere of Who is Dayani Cristal? More than 400 people showed up – more than double the number that attended the award winning documentary’s New York premiere. But a crowd alone doesn’t mean community.

behind the scenes

Searching for Andy at PCOME: Database debut leads to Tucson travels

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A publicly accessible website went online one week ago that provides maps and data based on the location where bodies presumed to be migrants have been recovered in southern Arizona. The Arizona OpenGIS for Deceased Migrants is “the result of ongoing partnership” between the humanitarian group Humane Borders, Inc. and the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner (PCOME). And so I ended up in a southbound car with New York Times reporter Fernanda Santos and freelance photographer Joshua Lott to learn about how the database works. In the years since the first time I visited PCOME, many things have changed. Dr. Bruce Parks, whom I interviewed for Unidentified dead common on the border, retired in the summer of 2011 and Dr. Gregory Hess is now the medical examiner.