SCHEDULE

DAY 01
FRIDAY, JUNE 3RD, 2011
9:00 am—Sunset

STATION 1
Casa Familiar / The FRONT
San Ysidro, California
147 West San Ysidro Blvd
San Diego, CA 92173-2555
(619) 428-1115

The event will be located in the border neighborhood of San Ysidro, where Community-based NGO, Casa Familiar has been evolving from social service provider into alternative developer of affordable housing. Casa Familiar has conceived the neighborhood as producer of new housing policy and economy, focusing on designing parcels as small infrastructures that mobilize social entrepreneurship into new spaces for housing, cultural production and political participation. —The Front is Casa Familiar's arts and culture hub.

8:30—9:00 am
Coffee at the FRONT

9:00—9:20 am
Welcome

CONVENERS:
Andrea Skorepa, Director, Community organizer, Casa Familiar, INC, A community-based non-profit organization in San Ysidro, California
Oscar Romo, Environmentalist, Watershed Coordinator, Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, Director of Alter-Terra, a scientific and community-based non-profit organization in Los Laureles Canyon, Baja California and lecturer in the Urban Studies and Planning Program at UC San Diego
Teddy Cruz, Professor in Public Culture and Urbanism at the Visual Arts Department and co-director of The Center for Urban Ecologies at UCSD, San Diego, California, co-founder of Political Equator

INTRODUCTION: The Political Equator 3
Launching of the Political Equator 3 with a short introduction of the conditions to be revealed during the event, the nomadic route and the different stations. The participants are briefly introduced and the way the public is going to engage throughout the itinerant confrontations and dialogs is explained.

9:30—11:30 am
Public Walk: Traversing the Common Ground

Departing from the FRONT, a walk and bus tour through the border neighborhood of San Ysidro led by local community members, will take the audience and participants to relevant sites, including the San Ysidro checkpoint.

11:30—12:30 am
Public Walk Reflections

Back at the FRONT, local community, guest presenters and participants respond to the public walk.

12:30—1:30 pm
Lunch

Food offered by Casa Familiar and the community of San Ysidro

1:30—4:00 pm
Neighborhood Forum: Reconnecting Urban Policy and the Community’s Imagination

1:30—1:50 pm
FRAMING THE ISSUES:
Re-thinking Citizenship and Property: Immigration and the Transformation of the American Neighborhood

INTRODUCTIONS (Host: Andrea Skorepa):
1. Casa Familiar: the Neighborhood as Socio-Political Unit, Andrea Skorepa
2. Re-thinking housing: The neighborhood as a site of cultural production, Teddy Cruz

1:50—2:30 pm
PRESENTATION
Sergio Fajardo, former mayor of Medellin
New paradigms of Public Infrastructure and civic imagination

2:30—4:00 pm
FORUM
The conversation initiated by former mayor of Medellin Sergio Fajardo’s will unfold into a ‘town-hall meeting’ where San Diego public officials, developers, scholars, activists, artists, community organizers and the public will debate obstacles that prevent and possible models that could enable new paradigms of housing policy and economy, public infrastructure and a civic culture.

4:00—4:15 pm
Coffee brake

4:15—5:30 pm
Project: Unveiling the corridor of Knowledge: UCSD Community Stations Project

Conversations around a media based project that enables a corridor of knowledge-exchange between Casa Familiar, University of California San Diego (Center for Community Wellbeing and Center for Urban Ecologies) and other global neighborhoods and cultural institutions. This project will be inaugurated with a teleconference event linking Casa Familiar with other neighborhood projects in the US.

5:30—6:30 pm
Conversation: Intersecting Economies

A conversation around a panel of artists, housing developers and activists known for their work at the intersection of community engagement and alternative economies.

6:30—Sunset
Reception at EL SALON, Casa Familiar's new Art and Culture Space

Exhibition: MoMitA: A smaller version of NY MoMA’s show: “Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement.”

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DAY 02
SATURDAY, JUNE 4TH, 2011
8:30 am—Sunset

STATION 2
Tijuana River Estuary Visitor Center
San Ysidro, California
301 Caspian Way
Imperial Beach, CA 91932-3149
(619) 575-3613

The event will be located under a tent at a site between the estuary and Home Land Security’s new border fence, next to a sediment basin, where the pollution from Los Laureles’s informal settlement in Mexico has been seeping into the estuary on the US side.

8:30—9:00 am
Coffee at the Tijuana River Estuary Visitor Center

9:00—9:15 am
Welcome and Introduction: The Tijuana River Estuary: Navigating the Natural and Political Landscapes

9:15—10:00 am
Shuttle transfers from the Tijuana River Estuary Visitor Center to a tent next to the border fence and sediment basin.

10:00—12:00 am
Framing the Issues:
Re-imagining the San Diego-Tijuana Border: Activating the Threshold between the Natural and the Political

10:00—10:15 am
INTRODUCTION
Host: Oscar Romo

1. Cross Border Natural Systems and the Rethinking of Political Jurisdictions

10:30—12:00 am
PERFORMANCE: Visualizing the Evidence of Coexistence
Small physical models reproduce in miniature the juncture between the Tijuana River Estuary in San Ysidro, the new U.S. Mexico border fence and the informal settlement of Los Laureles canyon in Tijuana.

INTRODUCTION
60 Linear Miles of Trans-border Conflict

CONVERSATION
The models will serve as detonators and mediators for presentations by guests in a conversation between Homeland Security, environmentalists and the community.

12:00—12:30 pm
Lunch

12:30—2:30 pm
Performance: A Public Border Crossing

Beginning from the tent, an unprecedented border crossing will take place, as participants cross the border by foot from the US into Mexico through the culvert beneath the border fence to enter Los Laureles canyon for the last part of the event.

1:15—2:00 pm
Pause at Abandoned Checkpoint in Tijuana
“Towards a Mutual Recognition”
—Welcome: Los Laureles Community

2:30—3:00 pm
Shuttle transfers to Los Laureles’s Alter Terra Field Station

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STATION 3
Alter Terra Field Station / Los Laureles Canyon, Tijuana, Mexico

At Soccer Field inside Parque Frontera.
The final part of the event will be located in the border community of Los Laureles, an informal settlement flanking the border, where a Community-based NGO, Alter Terra has been performing as a Scientific Station and Community Center measuring environmental degradation impacting this canyon. Alter Terra has conceived Los Laureles as producer of environmental policy and infrastructure, while mobilizing the informal economies and densities here to be the basis for new conceptions of social sustainability.

3:15—3:45 pm
Framing the Issues:
Generating Alternative Models of Environmental Activism

INTRODUCTIONS
Host: Oscar Romo

1. Micro-basins as Neighborhoods: Oscar Romo
2. The Political Economy of Waste, Teddy Cruz

3:45—5:00 pm
The Possible Coexistence of the Natural and the Social

Conversations on the re-thinking of activism and the feasibility of new natural and social contracts.

5:00—5:30 pm
Break/Drinks

Neighborhood Forum: Can an Informal Settlement in Tijuana be the Protector of the Tijuana River Estuary in the US?

Oscar Romo

5:30—6:15 pm
Presentation

Sergio Fajardo, Former mayor of Medellin
New paradigms of Public Infrastructure and civic imagination

6:15—7:00 pm
Forum

Presentations by guest participants and presenters will discuss exemplary urban retrofit projects in Latin American that have tapped into informal settlements to re-think public infrastructure as a cultural ecology. This conversation discerning the settlement as a sustainable urban ecology will unfold as ‘town-hall meeting’ where Tijuana public officials, scholars, activists, artists, community organizers and the public will debate the obstacles that prevent and possible models that could enable informal settlements as new sites of intervention for the rethinking of environmental sustainability.

7:00—7:15 pm
Closing Remarks

7:15—Sunset
Community Dinner

Food offered by Alter Terra and the community of Los Laureles Canyon.

9:00 pm
Shuttles will depart from Los Laureles back to the Tijuana River Estuary Visitor Center in San Diego.

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STATION-MAPS:

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NOTES:
—A field-guide will be distributed at the event with names of participants at each station and performance.
—Audience and participants should carry their passports at all times.
—Audience and participants should wear comfortable shoes for the public walks and public crossing.
—Food served by the communities of participating neighborhoods will be offered free of charge.
—Free transportation will be provided between stations.

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