Editor’s note: On Oct. 31, Portlander Nikki Thanos found herself locked to the gate of Portland’s Mexican consulate, part of a worldwide mobilization to draw attention to the struggle in Oaxaca. The international system driving down wages and working life while enriching the very rich in the U.S. and elsewhere is destituting the Mexican poor and creating more Mexican billionaires. (Mexico is now third in the world in billionaires, behind the U.S. and Japan). In Oaxaca, a very poor agrarian state in Southern Mexico, a teacher’s strike sparked a popular, entirely non-violent occupation of the town square by indigenous groups, students, unions, and civil society organizations. The Mexican government has responded militarily, as have all other governments trying to suppress the growing international movement for a social justice globalization. Nikki Thanos is a Portland-based popular educator who has been working to change U.S. military and economic policy in Mexico since 2001. She worked in the Sierra Juarez region of Oaxaca from 2002-2004. Here’s her story:

By Nikki Thanos

On Oct. 31 I found myself locked to the front door of the Mexican consulate in Portland to protest the violent repression against the People’s Popular Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO), a peaceful resistance movement in Oaxaca.

The previous Friday, gunmen linked to the Oaxaca state government shot dead Oaxacan teacher Emilio Alonso Fabian, Mexican demonstrator Esteban Zurita and New York Indymedia journalist/activist Brad Will. Two days later, the same government-backed thugs killed two more protesters. That brings the total death toll since the Oaxacan teachers began their strike-turned-popular-protest to at least nine.

I could’ve been one of those nine. I could’ve been Emilio, Esteban or Brad. If you’re someone who has ever thought change was possible, or believed the world could be a little sweeter, or that the poor deserved just a little more justice — well, you could be dead now, too.

When I lived in Latin America I funneled news from remote places in Latin America to church leaders, student groups and peace activists in the United States. Like Brad, I was documenting and reporting. Like Esteban, I was accompanying unarmed, autonomous popular movements. And like Emilio, I deeply believe in a justice that is inclusive, driven by love, and radically transformational.

But now I live in Portland. How do you build solidarity with a small place in the world most of your neighbors have never even heard of? How do you express your outrage when foreign governments start picking off your friends in places you used to call home? How do you say "ya basta" to the violence perpetrated by the U.S. government, a brand of militarism and imposition that is as convoluted as it is calculated?

As "Oaxaca Vive" dripped from my painted face last week, I renounced my government’s support for the Mexican army, police and paramilitaries. Yes, this is mostly an internal Mexican conflict. Yes, there is corruption in Mexico. Yes, Mexicans have the right to determine their own, autonomous course of development. But let’s not lose sight of the massive power the U.S. wields over Mexico. NAFTA and other U.S.-imposed structural adjustment programs have gridlocked Mexico into a system of economic violence that has devastated regions like Oaxaca.

During the time I worked in Mexico, milk, gas, electricity and transportation subsidies were cut, while prices for what most southern Mexicans produce — corn and beans — plummeted. I still carry the image of the first confirmed Oaxacan "Frankencorn" I documented in 2003 (U.S.-produced genetically modified corn came in under the Agricultural Chapter of NAFTA and wound up contaminating the most precious native Oaxacan varieties in what folks proudly consider the birthplace of corn). As one indigenous Mixteco told me this June in Oaxaca, "to sell my land would be to sell my mother."

All told, some two million Mexican corn farmers have been driven off their land by NAFTA. Just last week, a member of the APPO leadership arrived here in Oregon for his seasonal job in a coastal nursery. Like many Oaxacans, he would prefer to be farming with his family, but instead he finds himself watering floral wreaths at a froufrou plant wholesaler in the U.S. We cried together several times over the last two weeks at the cruel ways life seems to have separated us from the struggles that make us feel most alive. He was the first person I called when I got out of jail last night. He said to me: "You know, the best thing you can do in life is follow what your heart tells you is right. For us, borders don’t exist. Oaxaca is right here." As Martin Luther King said, "We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive."

While those not-so-hidden tensions continue to erupt in Oaxaca, we in the international community vow to bring the story of a victorious people’s struggle home. I truly believe that Portland needs a victory in Oaxaca, and Oaxaca needs Portland to make that victory real — which means we need to get "un chingo" (a whole-lot) more creative, more committed and more direct with our solidarity work. That doesn’t mean everyone needs to run and lockdown at Mexican consulates, but I think a direct action strategy more closely honors the mutually solidarious relationship we are trying to build with the people of Oaxaca. It is time to "up the stakes" of our protests beyond the well-stenciled banners, mass email alerts, and comfortable calls to representatives that have characterized our activities so far. Do something new this week with your bike lock, hoe, paintbrush or keyboard. As you innovate and dream, you’ll find me beside tens of thousands of Mexicans — without all the answers, for sure, but feeling one step closer to justice.

To repeat one of my favorite quotes, the question you should be asking yourself is not so much what I was doing in jail last night, but rather why you were not in jail with me.