Mark Adams
US Coordinator of Frontera Cristo
Mark Adams is a Presbyterian Church (USA) mission co-worker and the US Coordinator of Frontera Cristo. Mark along with his wife Miriam are highly respected organizers in the Agua Prieta/Douglas border region where they along with their partners have helped promote church development, permaculture, health ministries, and community and economic development. Recognizing the potentially divisive issues surrounding the border and immigration, Mark and Miriam help communities in the United States and Mexico respond positively and faithfully to these challenges.
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US Coordinator of Frontera Cristo
Alyson Ball spends her winters in Green Valley, Arizona, is a member of Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans, and is this year’s Chair of the Alliance4Action Immigration Action Group. In Charlottesville, Virginia she is on the Community Development Committee of the IRC which resettles about 200 refugees each year. Having studied US Immigration for over five years, Alyson is eager to provide the general public with an overview of this important topic.
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Activist
Jonathan Best has been playing music for most of his life. He learned the finer points of gospel music as he toured the Pentecostal churches of New York City and the south with The Elect Lady Evangelist Shirley Davis. His blues and R&B leanings also landed him gigs with bands such as The Drifters and The Coasters. He also performed with various Latin bands, a synthesis which brought him together with David Byrne (Talking Heads) for a seven month world tour and the feature film Between the Teeth.
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Musician
Davíd Carrasco
Professor, Harvard University, Study of Latin America and Department of Anthropology
Professor of the Study of Latin America at Harvard University, and member of the faculty of Harvard Divinity School Department of Anthropology
https://hds.harvard.edu/people/dav%C3%ADd-carrasco
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Professor, Harvard University, Study of Latin America and Department of Anthropology
Will Clipman
Percussionist
Will Clipman played his first professional gig at fourteen, and since then has mastered a pan-global palette of over one hundred percussion instruments in addition to the traditional drum set. Will is a seven-time GRAMMY® Nominee, and has won many awards. He has recorded over sixty albums. In addition to his solo work, Will performs with R. Carlos Nakai and William Eaton, among many other internationally-acclaimed artists.
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Percussionist
Margo Cowan
Community Leader and Humanitarian Attorney
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Community Leader and Humanitarian Attorney
Nellie Jo David
Co-founder, O’odham Anti Border Collective
Nellie Jo David works to strengthen indigenous rights and autonomy on the imposed U.S./Mexico borderlands intersecting the Tohono O’odham Nation. Nellie is co-founder of the O’odham Anti Border Collective, a grassroots group dedicated to maintaining connections despite colonial barriers. She is from Ajo, Arizona, traditionally Hia-Ced O’odham territory, just west of the Tohono O’odham reservation, north of Mexico. Nellie was inspired to raise awareness on border issues upon witnessing the increased militarization of her community. Nellie obtained her J.D. with a certificate in indigenous law and policy from Michigan State University in 2014. She is currently working on her SJD at the University of Arizona in the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program.
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Co-founder, O’odham Anti Border Collective
Betsy Finley
Educator and Photographer
Betsy Finley loves outdoor adventures that include kayaking on the Great Lakes, wilderness camping in Tennessee , and hiking in the woods. Photography became a natural part of documenting her adventures.However, the photos didn’t initially capture the essence or the beauty of the place. She has worked to fine tune her photographic abilities over the last several years by becoming a member of the Cuyahoga Valley Photographic Society. She has won awards and has had photos in the CVNP annual calendar each year since 2011. She developed an interest in Zentangle designs as another way to document her adventures and love of the natural world. This past year she has focused on the creation of mandalas as part of her spiritual journey.
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Educator and Photographer
Gail Frank is founder of Creative Journeys, a writing institute for those who write or want to. She has taught writing workshops in Oregon, Arizona, and Michigan for the past 15 years. A newspaper columnist for 12 years, Frank, who now lives 40 miles from the U.S./Mexico border writes stories of the human condition in our borderlands. She is a Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritan whose mission is to offer humanitarian aid to migrants in the Arizona-Sonora borderlands.
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Writer
Susan Hill
Art Museum Docent
Susan has been a docent since 2011. After working the visitor service desk and doing tours for several years, she has recently been concentrating on art talks and loving it.
Susan has been married for 55 years and has four daughters. She is an ordained United Methodist minister and served churches and hospitals for 20 years. Presently she facilitates various programs at The Good Shepherd United Church of Christ in Sahuarita, AZ. After retirement, she and her husband bought an RV and have traveled most of the country in it. In addition to art talks, Susan’s hobbies include knitting, cooking and reading murder mysteries.
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Art Museum Docent
Ellie Hutchison is the founding director of la Phoenikera Writers' Guild (laPWG). She brings a wealth of experience as an educator, community collaborator, writer, arts-rooted organizer, and theologian who earned her B.A. in English and M.Ed. in Special Education from Arcadia University. As a recent graduate of the M.A.R.–Public Leadership program at United Lutheran Seminary, her current scholarship investigated interfaith engagement and activism through the arts and humanities. Ellie spent 10 years as a teaching artist and poet throughout the Philadelphia School District, with Native youth in Arizona, and youth diagnosed with special needs. Ellie is committed to building bridges with communities through the lens of womxnist liberation and black theology.
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Writer
Mary Martin
Mission San Xavier del Bac Docent
Mary Martin fell in love with southern Arizona and with the San Xavier Mission on her first visit in 1999. In 2013 she answered a newspaper ad to become a docent at the mission and has been sharing
her knowledge with visitors ever since. She practiced law in Minnesota for more than 30 years before retiring to Arizona. She has visited five of the Kino Missions and a number of the Spanish Missions in California.
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Mission San Xavier del Bac Docent
Shura Wallin
founding Co-founder, Green Valley/Sahuarita Samaritans.
Shura Wallin has served with Planned Parenthood and the Population Council in New York, and coordinated food programs for the homeless in Berkeley, CA where, in 1996 she was selected as The Outstanding Woman of the Year by the Berkeley Commission on the Status of Women. After retiring in 2000, she became involved with Humane Borders, a humanitarian group that puts water tanks in areas with significant migrant traffic. She began to realize the enormity of the problem of migration and teamed up with Tucson Samaritans, eventually co-founding the Green Valley/Sahuarita Samaritans.
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founding Co-founder, Green Valley/Sahuarita Samaritans.
Randy Mayer
Senior Pastor, The Good Shepherd UCC
Rev. Dr. Randy J. Mayer is an ordained United Church of Christ minister. Deeply influenced by his time studying and living in Latin America, Randy and his family moved to the Borderlands 19 years ago so he could serve as Senior Minister of the Good Shepherd United Church of Christ in Sahuarita, Arizona—35 miles from the US/Mexico border. As immigration and border issues have become more and more intense, Randy and his congregation have been key leaders of many of the humanitarian groups (Humane Borders, No Mas Muertes, and Green Valley/Sahuarita Samaritans) that give food water and medical care to migrants in the desert---for no one should be dying in our deserts.
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Senior Pastor, The Good Shepherd UCC
Dan Millis
Borderlands program manager, Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter
Sierra Club
Dan Millis is the borderlands program manager for the Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter. Based in Tucson, Arizona, Dan and his program have been fighting border walls since George W. Bush was building them in 2007 and 2008.
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Borderlands program manager, Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter
Sierra Club
Lisa Otey
Award-winning musician and songwriter
Diane Van Deurzen and Lisa Otey are award-winning musicians and songwriters who perform around the world at festivals, clubs and concert halls. They offer different kinds of songwriting workshops each year at Common Ground on the Border.
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Award-winning musician and songwriter
Jesse Palidofsky
Musician
Jesse Palidofsky has led Music and Healing workshops in a wide variety of settings, including for: Common Ground on the Hill; the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization; the Association of Professional Chaplains annual conference, and the National Association of Catholic Chaplains.. Over the last three decades Jesse has utilized music for healing in hospital emergency rooms, in home hospice settings, with people with dementia, with pediatric oncology patients as well as for inmates in maximum security prisons in Kansas and Oregon.
Azalea City Recording artist Jesse Palidofsky has won numerous songwriting awards for his most recent CD "Dancing Toward the Light". His newly envisioned “America the Beautiful: 2020” video, for which he composed three new verses, has received over 47,000 views on Youtube. His latest album of original compositions, “Our Better Angels”, will be released early in 2021.
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Musician
Ted Ramirez
Artist-In-Residence at Tubac Presidio Park, Tubac, Arizona.
The music of Ted Ramirez is a celebration of the Southwest. His repertoire is pure and authentic, consisting of original songs, and Mexican and American folk songs and stories. Ted has received numerous culture preservation awards, including the “Arizona Culture Keeper” award and the Historical Commission Award. He is “Tucson’s Official Troubadour” as declared by the Tucson Mayor and Council in 2001 and is the Artist-In-Residence at the Tubac Presidio Park in Tubac, Arizona.
https://www.tedramirez.com/
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Artist-In-Residence at Tubac Presidio Park, Tubac, Arizona.
Peter D. Ronstadt
Musician
Peter Dalton Ronstadt, Petie, is a fifth generation Ronstadt in Tucson. Son of late Michael J Ronstadt, nephew of Linda Ronstadt, and great grandson of Federico Jose Maria Ronstadt. He plays the bass, guitar, banjo, tuba, and sings. He is one of the Ronstadts in Ronstadt Brothers (formerly Ronstadt Generations) with his older brother Michael G Ronstadt. He is a recording engineer and producer working out of LandMark Sound Recorders which he co-owns and operates with Sam Eagon. While in Tucson he performs locally with a cast of amazing Tucsonans (and displaced Tucsonans) Alex Flores, Bobby Ronstadt, Katie Arellano, Sam Eagon, Bryan Matyjasik, Ryan Alfred, Matt Roland, Michael P Nordberg, Aaron Emery, Sabra Faulk, Marshall Jones, Alvin Blaine, among many others, as well as a solo artist. He has a beautiful wife, Jackie, and daughter, Annabelle. He is a Tucsonan, through and through.
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Musician
Carol St. John
Writer and Artist
Carol Egmont St. John is a veteran of the classroom.She has taught for over thirty years in classrooms and workshops, and in a variety of contexts. Her life’s work has had many faces: writer, columnist, artist and illustrator, children’s theater director, playwright, and mother of five; but above all she describes herself as a teacher. This is her fifth year at Common Ground; her former classes included writing, painting, and sculpture.
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Writer and Artist
Diane Van Deurzen
Award-winning musician and songwriter
Diane Van Deurzen and Lisa Otey are award-winning musicians and songwriters who perform around the world at festivals, clubs and concert halls. They offer different kinds of songwriting workshops each year at Common Ground on the Border.
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Award-winning musician and songwriter
Suzy Webber is an artist, musician and Spanish teacher who has studied, exhibited and taught art throughout her life. She has painted murals in Honduras, created fabric art for a recording studio in Hawaii and led textile art workshops in Guatemala and Nicaragua. She is inspired by the bold exuberant colors of the southwest and Central America and works in a variety of media, including digital and textile art, and acrylic painting. Suzy embraces the intuitive abstract process and is especially intrigued with the creative flexibility of acrylic paint, which encourages experimentation, layering and starting over, acts which can carry over to the way we create our lives.
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Artist
