what to do with them.

"It's very empowering to be in a room with 30 officers and know they can't do shit to you," Alex Soto, a Tohono O'odham tribesman and Phoenix group member told me after the action. "It was definitely going to take some force to get us out of there. Force they did not want to use."

Ultimately, the Border Patrol called the Tucson Police Department, and a settlement was negotiated. The demonstrators agreed to leave after 3 1/2 hours. They were arrested, cited for trespassing and disorderly conduct, then released.

Soto, who's working on a degree in American Indian studies at ASU, is originally from Sells, the O'odham Nation's capital, where much of his family still lives. He said this act of "peaceful resistance" was meant toborder using barriers, helicopters, nighttime cameras, and watchtowers has little or no security vetting access to their own offices on a freaking U.S. Air Force base.

ARIZONA BRUSH FIRE

"Hopefully what we did will inspire other O'odhams and other races to take action," said Alex Soto.

I have no doubt that it will. Indeed, in the wake of SB 1070, the recent ban on ethnic studies, and the declared intent of state Senator Russell Pearce to push the Legislature to deny birth certificates to American-citizen children born to undocumented parents, a brush fire of pro-immigrant activism has swept the state.

On May 17, four students pushing for the DREAM Act were arrested after a sit-down strike in the Tucson offices of U.S. Senator John McCain. The DREAM Act is proposed federal legislation