Southwestern Border Politics will focus on history, contemporary public policies, and political activism in the southwest border region of the United States and the metropolitan region of Ciudad Juarez-El Paso.  The course is built around several fundamental assumptions: First, public policies at the local, state, national and bi-national levels shape our everyday lives, opportunities, and challenges.  Second, policy rhetoric is often different from the policy implementation, that is, the practices of government agencies and their impacts on people.  Third, a necessary but not sufficient condition for changing public policies and practices in political systems that call themselves democracies is civil-society activism--that is, actions of individuals and organizations outside of government who utilize skills, resources, and power to make change.  These resources include organized people power (the power of numbers), money, expertise, and indirect or occasionally distant networks.