Helping with Bronze Shoes

Aimee came over to my house this afternoon to leave me some shoes for the ongoing Bronze Shoes Installation, along with some Artist Statements, some wire, some boxes, and some laminated statements to hang with the shoes. "These bronze shoes represent children separated by ICE. Shoes serve as a reminder to all of us, and to the families, that the children are precious and we will not forget them." 

I'm helping her prepare boxes of shoes for mailing. She is learning more about the process of making the shoes more bronze-like, more stable in any weather, more useful. So far there have been eleven requests for shoes, three of them from Blippers. I think she could have prepared the shoes for mailing in less time than it took her to deliver them to me and explain how she's doing it, but we enjoyed spending time together and talking about Occupy ICE, photography (her art degree is in photography), and strategies for change. One unpleasant surprise is that it can cost more than $35 to mail a box of shoes within the continental USA. That leads us to wonder about the best possible use of resources. Would it be better for people to donate to Pueblo Sin Fronteras instead of paying for shoes to be mailed to them? Or will the shoes help to make people aware of the needs of the asylum-seekers? There are many factors to consider....