'It's ruthless out there': Quilts honor dead migrants to US
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A powerful exhibition of quilts memorializing migrants from Mexico and Central America who have died in the southern Arizona desert in the past 20 years is on display.
Seventeen quilts from the Migrant Quilt Project are hanging at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Organizers say the goal is to move the immigration debate beyond statistics and political sniping, and put the plight of real people in the spotlight.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The quilts are made by volunteers using pieces of the discarded clothing left behind by migrants.
While each quilt is a different design and size, they're all emblazoned with the names of every person who died in the desert that year — or, in the case of unknown people, with the word "desconocido," Spanish for stranger.
The exhibition runs through July 15.