We're at the border, to protest yet
another federal stupidity.
Behind the stage is the “new and
improved” wall marking New Mexico's border with Old Mexico. We
need no such wall, of course. Deer, mountain lions, and javelina
need no such wall. The land looks the same on both sides, except
that we've messed up our side.
This wall will waste money and our
scarce water, and inhibit biological diversity – without really
affecting drug trafficking. Drug cartels got plenty of ladders and
digging tools. Animals don't.
This wall placates Donald Trump's ego.
Along with DACA gamesmanship and separating families at the border,
it symbolizes our arrogance – and indifference to others'
suffering.
The guitars and activism recall the
1960's. Then as now, spirited people fought for truths denied by the
Washington elite.
It's different too. A white drone
flies above us. I can see it's single eye. I resist the impulse to
raise an impolite finger, assuming it's [U.S.] federal, though likely
it belongs to Mexican TV.
And there are many older folks. I
rarely saw that in the 1960's. “Don't Trust Anyone over 30!”
Now I've more than doubled 30. Most importantly, our community
doesn't view us as traitors or pariahs for our anti-wall beliefs.
Amazingly, three days before the
Primary, candidates Steve Fischmann, Billy Garrett, Bill McCamley,
and Garrett VeneKlasen are here. They didn't come into the desert
for votes. The few hundred here have likely voted for them already.
Nor did they come for the waters. They came because, like us, they
care. They're moved and saddened by the mistreatment of others –
and by our leaders' contempt for nature.
It's no huge thing, to have driven to
this lonely spot in the desert on a very hot day in June. I have no
illusion that today will have much effect; but we need to be here.
(In 1966, U.S. withdrawal from 'Nam seemed unlikely.)
People speak, movingly and not too
long. People play music and sing and dance.
City Councilor Gabe Vasquez speaks.
Born in Juarez, highly articulate and hard-working, he's a living
refutation of the kind of ethnic prejudice that energizes Trump &
Co.
 |
| At the Border - After the Walk |
The organizers give everyone a flower
to leave on the wall. We walk several hundred yards west to where
construction of the new wall is in progress. It's a good walk.
Thought-provoking. Moving, particularly when folks start singing
“This Land Is my Land.” I greet the Mexican Police, and wave,
and they wave back. Mexican reporters interview people.
Standing where this wall is being
built, I imagine some day placing a small section of it beside the
unprepossessing chunk of concrete (now serving as a doorstop) that
was once part of the Berlin Wall. I hope that day comes soon.
-30-
 |
| At the Border - After the Walk II |
[I intentionally left my camera at home -- but did finally shoot a couple of images with the cell-phone, just before we left. More photos -- not mine -- are available through a link in the next paragraph.]
[Here are links to: a source for additional information and news articles, Molly Molloy's photographs from the protest described in the column, a a Wa Po story on a judge calling the separation of families procedure "inhumane", "brutal", and "offensive," an Albuquerque Journal story on biologists' concerns about how the brder wall will affect wildliferder-wall-worries-wildlife-biologists.html, and a column pointing out thatwomen applying for asylum have no idea where their kids are.]
[One of the organizers, SWEC Founder and Director Kevin Bixby, penned this summary of the protest:
More than 400 people came out in the heat on Saturday to protest the new 20 miles of bollard wall going up west of Santa Teresa, NM. It was a powerful and moving event. Although mostly ignored by the media, it was important and needed to be done. You can see photos on SWEC's FB page as well as our partners'.
We returned yesterday for a closer inspection of construction progress. By my calculations, about 3.5-4 miles have been completed, in three distinct segments (both ends, and 2.2 middle section). Assuming they started construction April 9, and have worked about 48 days since (they work on Saturdays), and if my math is correct, they are progressing at the rate of up to one mile every two weeks, which means they should finish in about 32 weeks/8 months, or by the end of January, 2019. I expect the pace of construction will pick up now that staging is over and the kinks have been worked out. It seems pretty assembly line at this point. But, there is still time to document wildlife presence and get an injunction.
[One of the organizers, SWEC Founder and Director Kevin Bixby, penned this summary of the protest:
More than 400 people came out in the heat on Saturday to protest the new 20 miles of bollard wall going up west of Santa Teresa, NM. It was a powerful and moving event. Although mostly ignored by the media, it was important and needed to be done. You can see photos on SWEC's FB page as well as our partners'.
We returned yesterday for a closer inspection of construction progress. By my calculations, about 3.5-4 miles have been completed, in three distinct segments (both ends, and 2.2 middle section). Assuming they started construction April 9, and have worked about 48 days since (they work on Saturdays), and if my math is correct, they are progressing at the rate of up to one mile every two weeks, which means they should finish in about 32 weeks/8 months, or by the end of January, 2019. I expect the pace of construction will pick up now that staging is over and the kinks have been worked out. It seems pretty assembly line at this point. But, there is still time to document wildlife presence and get an injunction.
-- Kevin Bixby, Executive Director Southwest Environmental Center 275 North Main Street Las Cruces, NM 88001 wildmesquite.org ]
A note from a friend, Roberto Reveles:
We live at a time and place that challenges all of us, regardless of partisan label, religious affiliation or humanist ideals.
We began today’s Board of Supervisors meeting by publicly pledging fealty to a flag representative of our nation’s governing principles, followed by a call invoking a higher power for guidance to align those governing principles with a presumed belief in a common moral code.
And yet despite these pledges and invocations, there is in this vicinity and at this time a crisis of immense and unprecedented moral proportions occurring within our community.
In just the last month approximately 658 immigrant children, some 100 of them below age 4, have been separated from their parents through a new draconian policy announced by our federal government.
Here in Arizona and Florence, this morning some 60-plus innocent children, from age 1 to 10 are waking up in a detention cell, not knowing where their parents are and when, if ever, they will again see their parents.
This is an unprecedented crisis that challenges and questions how much we are truly committed to governing based on moral principles. Moral principles that are reflected in faith-based texts represented in our community: One text. "You shall not pervert the justice due an alien or an orphan.” Another biblical truism, “as much as you have done to one of these my little brothers, you have done that to me.”
I’m asking believers and non-believers to not succumb to the biblical admonition, that “Cursed is the man who withholds justice from the alien, the fatherless or the widow.”
Beyond religious texts and principles, civically, our global neighbors speaking through the United Nations human rights office, this week called on our government to immediately halt this inhumane policy, declaring that "The use of immigration detention and family separation as a deterrent runs counter to human rights standards and principles,"
I implore fellow Americans, to truly live by our professed biblical and patriotic teachings. Act today in opposition to this newly imposed immoral policy that is separating children from their parents as their immigration proceedings are taking place. Contact your representatives in the state legislature and in Congress to end this nightmarish treatment of helpless children.
We live at a time and place that challenges all of us, regardless of partisan label, religious affiliation or humanist ideals.
We began today’s Board of Supervisors meeting by publicly pledging fealty to a flag representative of our nation’s governing principles, followed by a call invoking a higher power for guidance to align those governing principles with a presumed belief in a common moral code.
And yet despite these pledges and invocations, there is in this vicinity and at this time a crisis of immense and unprecedented moral proportions occurring within our community.
In just the last month approximately 658 immigrant children, some 100 of them below age 4, have been separated from their parents through a new draconian policy announced by our federal government.
Here in Arizona and Florence, this morning some 60-plus innocent children, from age 1 to 10 are waking up in a detention cell, not knowing where their parents are and when, if ever, they will again see their parents.
This is an unprecedented crisis that challenges and questions how much we are truly committed to governing based on moral principles. Moral principles that are reflected in faith-based texts represented in our community: One text. "You shall not pervert the justice due an alien or an orphan.” Another biblical truism, “as much as you have done to one of these my little brothers, you have done that to me.”
I’m asking believers and non-believers to not succumb to the biblical admonition, that “Cursed is the man who withholds justice from the alien, the fatherless or the widow.”
Beyond religious texts and principles, civically, our global neighbors speaking through the United Nations human rights office, this week called on our government to immediately halt this inhumane policy, declaring that "The use of immigration detention and family separation as a deterrent runs counter to human rights standards and principles,"
I implore fellow Americans, to truly live by our professed biblical and patriotic teachings. Act today in opposition to this newly imposed immoral policy that is separating children from their parents as their immigration proceedings are taking place. Contact your representatives in the state legislature and in Congress to end this nightmarish treatment of helpless children.
Roberto A. Reveles
6/6/2018
[By contrast, here's a column by one of the few around here who think we need a bigger, better border wallclearly-define-what-ours/575330002/.
She seems to have misunderstood Robert Frost's poem, "Mending the Wall," in which he notes, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall" -- the something being, perhaps, nature or time or karma -- and portrays a crusty neighbor quoting his father's wisdom that "Good fences make good neighbors." Many, as she does, have taken that repeated line to be a precept the poet shares; but he doesn't. In any case, she's equally off-base with regard to the facts. Her basic argument seems to be that we need the wall to know what belongs to us and what belongs to someone else; but that's obviously a goal we can meet without closing off animals' ability to cross the border. And without spending quite such a vast amount of money. And I'll be interested to see whether, in her view, we also "need" to punish border-crossers, even those seeking asylum, inhumanely by separating families as we've recently been doing. ]
6/6/2018
[By contrast, here's a column by one of the few around here who think we need a bigger, better border wallclearly-define-what-ours/575330002/.
She seems to have misunderstood Robert Frost's poem, "Mending the Wall," in which he notes, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall" -- the something being, perhaps, nature or time or karma -- and portrays a crusty neighbor quoting his father's wisdom that "Good fences make good neighbors." Many, as she does, have taken that repeated line to be a precept the poet shares; but he doesn't. In any case, she's equally off-base with regard to the facts. Her basic argument seems to be that we need the wall to know what belongs to us and what belongs to someone else; but that's obviously a goal we can meet without closing off animals' ability to cross the border. And without spending quite such a vast amount of money. And I'll be interested to see whether, in her view, we also "need" to punish border-crossers, even those seeking asylum, inhumanely by separating families as we've recently been doing. ]
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