3/15/21

By Josh Rubin

The wall can be a stupid ugly fence.
It can be towering bollards, a word no one ever used until we started erecting them out of steel on the southern border.
It can be guards in green uniforms driving vans up and down dirt paths along a river.
It can be boats with mounted automatic weapons and itchy triggers.
It can be planes with chains that rattle as men and women, heads down, watch their feet take short steps up a gangway.
And it can be a law that calls people on the other side diseased, and removes them, even though nobody thinks it’s true.

The wall empties the pockets of the poor.
The wall separates families.
It kills people. It breaks hearts.
It embarrasses the wall makers, who worry about optics.

The wall cannot stop people from wanting to live.

The wall is the crisis.