9/7/22
By Josh Rubin
I want to talk about what we are calling a Journey for Justice, a car caravan along the full length of the southern border of the United States. It will take place in December and will hit the road in sight of the Gulf of Mexico and reach its end at the Pacific Ocean.
It is a journey of witness. A journey of discovery. We need people to bring their hearts and their stories on this journey, because what we see and who we are are the things that make up the act of witnessing. It may sound like magical thinking to imagine that for us to go and see this fateful border will make a difference. But it is not pure magic. It is sort of like the quantum effects of observation that we hear about in physics, and that no one really understands.
This much is simple. We cannot change what we cannot see. So we begin by opening our eyes to the injustice of our cruel border and begin to stir some particles of justice. We went to Tornillo, where children marched at arms length in the shadow of the wall we will travel beside, and we stirred enough of that quantum dust to bring down its tents and send some children to their families. To Homestead, where the scandals we lit up with our eyes imploded that swampy, moldy disgrace. We stood at the bridge to Matamoros until COVID drive us to take shelter.
The border, its walls, rivers, deserts and mountains, gouges a line of injustice and despair. Some of those reading this live near this strange vortex. Some of us are drawn to it, to face it and deplore it. Together, we will travel its length to try once again what we call the subversive act of seeing. To stir up the particles. To travel in fellowship. To inform our hearts.
To change the world. Particle by particle.