Posts
9/20/21
We have managed to momentarily stanch the flow of refugees across the border at Del Río, Texas. We closed the bridge, yellow-ribboned the shallow crossing at the dam where families waded across. Border Patrol agents in vans and on horseback are rounding up families who penetrated the border, outraging and horrifying an America that fears the pictures and numbers coming from the television cameras that have finally been turned on.
9/20/21
We are here for a while and then we are not. We will all suffer for some of that time; rich and poor will both know loss and sorrow. There is no border that can protect us from all of it, and even the comfort of wealth and privilege does not fully shield us.
Image: Melissa Bowen Rubin
9/19/21
In the dark, as state troopers flashed their lights, Border Patrol began gathering up refugees, mostly from Haiti, and busing them, the first phase of a mighty airlift to remind the world that the border will stand and protect us from the chaos and brutality that swirls around like the whirlwind, our unwelcome inheritance.
9/15/21
It is now past time for us to realize that there is little substantial difference between the anti-immigrant policies of the brutal regime of our last president and those of the current regime. This comes about because the goal is largely the same: to discourage people from coming. And although some of the rhetoric takes on a tone that sounds like regret and compassion, the tools that the United States falls back on are largely the same. We rely on layered disincentives.
9/10/21
“Matamoros Pietá” by Melissa Bowen Rubin
In approving language, members of our government have noted in recent days that the activity of Mexico near its southern border is having an impact on the flow of refugees and asylum seekers reaching its northern border, our southern border. That activity, by the way, is brutality and privation. These are the disincentives added to the mix by Mexico, in an apparent effort to demonstrate to people forced to leave their homes that there are worse things than the homelessness, starvation and violence they are fleeing.
9/6/21
For decades now, the policy of the United States has been to appear to discourage migration to our country across the southern border with Mexico. There has been some variation. When anti-immigrant sentiment is at an ebb, and voracious and exploitative businesses hold sway, more migrants are allowed across, under the radar, to satisfy demand. Other times, particularly when fear of foreigners is fanned to flames, both major parties have identified themselves with efforts to resist the flow of humanity, and preserve our stranglehold on prosperity in our hemisphere.
8/31/21
NEW: WITNESS RADIO Ep. 5. "Colombia's Summer of the Patriarch" w/ activist Manuel Rozental of Pueblos en Camino. Camilo Antonio Perez Bustillo interviews Rozental about this summer’s protests in Colombia, excessive police response, & the link to environmental justice.
LISTEN & BECOME A PATRON AT THIS LINK: https://www.patreon.com/posts/colombias-summer-55529170
8/29/21
You probably have not seen the people, from Haiti, and from the devastated countries in Central America, people who have pushed across the border into southern Mexico, who are being met by soldiers with clear shields, using those shields to drive people back. To knock people down. Families and children, ragged from their time held outside Mexico’s southern border, desperately forcing their way against these armed men, clutching at a chance to follow their North Star, which just so happens to be the North Star itself.
8/28/21
#FreeTheChildren Vigil of Light, El Paso, August 28, 2021. Children need #HomesNotDetention #WelcomeWIthDignity #EndChildDetention. Close the emergency intake sites at Fort Bliss and Pecos! Vigil hosted by Witness at the Border Border Network for Human Rights Coalition to End Child Detention- El Paso.
8/24/21
Much of life is lived steering between rocks and hard places. It is starker for those whose choices are fewer. Like those who are choosing each day between the fear and doom of collapsing economies, corruption, and hunger on the one hand; and the long journey roll of the dice that may end in shattered families or as bones drying in a desert across a muddy river.
8/22/21
Barbarians at the gate. No, not outside the gate. Inside.
I suppose there are some folks reading this who live in gated developments. Maybe there is a guard who raises and lowers a bar depending on whether you are recognized. Maybe you have a combination of numbers that you punch into a keypad. Maybe you slide a card into a slot and the door lock clicks or rattles open for you.
8/19/21
If anyone has noticed that I have been quiet lately, my excuse is that I have been spending a few weeks in Mexico. I studied for two of those weeks, to make the Spanish I try to speak a little less awkward. And, of course, I spent my time in places very different from the place I live, and the places I usually inhabit.
I know many of you have gone to Mexico, and have seen some of the sights, heard some of the sounds, tasted and smelled the air of a different world than ours. It is a feeling of extremes. On the one hand, as always I am struck by the similarities that bind us, our daily struggle to keep body and soul together. To raise children. Food, shelter.
