JUST AS A WALL that keeps the poor in place in our own cities and towns and marks the divide where law enforcement begins caring a whole lot more about property and people, so do the borders operate in our world. This entrenched and justified divide is a crime in and of itself. All the rest that follows is fallout.
WE KNEW THAT THERE WOULD BE a faction of people so wed to their own racist thought patterns they would be incapable of dealing with the fact that a non-white person was president of the US. I guess I thought they’d be a bit more honest about it.
THE NATIVIST LOBBY HAS INSINUATED ITSELF into the media dialogue on immigration to all our detriment. They create a false boogeyman of danger and parasitism, and promote the impression that the only response is a harsh, punitive one doled out in cuffs or a cell. The results of the February Bellingham raids are in, and put the lie to this screech of extremist thought.
THE DIALOGUE ON IMMIGRATION has, historically, been contentious and cyclical. There are times when hysteria peaks, and rational thought struggles to enter the national dialogue. And then, there are moments the truth breaches the surface and shines brightly. This week is one of those moments.
SOMETIMES I FIND IT DIFFICULT to advocate at length for things that seem common sense. I don’t know what to say to convince people that everyone should have air, or water, or love, or freedom of movement or a chance to give back to that which has nurtured them. I am never quite sure how to meet those who would oppose these things, either.
In the modern world, borders do not separate families, nor commerce, nor soldiers, nor bank accounts and their owners. And NAFTA has allowed Mexico’s corn crop to be so devalued that Mexico—the land where the plant was born roughly 5,000 years ago—now imports corn, forcing streams of campesinos to migrate north…where we lock them up.
THIS IS NOT the first time in history that those with power looking only toward their own profit margin have unwittingly led their hand to disastrous effects on larger populations’ basic ability to live.
THE TELESCREENS WORK ONLY IN ONE DIRECTION. The conversations are filtered, edited, neutered for your own protection. Even when we discuss such pivotal and worldshaking events as this economic malfunction we are rarely talking without misdirection. So much dialogue spat out in the service of maintaining so much division. It’s time to look to the building blocks of these quaking towers and reconfigure the entire equation.
LAW OUGHT TO MATCH IDEAL. If Law means anything at all, it is because it is a symbol of Truth. On this week’s Immigration Wire, we examine approaches to immigration that do nothing to synchronize real-life America with the America in songs and storybooks.
HERE IS THIS WEEK’S VIDEO complement to the TMC blog I wrote Thursday. Articles covered include the many actions being taken across the nation as people demand movement on this issue. Also, I speak on why we need immigration reform and now. There will be a YouTube version, but from now on there will be a window of time after I post videos on the XOLAGRAFIK site.
I’VE SETUP A GROUP BLOG where anyone can join as an Author. It’s called Signs of the Times, and its purpose is simply to collect short, simple anecdotal stories, jottings, blurbs, fotos, fears, thoughts, hopes, sightings, single sentences (or more) about symptoms of the collapsing economy, and in one place.
ALL OVER THE NATION, communities are clamoring to be heard. In this worsening economic landscape, migrant communities are being terrorized by violent raids, families are destabilized, wage earners are jailed or detained, and xenophobic pundits continue to fuel a rising wave of hate crimes against Latinos. The stakes could not be any higher.
WE ALL LOOK TO THE NEW SEASON of politics with hope and with relief and many of us, joy. But as much as we want to simply admire the new bloom and leaf and ray of sun, let us remember (and Never Forget) that you do not plant a garden in active rot if you want a healthy harvest.
ONE OF THE THINGS that hit me in a “real” place about bush—aside from my protesting him and getting locked up over it—was watching him gut programs like the one that helped local teenage girls who were pregnant and needed housing. A fire lit in me that day that threatened to eat my heart alive.
IT IS AS IF WE GET COMFORTABLE and forget our own histories. The tales of struggle and dreaming and working and persecution—is this not America? Are these not our stories? Would we throw our own past into prison?
House of Nezua
the XOLAGRAFIK theater!
