A Rising Movement Against Borders
07 Apr 2005 18:05 GMTAll over Europe, movements came together on April 2nd to demand Freedom of Movement and the Right to Stay and to act against migrant detention centers. UK Reports | More European Reports.
Meanwhile in the US, what better place than Tombstone, Arizona, where gun-toting actors dressed like sheriffs and outlaws keep the nostalgia of the Wild West alive, to be the focal point of yet another vigilante convergence. The Minuteman Project, as it is called, is being organized by two of southern Arizona's most notorious and outspoken border vigilantes: Chris Simcox and Jim Gilchrist. Their plan is to place "observers" every quarter mile along a 20-mile stretch of border from Douglas to the San Pedro River during the month of April.However, their actions will not go unopposed. Legal observers are being trained to watch over and document the Minutemen. Counter protests, vigils and other border activities are also planned to take place throughout April. ( April Unity Events )
In San Diego and Tijuana, on April 2nd, 2005, numerous organizations including the Border Angels, FIST ( Fight Imperialism, Stand Together), the Brown Berets, Code Pink, and the ORGANIC collective held a march and a rally at the US/Mexico border, the site of the construction of the Triple Border Fence. This rally was against HR 418, against the Triple Border Fence and against the Minutemen. Between 50 and 75 people were in attendance for the 1.5 mile march, followed by a rally on both sides of the fence. In addition, plans for borderHack 2.005 were announced for this summer.
As the MinuteMen project in Arizona takes the media spotlight, Congress is quietly trying to roll back 30 years of environmental regulations and create a buffer zone of martial law along the borders of the US. HR 418 recently passed in the House and is currently being fast tracked through the Senate. This law would completely exempt any project to build fences or roads in the region of the borders of the US from all environmental laws. This would include the border with Canada as well as the border with Mexico.
Indymedia Arizona Coverage:
Minuteman Project invades Southern Arizona, highlights complexity of border crisis
Legal Observers to Keep Eye on Minute Man Project
Minutemen Most Likely Exaggerators
Crimes Against Humanity
In Texas, anti-racist activists have been busy shutting down "immigrant hunts" organized by the "Young Conservatives of Texas", in which the fascist youth play at what their allies in Arizona are doing for real:
Austin IMC: Hundreds Protest Racist Immigrant Hunt
North Texas IMC: The Young Conservatives and the Racist Games They Play...
Photos from SD | More Photos | More Photos 2 | Video of SD/TJ Protest | HR 418 - The Real ID Act | SF Indybay Coverage of HR 418 | SF Indybay HR 418 Protest | borderHack 2.005
Google Minutemen News | MSNBC: Minutemen vs. Protesters
The Minutemen's rhetoric is rooted in racism and a twisted interpretation of history and economics. They blame the migrants for everything, then blame the government for not shutting them out, all the while overlooking the impacts of U.S. free trade policies that are forcing people off their land all over Latin America, leaving few options but to come to the country that caused all the problems in the first place.
In San Diego, Speakers decried the loss of life by people trying to cause the border. They read the letter of a mother who lost her son to the border. A representative of the SD Native Plant Society talked about the many endangered plant and animal species that would be destroyed by the fence. Every speaker spoke out about the racism and violence of the MinuteMen project. Enrique Morones of the Border Angels urged everyone to action, saying "We can change this. We can make a stand". Speakers also spoke from the Tijuana side of the fence. Members of the ORGANIC collective announced their plans for borderHack 2.005 this summer.
Recently, the California Coastal Commission rejected a proposal by the Department of Homeland Security to construct the last 5 miles of the Triple Border Fence in San Diego. The Coastal Commission stated that the construction of this fence would destroy miles of sensitive wetlands, home to numerous endangered plant and animal species. HR 418 would allow the Triple Border Fence to be built in San Diego, despite the 100 meter by 5 mile, highway sized swath of environmental destruction it would cause. In addition, this would only cause more migrant people to be forced to cross in the desert, resulting in more deaths. Already over 3,200 migrants have died crossing the US/Mexico border since operation Gatekeeper began in 1994.
As a California State Parks officer said at the protest, "it doesn't matter how many fences we put up, if they want to get through - they'll find a way." Even he understands that the forces driving migration are powerful and that the fence itself will be totally ineffective. As someone who works in the area every day, he says that there isn't much of a need for another fence - as not many people try to cross through that area.
Okay
Joe Boo 08.Apr.2005 11:56
What is amazes me is the fact that you seem to think the flood of illegals should just continue unabated. There is a right way and a wrong way to do shit around here, those who do it the wrong way I really don't care about. Those who take the time to do it the right way, welcome.
Sanity is Admitting Your Problems
tk 08.Apr.2005 21:15
road to sanity: admit that you know nothing
But these protest accomplish NOTHING - or are negative education - people are not so dumb as to think you fix structural problems with do-gooder slogans - Why Don't Activists Say Something??????
If we are in denial about what the conditions are that we organize in, then we are organizing a giant lie. There is no way out for an imperialism fully dependent on oil reserves. Yet our slogans are things like "No blood for oil" and "money for housing, not war". It's as if we want to believe that housing money isn't a direct result of war!
North American Activist Denial and Dishonesty Lead to Demobilization and Genocide:
By Everything is a Weapon/Total Resistance is the Road to Sanity
The numbers of anti-Imperialist resisters in North America have gotten smaller, yet the global resistance grows larger. The situation is more stark globally speaking, but more of the half-hearted US activists stay home. We should be supporting the Iraqi resistance, why? Because the US is never going to leave the region until the oil is gone and all the people in the greater region are subdued or dead. This fate is as true for Palestine and Lebanon as it is for Iran and Pakistan.
This is not only a struggle against cultural annihilation, but to elevate the needs of nations and the environment above that of the needs of oil (the lifeblood of imperialism). It is not only anti-war, it is inherently anti-capitalist. The reality of capitalism is that it aims for limitless production in a limited environment. Oil production, currently at an all-time high of 84 million barrels per day, cannot be pushed much higher and neither can it be sustained indefinitely. Declining US production means a more savage neo-liberal ravaging of the third world for oil resources.
The relationship between industrialized and developing or indigenous nations has always been that of predator and prey. The first world nations have cannibalized their own endowment of resources and are now dependent upon external sources to fuel their economies. Through debt, coup, and outright invasion, the interwoven military-industrial-finance complex has deliberately held developing and indigenous populations in check, so that they might not apply their resources to their own development.
This "final-solution" stage of capitalism is a self-perpetuating process in which growth equals survival for the capitalist paradigm. Every imperialist conflict the West has engaged in has this terrible need at the root of it - culminating in the current war in Central Asia (Afghanistan, Iraq, soon to be Iran) Oil is transportation, industrial agriculture, plastics, medicines, asphalt, cosmetics... everything we produce, consume, buy, and throw away - everything that differentiates the first world from it's victims. If we oppose the war, we cannot ignore that our lifestyle demands a constant flow of wealth from the impoverished to the wealthy nations, and war is the means to achieve this.
The level of material wealth that America expropriates from the rest of the planet cannot feasibly be shared by other developing powers. American oil consumption stands at fully a quarter of world use, though it has only 5% of the world's population. Emerging industrial nations seeking to attain the per-capita oil use of the US will inevitably create conflict over diminishing resources. The fastest growing economy on the planet is China, whose oil consumption is growing at a similar rate. For China's one billion people to enjoy the same per-capita oil use would require a doubling of world oil production. That is physically impossible, equivalent to eight additional Saudi Arabias pumping oil at maximum capacity. The capitalist dream of unlimited growth is on a collision course with the ecological limitations of the planet, and competition for those diminishing resources is the catalyst for a new World War.
The current conflict is being waged with a morbid indifference to public opinion and fiscal sanity. The oil reserves that will sustain American consumption in the coming decades are being contested in nationalist struggles of every character. Resistance to imperialism is flourishing in every corner of the world. However, it is not the resolution of individual injustices but the entire economic order of things that is at stake as sovereign peoples rise up and assert that their land and its wealth exist for their benefit, not their exploitation.
Venezuela has begun to take the notion of a revolution seriously. The measures being taken are among the most inspiring yet performed anywhere in history. The barrios are alight with massive literacy campaigns, health clinics sprouting up everywhere, new universities built for the entire region. The military has started to carry out an actual land reform process, albeit slowly. How to defend all of this? Venezuela has begun training citizens basic military self-defence maneuvers, as the American hostility to the revolution grows deeper every day. Venezuela is more dangerous to the Empire than any other country in the world: democratic, successful, advancing the conditions of the people, this process is providing "the threat of a good example"-and Venezuela is not naïve about the need to defend itself.
Record global oil prices continue to buoy the programs of social housing, hyper-democracy and land redistribution. These prices will never drop again, thus meaning the outright destruction of the revolution will only grow on the priority list for the Pentagon-all the more now that the revolution has declared itself socialist, placing the Bolivarians and Hugo Chavez at the front of global alternatives.
Meanwhile, "our" anti-war movement continues to play body count: We count the American GI's in the morgue, and count the civilians who are in the streets. While the rest of the world, through resistance and revolutionary upsurge, are able to demonstrate an alternative vision, we can't even articulate one. We don't speak here of a need for rigid blueprints, but rather to think about the state of global energy resources so as to allow us to think realistically about a new alternative. If we are in denial about what the conditions are that we organize in, then we are organizing a giant lie. There is no way out for an imperialism fully dependent on oil reserves. Yet our slogans are things like "No blood for oil" and "money for housing, not war". It's as if we want to believe that housing money isn't a direct result of war!
When oil pipelines are attacked in Iraq by resistance fighters, when the Niger Delta-located Ijaw people declare all Shell refinery employees military targets, these people show an understanding of two things: one that they understand what drives the assault on all people throughout the world, from the Arctic to the Equator. Two: that they see no real ally in the first world, what with our entire program a giant basic lie.
There is no return to the life of mass consumption of the American Dream. This war is a Wolfowitzian stalling tactic, and it's working. What's our alternative? When our mass movement declares "money for homes not bombs", the population of both the US and the rest of the world can safely ignore us, knowing as they do we are locked in a massive time warp. Further, this more than anything else is why the numbers of the demonstrators in the streets dwindled to embarrassingly low levels in many cities this "second anniversary". We should not celebrate these dates as if we were engaged to the war!
A few months ago, on the day that George W Bush entered Canadian soil on Nov 30, ironically five years to the day after the Battle of Seattle, a small, shadowy group attempted to blow up Hydro Quebec power lines that supplied energy to New York state, from dams that were built on Indian land in James Bay. The Initiative de Resistance Internationaliste (IRI) declared they did not want the weight of the resistance to imperialism to fall on the shoulders of the "noble Iraqi people, the Colombians and the Palestinians". The action was a failure, garnering little to no attention except from the same people who want to impose smart card national ID's on us all.
Neither did the act inspire anything because the North American anti-war movement is frightfully passive and cowed. So long as our movement continues to leave the struggle to the shoulders of all the rest of the world and the colonies within, this is inevitable. We need to stop lying, start strategizing about what ways might bring down imperialism on a global level-before imperialism brings down us all. And to do that, we must state we don't know what to do, because this situation has never been seen before.
We need to wrap our collective heads around exactly why it is impossible, completely unthinkable and a total non-starter to imagine street protests "forcing" a dwindling energy imperialist monster into a retreat. You can't simply talk a tiger into vegetarianism; you have to cage it or kill it. And we are doing so basically without arms. Therefore we must be good at learning. Let's be as serious and as humble as we can: We know nothing, that's the first piece of profound knowledge of our movement on our path to freedom.
When we have a strategy that really speaks to the systemic, terminal crisis that late exterminist imperialism is taking us all into, when we articulate this in a way that invites the people of both North America and the rest of the enslaved planet to fight this petroleum hydra and all the heads, by instead going after the heart of the beast, then more than a mere few windows at a Starbucks will quake and shatter; when the people who own this world as a part of it see a way out that actually relates to what they know in their very soul, the piddly explosions of a few hydro towers will be mere amusement.
The explosions you hear will be not of towers, but of a new dawn awakening. In other words, it will not be "money for schools, not bombs!" but an education itself that explodes through our continuing hypocrisy. We need to, in a word, trust; Trust the population to handle the truth. If we can't, then all we have done is for naught.
personally like to see borders understood a little better
piet 12.Apr.2005 21:21
hint/clue/crux:
the important ones are vertical/radial, NOT lateral;
the latter are mere surface phenoms, superficial,
more often than not arbitrarily drawn
like only absentee big shots can
and more and more frequently hotly contested;
that tells you a deep rethink is in order;
I've got just that very think for you
free of charge but you have to be ready
for some highly unscheduled surfage:
anmerkung zur uebersetzung auf deutsch / comment on german translation
no-racism.net 15.Apr.2005 18:06
Across the wall between San Diego and Tijuana
(en) there are some mistakes in the german translation. we published this article with some corrections on no-racism.net, where u can also find background information about the Minuteman Project in german, reports on furhter noborder-protests and more.
(de) bei der übersetzung sind einige fehler passiert. wir haben den artikel ueberarbeitet und auf no-racism.net veroeffentlicht. ihr findet dort auch hintergrundinformation zu den minutemen auf deutsch, sowie informationen über weitere noborder-Proteste und mehr.
- Eine wachsende Bewegung gegen Grenzen
- Wacht an der Grenze (zu den MinuteMen)
- noborder Protests / Grenzcamps
hier noch mal die links (anmerkung zur uebersetzung auf deutsch)
no-racism.net 15.Apr.2005 18:22
- Eine wachsende Bewegung gegen Grenzen:
http://no-racism.net/article/1184 
http://no-racism.net/article/1170
http://no-racism.net/rubrik/35
- Wacht an der Grenze (zu den MinuteMen):
- noborder Protests / Grenzcamps:
Indybay Coverage of AZ delegation from San Francisco
SF2AZ 20.Apr.2005 20:03
Indybay in San Francisco has a great article on the delegation that drove all the way to Arizona, last-minute to meet with the communities in AZ and organize against racism and hatred. Check it out:
http://www.indybay.org/immigrant/