Sunday I went with a friend, Alice, to a demonstration in Naco, AZ . It was a protest against the wall that is being built across the desert here in southeastern Arizona. The wall is very tall and made of steel panels and struts with a fine wire mesh panel at the top. It bisects the desert, it splits the wide expanse of open space valleys and up close it is an affront to my belief in freedom. It was built and is being built to keep people coming into the US from south of the border.

I stood near the wall at a place where the builders left an opening, a window with bars, where I could see a US border marker on the other side. It has to be on the other side because the wall cannot be built on Mexican land.

They are building this wall with no environmental review. All rights have been waived so that this metal scar, this barrier can be built without problems, without demonstrations. All who get in the way are threatened with arrest. The border has become militarized, a military zone. No longer a border between countries…it has become a place where people are arrested and killed. These people trying to cross are not terrorists, most are just wanting to come to the US to get jobs to support themselves and their families. Some are political refugees. Of course not all are good people…they never are. But that is not the point. The point is that we are no longer a symbol of freedom and justice. We’ve become an iron fist, an iron wall.

I listened to many speakers and one man with a wonderful voice who sang and played the guitar. One woman, a native American…she called herself ‘one of the original people’…spoke about the problems her people, the O’Odham, are having with the government and the wall. Their land historically is on both sides of the border…Mexico and the US. They have always walked across the border to their villages in Mexico for ceremonies and now they will not be allowed to do so without passports and they will have to go through gates in the wall being built across their land without their consent. It’s awful. What have we become? We have no respect, no appreciation for others and for ourselves.

We were watched by the Border Patrol, men sitting in their SUVs waiting while we stood and listened to speakers and put up signs. We waited for residents from the other side of the wall, in Naco Mexico, to greet us through the window but they never showed up. I don’t know why. It was a peaceful demonstration and the bottom line is that the wall is going to continue to be built…right now there is no political will to change what is going on. We will have to wait for the next administration before we can start working to have this wall torn down, demolished as it should be, as all walls eventually are destroyed. We humans are not built for walls. We are essentially built for freedom and love. This wall shows another side of us humans, a dark side, a side of anger and greed and destruction. As I stood looking at this wall, at the blue sky above, at a WALL stretching both ways as far as I could see, I felt that this cannot continue. That somehow I need to do something, to participate in some way to get this wall down. It ’s the least I can do for my country.

For more information go to … coming.

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