Local activists held a Stop the Wall rally today to save the nearby Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge which is 2,000 acres of federal property on the US-Mexico border. The Trump forces plan on mowing a wall through the refuge & using eminent domain to confiscate adjacent farm land for the wall. This would be an environmental disaster & for the human rights of refugees on the US southern border, it would be monstrous.

Beside borderland poets & musicians, speakers included DACA recipients (undocumented youth who came to the US with their parents & who Trump wants to deport), environmentalists, the leader of the Carrizo Comecrudo tribe who have ancestral rights to the land. I was honored to speak about the international crisis of refugees from war, persecution, genocide, sweatshop economics & economic plunder.

I’ve been to hundreds of protests in my life & listened to hundreds of boring speakers but everyone who spoke at this rally was impassioned & brilliant & a testimony to the commitment to tear down these walls that divide the human race. One of the most heartening things was seeing so many of my generation along with so many youth standing together against the wall & for refugee rights.

Thank you to Ava Leal for her role in organizing this event & to the other organizers & volunteers, including Emilia Alvarez Gamboa, who made it run so smoothly. It was inspiring for all who participated.

No human being is alien to us.

(Photo of rally participants by Leslie Gower)