“Mommy, What Was a Border?”

A call to resistance against the border regime
An invitation to the 2007 No Borders Camp in Calexico/Mexicali

There is a regime of terror spreading across the land. Racist laws, arbitrary detention, unwarranted prosecution and the deportation of thousands are dividing families and driving a wedge through our communities. An emboldened Department of Homeland Security is attacking people in their homes, workplaces, on the highways, at grocery stores. Police agencies nationwide are collaborating in the attack on immigrants, one of the most visible targets in America’s war against the “other”.

In southern Arizona, we are on the front lines of this war. Every morning more than 2,000 Border Patrol agents report for duty through Tucson out into the Altar Valley and Tohono O’odham nation to the west. Remote camera towers monitor every activity of the civilian population. Walls, roads and other enforcement infrastructure have ravaged the fragile landscape. Racist vigilantes have operated for years with virtual impunity. And every year hundreds upon hundreds of migrants die attempting to cross the desert.

There is a logic to this terror regime, and it is by no means unique to this place and this time. Around the world governments have enacted laws and policies aimed at persecuting and excluding indigenous peoples and people who have migrated across national boundaries. Detention centers, surveillance, and militarization are among the hallmarks of this regime.

The border is the flipside of colonialism. It is a physical and psychological weapon meant to assert the perceived entitlement of a settler population, and enforce the global dynamics that maintain power and privilege. The border is not just a line between one country and another -- it is an ideology that says: “You should not exist in this space”.

Neo-liberal globalization cannot operate without the border. It is no coincidence that Operation Gatekeeper was launched at the same time as the North American Free Trade Agreement. Initiatives like the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America make this connection explicit by linking the integration of markets and regulations to the integration of security infrastructure. While capital is freed to exploit whomever it wants, wherever it wants, our lives are to be increasingly scrutinized, our bodies controlled.

We who live and struggle in the borderlands grapple with many questions. How do we organize, live alternatively, ensure emotional wellbeing and develop alliances in this low-intensity war zone? What forms of resistance might supersede the militarization of our lives and the divisions that borders impose?

There is hope and active resistance developing all around us. Immigrant communities and their allies are fighting back, organizing migra-watch and monitoring the activities of the Border Patrol. Activists are working in detention centers to support those locked up and ensure they are not forgotten; still others have locked themselves to the gates of these centers, temporarily shutting them down. The operations of Minutemen and other vigilante groups are monitored, confronted and disrupted to the point that they’ve been driven out of some communities altogether.

In the southern Arizona desert, volunteers patrol trails every day looking for those lost and on the brink of death, providing medical assistance and documenting the systematic abuse and neglect of law enforcement.

In Bisbee-Arizona and Naco-Arizona/Sonora, border communities have held a bi-national fiesta and volleyball game across the international line since before the wall was constructed, making sport of the physical barrier and ‘serving’ to de-legitimize its presence.

In Arivaca, Arizona residents are reclaiming their privacy by turning the Border Patrol / Boeing watchtower bases into picnic grounds. Kites crisscross the sky, amusing the children and frustrating surveillance efforts. Locals are mounting a lawsuit to challenge the existence of surveillance towers outright.

Organizers in Tucson maintain a list of those who have died and disappeared in the desert, and mount searches for the remains of women, children and men in order to reunite them with their loved ones.

Members of the Tohono O’odham nation are refusing to allow the border to divide them, continuing cross-border pilgrimages and resisting the presence of the Border Patrol and Homeland Security on their land.

On the south side of the line between ‘ambos’ Nogales - nestled between Mexican customs, people smugglers, the border wall, the U.S. National Guard and the never-ending line of NAFTA trucks - there is a Migrant Aid Station giving support and safety to the hundreds of hungry, sick, and abused people repatriated to Mexico by Border Patrol each day.

Immigrant, indigenous and youth-based community groups are organizing house meetings and conducting human rights trainings to build confidence and resistance against the ICE raids and terrorization of their families and neighborhoods.

Even while threatened with harassment and arrest regular folks in the borderlands and across the United States provide sanctuary and support to those targeted by the security apparatus, in direct refusal of the state’s efforts at criminalization.

In Europe, Oceania and elsewhere movements have been developing for years in response to the state's violent repression of freedom of movement. Over the last decade No Borders Camps and other anti-border actions have been organized around the world, continuing this year with No Border Camps in Ukraine in August and near London at Gatwick airport in September.

Together we are developing a politics, a praxis of resistance in opposition to the border and all that it represents. This opposition is explicitly in solidarity with all the other struggles around the world
against neo-liberalism and authoritarianism. We are refusing to be divided by the symbolic borders of race, nationality, language and gender.

This movement is just the latest phase in a resistance that has been ongoing in this hemisphere for more than 500 years. Despite all of their efforts, they have been unable to silence us.

An Invitation

This is an invitation to all people of goodwill, to all who are fighting for dignity, freedom, human rights and autonomy. The regime of terror and the homeland security apparatus will not collapse on its own – it must be challenged. We call on you to join us in opposition to the border regime.

Between November 7th and 11th, 2007, thousands of people will gather at the line between Calexico, California and Mexicali, Baja California. Throughout this week of action we will engage in opposition to the infrastructure of repression and that of neo-liberal globalization. Together we will create an autonomous zone free of borders and the lies they perpetuate.

This November we will build a place in which, for one week, our dreams of freedom will take shape. A place of action, of symbol, of sharing, communicating, becoming. Bring your plans, for there will be no hourly schedule for you to follow. This time and place will be all of ours, and we will join together to create the future.

Even as we organize during the months leading up to the Camp, we're not sure what will happen -- just as no one quite knew what would happen in Berlin in November 1989, or 10 years later at the end of November in Seattle. Both of these events were complex in their genesis. They were the result of diverse networks of groups, and years of struggle and organizing that added up to something unpredictable. We do not suggest that the No Borders Camp will be a crescendo but rather a leap forward in our resistance, and an affirmative “Yes!” to our shared dreams of freedom.

Join us in this declaration of autonomous space inside the warzone of the U.S./Mexico border! Imagine marches, actions, forums, music; a circus with a thousand performers, murals painted ten feet high along the border wall. Come together with people who are resisting the border regime, and learn what is being done and what can be done in our communities. Celebrate the resistance and solidarity with our comrades around the world. Discuss strategies, network, and send a message from the edge of the empire that says: "This is not about terrorists. This is not about cheap labor. This is about human freedom and our ability to live full lives."

On November 10, 2007 -- on the 18th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall – actions will be mounted against border regimes in Mexico, Guatemala, the United States, Canada, Israel and Palestine. We call on the people of the world to join us in symbolic and direct action against borders, migration controls, neo-liberalism and regimes of terror wherever they are encountered. Because anything is possible when we join our efforts; because no human being is illegal.

Toward a World Without Borders,
Borderlands Autonomist Collective
Tucson, AZ