Posted on 02/24/2008 5:43:18 PM PST by SwinneySwitch
Some of them have been trying to gather support in the Rio Grande Valley. Others belong to nascent coalitions in small towns in Southwest Texas. Some don't live anywhere near the border but want to help out.
The federal government's plan to erect physical barriers along various stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border has mobilized a hodge-podge opposition movement ranging from border mayors to immigrant advocacy groups and environmentalists.
Yet there has been no unified front — opponents have been doing their own thing without coordinating with counterparts in other areas of the state and country.
This weekend, a small but geographically diverse group of such activists are meeting in San Antonio in a first attempt to give one voice to the "no border wall" effort.
Organized and hosted by the Southwest Workers Union, a labor and civil rights group based near Sunset Station, the strategy conference drew about 50 activists paying their own way from across Texas and as far as Chicago, Atlanta, Washington state and Puerto Rico.
"This issue has the ability to really motivate people," said Stefanie Herweck, who last year founded No Border Wall in the Rio Grande Valley town of Weslaco. "We need to get energized and raise one big fight."
Multiple nods of approval set the agenda for the rest of the day's brainstorming session. The gathering continues today, but by Saturday the ad hoc group had identified the fence's major negative impact in border communities and potential strategies that could soon be taken up to fight it.
Border fencing has existed for years in southern California and most recent construction has focused on western Arizona. But it has run into the most controversy in the Valley, where fierce opposition to 70 miles of proposed fencing has prompted the Department of Homeland Security to sue cities and landowners to gain access for surveyors working on the plans.
The cadre of activists convening in San Antonio argued that fencing further militarizes an already fortified area, that it will split families and cut off crucial communication and basic services that serve as lifelines for border communities, particularly in rural areas.
An example is the 50 or so people who live so remotely in tiny Redford that their nearest hospital is in Mexico, said April Cotte.
They and others in nearby towns like Presidio and Lajitas in the Big Bend area traditionally have relied on dozens of informal river crossings that the government shut down after the 9-11 attacks.
"The Border Patrol stops people all the time now," said Cotte. "All for fighting the war on terror, they say. We all know there's no threat here."
That the public generally accepts such a threat is a perception that must be changed, the group concluded. To draw attention and action to what they believe is the untold downside of the government's border clampdown, particularly the fence, participants considered:
Pushing for legislative changes, particularly the Real ID Act that gave the government unprecedented powers to waive environmental and other laws to build the fence;
Educating affected border residents with know-your-rights workshops, linking them to groups offering free legal help and holding public forums to counter those offered by the government at which public testimony has not been aired;
Expanding the fledgling coalition to include other human rights and religious groups, including the Catholic Church.
Coming away with newfound knowledge of the impact of the border fence in Texas, Javier Rodríguez vowed to enlist help from his base in Los Angeles.
"I didn't realize the complexity and intensity of the issue," said Rodríguez, a community organizer who helped served as spokesman for the coalition that led massive pro-immigrant demonstrations there in 2006, including one that drew around 500,000 people.
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hrozemberg@express-news.net
Ping!
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
Both the RINOs(Mccaniacs and Huckaphony) and the DemonRats(Osamabama and Hitlery) are big on the antifence movement.
Flush the “immigrant (illegal, that is) advocacy” groups!!!
If a fence system will not work what are they so scared of?
crickets......................
well all the republicans have moved to the right on the issue. Even Ron Paul the libertarian is now very much anti-illegal. In 1988 he said “As in our country’s first 150 years, there shouldn’t be any immigration policy at all. We should welcome everyone who wants to come here and work.”
That was pretty much what Reagan believed and what reason.com still argues for.
Sounds to me like all the special interests invested in open borders are busy investing in “consensus” building in prepearation for the next amnesty go round...say 01/22/09.....
And who is bankrolling the "Southwest Workers Union" and what is their particular interest regarding the border and a fence?
Could be illuminating.
You made a big joke, are is that a whopper and I'm not talking hamburger!
Fifty, that is 50 correct. LOLROF. How many million are against open borders. Something is just a little out of whack here.
http://www.swunion.org/staff.html
You'll find that every one of their officers has an e-mail address at igc.org
http://igc.org/
And igc is "International Global Communications", headquartered in San Francisco. It's a non-profit front for a collection of anti-war peaceniks, radical feminists, enviro-whackos and other anti-capitalists.
I'm beginning to think that if all the non-profit organizations in the country who were politically active lost their non-profit status, the left would be cast into vagabondage -- without any visible means of support.
not a joke at all. It wasn’t an issue at all during the previous presidential campaigns.
That's because it didn't become a problem until the consequences of the 1965 Immigration Act began to be seen in the late 80s, combined with our appalling failure to guard our borders against illegals. Here's a great quote from Lawrence Auster:
"A country that lets in large numbers of immigrants of a different culture or race is not only giving away its national identity, but its national freedom, because once there is a large immigrant community with an identity distinct from that of the host society, they will deny the host country the right to restrict future immigration. And they will have the power to deny that right, so long as the host country itself has no real identity except for openness. But if the majority people of the host country begin to act as a group, just as the immigrants are acting like a group, then the immigration can be stopped, and the immigrants be made to behave."
but why specifically 2008 and why all the republicans? (you don’t see the democrats getting tough; Obama is overtly pro-illegal)
part of it is backlash against mccain and part of it was because of Duncan Hunter’s presence in the race. He made a difference.
California is the canary in the coalmine for what our present immigration policy is doing to America. The Democrats like what has happened to California, so of course they aren't going to get tough. As usual, the Republicans were slow to see an obvious disaster that was coming straight at them. Now that they've seen the disaster, some of them belatedly want to stop it from spreading.
Works BOTH way doesn’t it?
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