Border blues...

             Whenever I come face-to-face with this fuckin wall, a fuckin wall with barbed wire, I always feel like I’m on the wrong side, I’m in the wrong country. I don't want to be in a country that builds walls.

              

            Today, I walked thru the small park next to the wall where there’s a plaque dedicated ironically to the history of the ferry crossings from the early 1800’s until the bridge was built in the late 1920’s – when people could flow BOTH ways across the Rio Grande.

               The Rio Grande was probably a raging river for most of that time until we started damming off the river to divert the water for our use – thus the ferry was probably a necessity until the bridge was built.

            There’s a white cross made from short 4x4 pieces of painted wood pounded into the soil with a bunch of plastic sunflowers tied to the cross. I wonder who has died there but the list is probably shorter of who hasn’t died there.

            A small group of four starts walking up the path toward me: two older white strate couples, maybe parents and grandparents but definitely tourists. As I walk past them, I hear the older woman complaining that there are no men with rifles guarding the fence.

            Has she really thought about what that means???

            I’m so livid I say while charging past them “Oh you’re not feeling safe enough yet, this huge fuckin wall with its barbed wire and you still don’t feel safe?”

            They laugh uncomfortably but I’m not laughing.

            I think of the white male Liberty Hill Texan yesterday who claimed “terrorists” were being kept out by this fuckin wall – terrorists he’d be willing to come down here and kill if the wall doesn’t keep them out.

            I want to stop and ask the woman if she really thinks men with rifles should be shooting people who are fleeing war in their countries, womyn who are escaping male violence, children who are following their parents, but I’m too angry, too disgusted, too afraid of what her answer will be if she does stop and really think about it.