No Borders Camp/Campemento Contra Las Fronteras
On both sides of the U.S.-Mexico frontera, people (mostly kids) camp out to protest the border wall, although their message is much greater than GWB’s archaic “plan” to build a very long wall. No Borders Camp has been around for a while now, but the most recent run in with the Border Patrol (pinche pendejos!) was over breakfast…. http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/11/09/18459625.php
I like to think that No Borders Camp is gaining some justice and awareness on the problematics of borders; however, this form of protest seems to be nostaglic for Ghandi-esque and passive 1960s forms, which just doesn’t seem to work anymore. And with No Borders being a passive group movement, the Border Patrol is often able to retaliate in violent style:
Regardless, the wall is still being built, although perhaps with a bit less seriousness as we get closer and closer to GWB’s end (yea!). This form of protesting can only result in moments of “peace” (as the article above shows), but it rarely figures into any notion of “progress.” These forms of protests are perhaps now simply gestures of awareness, as teleological desires appear to be impossible to achieve without a threat to money or anarchy-level riots/violence. It makes me wonder if political progress is simply a pipe dream fed to me by capitalism under the guise of justice.
I just noticed the subtitle “Fighting the Political Economy Since 1981″ and imagined little Vinataba marching down her kindergarten hallway with a “down with capitalism” sign. Now some thoughts on the above. On the one hand, my instinct tells me that the Ghandi style non-violent protests would work even today IF there were an older sage-like figure involved, PLUS a critical mass of plain mainstream ladies and gentlemen camping and marching and refusing shit. Before Rosa Parks, there were plenty of young women (probably often hip young women like the No Border Camp kids) refusing to get up for some whitey on the bus, but they’d get arrested, sometimes win a case, and still there’d be no protests boycotting mass transit etc. I guess what I’m trying to say is unfortunately young leftists are not real common denominators. On the other hand, the precise fact that there are no rosaparkses and no awe-inspiring-yet-lovable sage-like figures makes me think that your last sentence is dead on. I’ll elaborate a bit.
I have no doubt that the protesters know that the wall is just a symptom, not the disease. In other words, I’m sure they’re aware that they’re fighting a symbol of pan-american and global economic injustice and that even if the powers that be say “okay, you’re right, down with the wall!” the poverty and slums and ghettos will go on, etc.
Which brings me to another thought. Isn’t it that the Black Panthers–here I go again!–were so threatening to the status quo not because they wore berets, leather jackets, naturals, and guns, but because for a while they were a smoothly running machine giving away free breakfast and free education to the people in the ghettos? And they mainly came from the ghettos. Are the No Borders Camp activists—at least on the Mexican side—directly affected by the poverty that makes people risk their lives to cross the border? And for the American side, how else do they express their solidarity with the poor? If chanting “tear down the wall” and getting beat up is all that they’re doing, I respect that, it’s still much more than what I’m doing, but I don’t see any power in that to change anything.
Yes, I respect the symbolism of protest, but I guess what bugs me so much is that it solely acts as symbolic. But, is this not what late capitalism does? I mean, doesn’t late capitalism turn everything into solely a part of the symbolic order?