Republished from Yo No Me Callo

A black flag flew high in the crisp desert air. Clenched fists and pleading palms pounded on both sides of the wall that separates the United States and Mexico. To the rhythmic dissonance of flesh beating against metal, hundreds of masked faces were chanting, “We want a world without borders!”

After about an hour of shouting and whispering through the holes of the 30 foot-tall fence, the crowds on both sides gradually began to march, together, flags waving, drums resonating, East along the border. Curious bystanders stared, and authorities behind sunglasses and armored vehicles muttered into radios.

Welcome to Calexico/Mexicali, November 2007. “Mexicali and Calexico,” reads one of the many leaflets the crowds are distributing, “are not sister cities, they are one city divided by a hyper-militarized line.” Calexico on the US side, with a population of roughly 30,000, is in Imperial County, about 120 miles east of San Diego, California. Mexicali is the capital of Baja, California, with a shifting population of around 850,000. On this bright day in November, several blocks from the legal point of entry on the border, hundreds of people from around the world gathered on both sides of the wall to improvise a spacetime with no borders.

Amigos y Amigas ! I am hosting an informal reception for a photo installation of images from the No Borders Camp this Thursday, May 1st at 8pm at the Revolution Cafe in San Francisco. Please forward, post and/or otherwise share this invitation with anyone interested in documentary photography or issues of immigration in the SF Bay Area. The exhibition will continue through the first half of May and is open to the public seven days a week during normal Revolution hours. Nos Vemos ?El Fotografo

I wanted to let everyone know that we are still interested in filing this case. I have committments from several other attorneys to work on it and we are looking into trying to get some funding for expenses from the National Lawyers Guild. If anyone has any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Gerald Singleton, Esq.
1950 Fifth Avenue, Suite 200
San Diego, California 92101
Telephone: (619) 239-2196
Facsimile: (619) 702-5592
Email: geraldsingleton73 (at) yahoo (dot) com
Website: www.Singleton-Associates.com

Were you a witness/recipient of Border Patrol brutality during the No Borders Camp? Fill out a report and send it in.

Republished from the Free Juan Ruiz blog

Juan Esteban Ruiz was arrested during the No Borders Camp at the U.S./Mexican border on November 11, 2007, while playing the drum, in other words, using his rights to free speech, peaceful assembly, and redress of grievances specified by the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He was charged with two counts of assaulting a federal officer. The charge was reduced to "interfering" with a federal officer. The case is now closed, as detailed below.

Federal case completed

On Feb. 19, 2008, Juan appeared in Federal Court in San Diego on charges stemming from his participation in a protest at the U.S.-Mexican border on Nov. 11, 2007. We are happy to report that his case was resolved without endangering his immigration status. Juan agreed that he had been present at the protest, playing his drum, and had been too close to the Border Patrol officers. The judge commended Juan for his volunteer work and social activism and said that he wished more young people were as engaged as Juan. The letters of support from Juan's teachers, family, friends, fellow activists and community members, were very helpful in showing the judge and prosecution about Juan's open and caring character. Juan is back in Madison, Wisconsin. He needs to complete 100 hours of community service - never a problem for him! - and will be on probation for 2 years. After that, we hope that Juan will attain his U.S. citizenship. He is truly "one of ours" and deserves the protection of citizenship. We don't anticipate any further legal costs for this case, though he will need help for naturalization in the next few years. We thank everyone for their support. Truly, he would not have been able to do this on his own. Gracias a todos.

Republished from SF Pride at Work

No Border Camp Reportback
By Molly Goldberg

A Report from the No Borders Camp

In early November, I joined seventeen other members of the Queer Youth Organizing Project (QYOP) of Pride at Work San Francisco to attend the first US/ Mexican No Borders Camp.Here, organizers from all over Mexico, the United States, and a number of other countries gathered for a weeklong convergence at the Mexicali/ Calexico border in the Sonoran Desert.The camp was aimed at creating a temporary trans-national space to challenge increased border militarization and migration controls, and the economic system that makes such repressions necessary.

QYOP worked for six months prior to the camp to educate members of the community about the project, and helped to organize citywide meetings with a broad coalition of student and community groups who ended up participating in the No Borders Camp.In Calexico/ Mexicali, we worked to build a radio station for the camp, led chants for a march to the ICE detention center in neighboring El Centro, participated in workshops on topics such as NAFTA and the growth of maquiladoras on the Mexicali side of the fence, and hosted a transnational dance party at the wall.

Although to some, an action calling for “No Borders” sounds extreme or radical, for many of us in the labor movement, the need for this sort of cross-border organizing and solidarity work is actually quite intuitive.Since the passage of NAFTA and other free-trade agreements, we have seen hundreds of thousands of union jobs exported to countries with lower labor and environmental standards.

Experiences and Perspectives on No Borders Camp US/Mexico 2007

http://www.ncor2008.org/index.php?page=workshops

Location TBA
Description: The first No borders camp in the western hemisphere took place in November 07 in Calexico/Mexicali on the US/Mexico border. In this workshop we'll discuss:

Why No Borders Camp?

A horizontal, cross-border, multi-city, multi-culture, multi-lingual organizing process.

Creating an Autonomous space in a border zone and dynamics of participation at the camp.

The necessity of an Anti-capitalist No Borders Network. We will use the no borders camp as an example of how these concepts are applied in practice, and discuss how these concepts may be useful in the many overlapping struggles against borders, for immigrant rights, against capitalism and against all oppression.

Republished from the Defenestrator

Hundreds occupy U.S./Mexico borderlands to challenge militarization, neoliberalism and racism
by Jen Lawhorne

Overcoming the racism, xenophobia, classism and fear that borders represent hundreds of people created a space on the U.S./Mexico border in November that challenged the dominant paradigm to offer a world without borders based upon solidarity, self-organization, autonomy and mutual aid, without borders.

After five days of creating the dream, the No Borders Camp in Calexico and Mexicali also demonstrated the true inhumanity of the border when Border Patrol agents attacked the camp’s final protest, brutalizing participants and arresting three individuals.

A growing global network that for the past couple of decades has demanded the freedom of movement for all humans and denounced the deportations and repression lived by migrants, No Borders mobilized people to oppose the detention and deportation of migrants, the corporations making money from migrant repression and the multinational agreements crafted that spawn migration. Although the network has formally ceased to exist since 2004, groups and movements have borrowed from their principles to carry the movement forward.

These observations do not seek be a thorough analysis of the camp, but rather I will focus on my perspective as a media person on the southern side of the border. I think that through this discussion some points may touch upon on broader issues experienced in the camp, which to me is an ongoing process that started years before November 2007 and is long from over. I was involved very little and mostly from long distance in prior organizing and I have never lived in the borderlands. Saying this I feel that the goal of generating and strengthening our communities is shared.

Republished from the Free Juan Ruiz blog

More info on Juan's arrest during the No Borders camp can be found here.

Update: Feb 3

Juan's court date was delayed again and is now scheduled for Feb. 19th. His lawyer is working hard to have the charges reduced. We are very grateful for all the community support and have gathered letters of support from fellow volunteers, teachers and community members to help in his case.

Due to his arrest in California, it is clear that Juan needs to deal with his immigration status in order to stay in the United States without risk of deportation. Remember that Juan grew up in Wisconsin and has no memory of or family in the country of his birth. Given the federal government's current harshness towards non-citizens, even though Juan is a legal permanent resident, he will be at risk until he becomes a U.S. citizen. He will need legal representation for his immigration case after the current federal case is decided.

In order to help Juan, we are fundraising to help him with legal support to defend him against the charges from his arrest at the border AND for his immigration case, so Juan can remain free and able to continue working for justice for immigrants and all of us.

Donations can be made to the Juan Ruiz Defense Fund via the paypal account on the blog or by sending a check to: 3404 Cross St., Madison. WI 53711.

Thanks!
Juan's friends

Republished from mediaLeft

A World Without Borders!
Written by Rocky Neptun
Tuesday, 13 November 2007

Bi-National Tent Village, Calexico-Mexicali, November 10, 2007: The thick, chalky soil sucks at your feet, pulling them downward. Dust climbs and sticks to pants while the finer silt; translucent, airy, swirls around the head like terrestrial ghosts. This patch of ground, once hardened by millennium of human feet; migrating south to north and back again, before the men with guns came, is now a barren wasteland. Does the battle for free Earth begin here?

Several hundred young people, from all over the United States and a few other countries, dressed in black, many with red bandanas, wearing the dust proudly, as badges, think so. Radical baptism by sand, they sink their tents and bodies into it reverently; blood sand, over 4,000 immigrants have died, all along the great separation.

One hundred-fifty bright colored tents, buses, campers, sleeping vans, cooking areas, meeting canopies, porta-potties and a first-aid wickiup; they have set up their first ever five-day, No Border Camp, here at Calexico, where the wall of shame ends. The other side, Mexicali, Mexico is blocked by a simple iron swing gate that blocks a path between the end of the fence and the curve of a deep, swift canal. Thirty armed border patrol officers cling to the swinging gate.