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. As Princeton University Professor Alejandro Portes writes in his article NAFTA and Mexican Immigration,

“Those who have paid for the corporate successes of NAFTA are the workers, Americans and Mexicans alike. Mexican workers have suffered the double whammy of diminished job prospects and rising prices at home... American workers have suffered the double whammy of lost jobs in runaway industries and new competition from migrant workers displaced by the same economic model under which those industries increasingly profit.”[1]

The AFL-CIO has long been a vocal opponent of free trade agreements such as NAFTA, and unions around the country have been a major force in building the new immigrant rights movement, organizing the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride of 2003, and even working in coalition with Mexican labor unions to organize in the maquiladoras on the border.It is clear that as a movement, we understand the violence that is done by pushing for a free flow of goods and capital while restricting the movement of people in the same places.

But I did not just attend the No Borders Camp with a group of labor activists, I attended the camp with seventeen other queer labor activists, and I think that with this we bring a unique commitment to-- and history of—building powerful community through re-imagining the boundaries that define who we consider to be family.Historically, the LGBT community has found its power in the real solidarity that comes from expanding the lines around who we feel connected and responsible to—across race, class, and national boundaries.

The No Borders Camp was fundamentally about creating a site for genuine communication and cross-border organizing, with a faith that such spaces are where we make the kind of community that creates powerful change.Pride at Work itself was birthed out of another example of radical solidarity:the Coors boycott.In 1974, San Francisco’s gay community joined publicly with the Teamsters to boycott the anti-union, homophobic company, drastically reducing Coors’ share of the statewide market by convincing gay bars in the city to pull the beer.

Two groups that historically had a delicate and tenuous relationship were able to find common ground around the Coors boycott, and this solidarity only continued to expand in the coming years.Following the boycott, the Teamsters found work for openly gay truck drivers in their union, joined with other labor to support gay candidates such as Harvey Milk, and later defeated the Briggs amendment, which would have banned gays from teaching in public schools.As a result of this solidarity and mutual aid, the boundaries of both the labor and queer communities were substantially expanded.

When we describe those around us as brothers and sisters, it is because we understand that we all have a greater responsibility to one another than those in power would like us to believe.We understand that a border, no matter how tangible its effects may be, is inherently a metaphor. Given the space, we can-- and must-- imagine relationships that extend beyond the imposed lines that divide us.

He is not gay or a worker. He is a gay worker.

She is not Mexican or American. She is Chicana.

The corporations that pushed through trade agreements like NAFTA already understand this.They successfully use closed borders to exploit workforces in the name of profit for a select few, and open the same borders to undermine the organizing we have done within their boundaries.

Through workshops, dance parties, or simple conversations and meals with each other, we were able to make room for a move from sympathy to empathy-based action, for real solidarity work.The No Borders Camp was an effort to shine a bright light on the violence that an increasingly militarized border does to our communities, and then an opportunity to open our eyes wide and imagine something new.