Borders Are Obsolete Part II: Reflections on Central American Caravans and Mediterranean Crossings (original) (raw)

2021, Critical Ethnic Studies

Delen el dinero directamente. Ellos saben lo que necesitan hacer.-Salvadoran Civil War refugee When we were part of the organizing for Break Down Borders 5K, 1 an annual event beginning in 2014 that drew connections between Palestine and the United States at the San Diego///Tijuana 2 border, we were able to create a deep and intimate network of relations that crossed community, geographic, and border contexts. Far from being just a 5K run/walk, this event also functioned as an act of protest or resistance to the everyday realities of border, colonial, carceral, and other structural violences. One of our goals as organizers was to create an accompanying program that would foster exchange and connection between each of the participants and highlight each of their various struggles. One of the most inspirational and concrete examples of what a world without borders could look like was the moment when recently resettled Syrian refugees and Yaqui political organizers were able to talk to each other, learn from each other, and invite each other to their respective struggles with the help of our translation-Arabic to English to Spanish and back again. A Yaqui leader spoke about water struggles and political organizing on Yaqui territories in the border region of Mexicali-Calexico, 3 while the Syrian elders shared their stories of coming from farming, land-based communities. Land and water struggles from both geographies connected them, and us, across language. As part of the run, we invited both communities to participate and speak. While also being able to engage the broader community present at the 5K, more importantly, they found each other through the stories they were telling. Without knowing much about each other's contexts aside from what was being shared in the moment, they began attempting to communicate in order to express their solidarities and share the resonances of the lived experiences that each person was describing. In this organic moment, organizers facilitated a trilingual back-and-forth of grassroots, experiential knowledge and a display of the ways in which transnational solidarities and joint struggles can surface in their own ways at any given moment. All that was needed were the conditions to meet-the invitation to be present with us at the fifth annual Break Down Borders 5K-but the otherwise geographically distant yet politically connected bonds were already present. These bonds continue to grow, develop, and evolve in the undercommons. 4 As activist descendants of immigrants from the Palestinian and Central American diasporas, we have organized in joint struggle to bring together global analyses of border regimes while directly serving the most vulnerable and newly displaced communities where we have resided-specifically, on Kumeyaay territories, or the San Diego///Tijuana border region. This site has one of the largest resettled refugee populations in the United States 5 and has enabled us to create new organizations, spaces, and coalitions for grassroots organizing. In this work, we are informed by our past organizing experiences in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Italy, and throughout California. As we grow together in our organizing praxis, we find ourselves building a feminist praxis that Angela Y. Davis has theorized when she asks us to imagine "a woman of color formation [that] might decide to work around immigration issues. This political commitment is not based on the specific histories of racialized communities or its constituent members, but rather constructs an agenda agreed upon by all who are a part of it. In my opinion, the most exciting potential of women of color formations resides in the possibility of politicizing this identity-basing the identity on politics rather than the politics on identity." 6 We are learning from each other's geographic and transhistorical specificities of border regimes and displacement, while organizing to serve new refugee communities as they arrive in the United States and Europe today. Through our positionalities as children of displaced communities, committed grassroots organizers, and educators in the academic-industrial complex, we find our specific vantage points in joint-struggle organizing as important entryways into more disciplined and accountable methodologies, analyses, and critiques of solidarity organizing in border contexts and regions. While we do not want to perpetuate the gatekeeping of on-the-ground work with refugees who need immediate services and relief, we do, however, want to speak to various dynamics that often result in more damage than good. No organizer, activist, or academic is immune to perpetuating violent dynamics and unethical relations with migrants and refugees who are crossing borders every day-including ourselves, as we write our reflections based on our different histories of organizing on the ground. We view "on-theground" work as being involved, potentially in an organization or as an individual, in collective work; going to meetings; and actively facilitating logistics, communication, and service provisions that prioritize vulnerable communities with various needs over a long period of time. While there are occasional interruptions to the continuity of our engagements, we always strive to remain committed to the work and to centering vulnerable communities and their known/expressed needs. We recognize that institutions, bureaucracies, funding streams, and different political strategies that intend on helping migrants in transit and refugees in spatial border limbos all have their possibilities and faults. In the cracks of state infrastructures that have always