Friends – what happens in Brownsville tomorrow night may well set a precedent for what happens in San Diego and Friendship Park. Thank you for following the instructions in the e-mail below and making San Diego’s voice heard all the way to the other end of the border.
Yours,
John Fanestil
To Everyone Opposed to the Border Wall,
The Brownsville City Commission is on the verge of making a deal with DHS. This deal has immediate and long-term implications for border wall opposition nationwide. If the the City of Brownsville enters into a deal with DHS, all hope for a last minute halt to border wall construction from the Obama administration may be lost. In addition, a change in Brownsville's position could undermine all litigation related to the border wall, including El Paso's appeal to the Supreme Court. Brownsville's failure to fight something that is so clearly an injustice and an imposition by the federal goverment may eventually lead to increased militarization of our borders over the long haul.
The deal itself is a bad one. The commissioners are touting the fact that DHS will build "temporary fencing" on Brownsville property, but the contract stipulates that before such temporary fencing comes down, Brownsville will have to pay the entire cost of constructing a new wall, this time a permanent concrete border wall built into the levee. These levee-border walls have cost Hidalgo County $10-12 million per mile. Since these walls become an inextricable part of the flood-control levee system, they will never be removed, even if we are one day successful in implementing a saner border policy. However U.S. immigration policy changes over the coming decades, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be living walls because of the levee-border wall design.
No Border Wall urges everyone, regardless of where you live, to make your voices heard and let Brownsville City Commissioners know that you too are a stakeholder. If you live in the Rio Grande Valley, please make a concerted effort to attend the City Commission Public Hearing this Thursday night, February 12 at 5:30 pm at the City Commissioners' Court on the 2nd floor of the City Hall/Federal Building on the corner of 10th and Elizabeth Streets in Brownsville. Plan to arrive 15 minutes early if possible to sign up for a public comment.
If you live elsewhere or are unable to attend the public hearing, please copy and paste the following email addresses and send an email to the Brownsville mayor and city commissioners, letting them know that it's not only the future of Brownsville that's at stake, but the future of our borderlands and our nation as a whole. You might tell them of your community's experience dealing with DHS and border wall construction and your group's ongoing efforts to stop wall construction.
The commissioners emails are: |
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