The day brings so much more news about ICE, the U.S.Border Patrol, family separation, the dependency of multi-billion dollar corporations on undocumented labour and racism. The buying of citizenship (U.S.A) and the ban on migrants who receive social assistance from becoming citizens (Germany). And in the midst of these conditions, people still love and live, full of dreams, hopes, relationships, and humanity. I happened to be in Mexico during the Obama deportations of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. We met people who had never been to Mexico, but were expected to remake their lives there…. I’ve included a beautiful rendition of Woody Guthrie’s Deportee, covered by the band, The Last Internationale, who were part of discovering the identities of the deportees mentioned in the song! What an amazing tribute.
The following pictures are a meditation on the resilience of migrants and refugees all over the world, but particularly taking inspiration from the flight of the Monarch butterfly whose journey through three countries and beautiful presence in all of them– should be the basis of our thinking about borders. No one is illegal!
Ear to the Ground 