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Apr 1, 19

#BlocktheWall & Open the World: A Call to Action

Call from the #BlocktheWall network for a month of action and solidarity with ongoing organizing happening at the border and for actions to manifest in the face of Trump’s growing calls for an authoritarian attack on migrants.

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” – Assata Shakur

The #BlockTheWall Network is calling for April to be a month of solidarity and support for migrant communities. We are also calling for disruptive actions against ICE/Border infrastructure on May 1st.

Calling all anarchists, abolitionists, and anti-capitalists. Together we can support migrant communities, get resources for people in need, and build the political space for open borders, the abolition of ICE, and border-communities to be liberated from “open-air” prisons.

There are multiple initiatives already demonstrating hospitality to migrants and physically defying the border that separates the United States from Mexico:

ON THE GROUND

If you are in borderlands and are able to offer support on the frontline, assistance is needed daily in various forms, such as driving or walking donations across, showing up for a cooking shift, become a drop-off site for others to leave their donations, become an overnight assistant at a shelter, or look to indigenous-communities already leading resistance to the US-Mexico border. Send us an email to be connected to groups already doing great work, at [email protected].

FROM AFAR

Cash funds are the most valuable means of support. Needs and conditions change every day and hour. The local initiatives on the border are full of knowledge people. Cash funds give those folks on the ground greater flexibility and control as they respond to emergencies and build infrastructure that can adapt to their changing needs. We’ve also created our own to fund to help support local organizers.

There are many substantial ways for folks who live farther away from the border to contribute. We’ve listed some specific ones, but please let your imagination run. And, be sure to email us whatever solidarity initiative you get going—all the fundraising events, donation drop-off sites, sponsorship programs, knitting circles, etc.

Host a solidarity event as a fundraiser for one of the organizations or projects listed on our solidarity section. Accepting cash donations from attendees is a great way to build community and solidarity at the same time. Punk shows are planned to benefit migrant communities in DC, Dance Parties in Bloomington, and other events planned around the country.

Send valuable, hard-to-get resources, such as medical supplies, and tech devices to support migrant coordination and migrant-led & frontline reporting, such as cell phones, laptops, batteries, wifi hotspots, and wifi infrastructure.

Translate! Translation help is always in demand. Folks who speak Spanish, Creole, French, Russian, and indigenous languages common to Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua could work from home on translations of legal documents, work papers, idenitfication records, etc.

Share your knowledge and create specialized, user-friendly multilingual guides. Migrants spend months waiting in an illegal list process at the border. They speak many different languages and have few reliable resources for information. Organizers need to know about security culture, identity protection, and doxx prevention. Medic field guides empower people to be ready for tear-gas attacks, wound care, dehydration, and other stress recognition, and diy women’s and trans health zines empower people to care for their bodies. Everyone can benefit from meditation or self-care zines full of affirmations. Children get no education and no programming as they wait. Digitized lesson plans, work books, blank coloring sheet designs can change that!

Become a sponsor through an active-placement network, like SURJ, or form a group with others to teach folks what the process of sponsoring an asylum-seeker is and support each other in this work. Sponsoring an asylum seeker can mean anything from a few months to a year’s commitment and can dramatically improve an asylum-seeker’s likelihood of release from detention.

Always boost fundraisers & call-outs within your networks by writing with personal comments along with your retweets & reposts.

Contribute a poster or shirt design and we’ll host it when we launch our support store.

FOR MAY 1st

Disrupt the operation of detention centers in your community. Adults are imprisoned in over 200 centers across the US. There are also over 100 “shelters” holding children captive, often in residential neighborhoods, and often unlabeled. Find a center near you and fight for its closure, hold solidarity demos outside, hold those who profit from this machine accountable. Together we can show that migrants are welcomed.

Dismantle the arms of the system in your own community—there are many local resources that Chicanx, immigrant, Latinx and migrant communities have created. Those communities and resource outlets are lead by them and some are autonomous of the state. We ask that you find ways to get invited, allow them to organize within their communities’ capacity, and support in ways that protect their community’s organizing. Here is an article with a zine to help folks outside of migrant support communities to remember to be an accomplice.

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We refuse to choose between Trump's openly racist wall and the Democrats' implicitly racist "smart border" – they are merely different faces of the same death-making logic. We will block the border wall. We choose another way: freedom of movement, self-determination, solidarity and mutual aid.

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