NO BORDER WALL

The team is in Washington D.C. on Monday July 30, preparing for a public witness and action. We have a banner that came with us from Brownsville Texas, covered with signatures, and saying "No Border Wall". We have a letter from an 11-year-old girl to President Bush, saying "No Border Wall". That is the message we are bringing. This poem was used in our liturgy this morning.

NO BORDER WALL

In Douglas Arizona, on a starry night,

Four blocks from our house loomed a painful sight.

The border wall, what is its name?

The closest description is the Wall of Shame..

U.S. Americans in nice houses to the north;

Central Americans and Mexicans in shacks to the south.

The sign on the border says we don’t want you here;

But there are jobs and employers who say “nothing to fear”.

What to do now, the migrants all ask

To go home with nothing is a losing task

Crossing the desert is dangerous they say,

But you risk your life and do it, there is no other way.

Two hundred die there every single year,

The wall is their killer, that’s perfectly clear

And their families back home,

Will have one more loss to moan.

The Rio Grande Valley shows other dimensions

The families who live there belong to two nations

People have crossed freely for many generations

Now a wall is proposed that will harm their relations.

The wall will hurt families like a knife through the heart;

Mothers and children wll be left far apart.

Fathers with work can only send money;

They cannot go home to be with their family..

And what sort of message does the wall send?

Would you slam a door in the face of a friend?

Keep our Latino neighbors from our land of freedom?

Is that, our dear nation, what we’ve become?

That wall is shameful, you could call it a sin;

Dividing up families, killing women and men.

Locking the river kills the animals too,

While rotting the hearts of both me and you.

Save your conscience.

Save your soul.

Just say no.

To the border wall..

By Haven, Washington DC, 30 July, 2007