'This is a human tragedy and an ecological tragedy'
On a Saturday morning in early November, Edwina Vogan and a few of her friends drove over two hours from the Phoenix suburbs to southern Arizona to protest new wall construction at the U.S.-Mexico border.
By the time I met them, among a throng of protesters in front of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument’s visitor center, the weather was sweltering. The protesters chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, this border wall has got to go.” Some had donned animal masks made from paper, representing endangered species like the jaguar, further at risk with its habitat cleaved in two.
Every 20 minutes or so, a volunteer shuttle brought more people.
“We live over a hundred miles from here, but that doesn't mean that we don't care about what is going on here,” Vogan told me. She wore a shirt that showed monarch butterflies, which have come to symbolize migration. A member of CODEPINK — a women-led organization that opposes militarization and supports human rights —she came to see what was happening here firsthand. “This is a human tragedy and an ecological tragedy,” she said. “We are here to witness.”
Read more: https://www.hcn.org/articles/borderlands-this-is-a-human-tragedy-and-an-ecological-tragedy
(High Country News)