Palms and Protest

I’ve entered the last remaining hundred acres of sabal palm forest ecosystem in the nation. Soon we will be cut off from it by Homeland’s Wall.

I walk a wooden boardwalk and marvel at the trees’ stature, the volume of their massive fronds clashing in the winds I’m sheltered from.

The river here, approaching freedom and the Gulf at Boca Chica, used to be a mile wide and up to 40-feet deep, a local conservationist tells me.

I can’t use any proper names here. You see, the clampdown is on. Both employees at the Audubon Sanctuary said they could not speak about the wall, could not tell me anything, in fact. Instead, one hands me a printout from the non-prof’s website. I can use this, I’m told.

Mexican Sunset

First there was the mandated double fence with floodlights and roadway. Post Hutchison ammendment, Chertoff started signing off on “discrete” portions of single-line fencing. Now we hear the Czar scaling back again…

There are moments of irrepressible assurance. Yeah, confidence is against my nature — maybe against the nature of all inkscratchers — so when we feel it, it means something to agitated explainers like us. Explaining what, to who(m), and from what direction? That is, did we get it right? Used to writing the bad news and seeing Big Money win over and again against community interests.