When I was young child, I felt like there was a terrible prejudice toward people who are different. I remember being angry with my Dad when he made a joke about Middle Eastern people and upset with my best friend in high school when he joked about the Trenoubal catostrophe being ok cause the people who suffered were "Just a buncha Russians." I remember being intrigued by people who couldn’t speak English. when I was in grammar school, I had immigrant friends from Laos and Vietnam who were two of my best friends. My 5th grade teacher, I remember, noticed my interest and would assign the seat of any new student who couldn’t speak English close to me because she knew I’d learn their ways quickly and could facilitate class instruction for them. Too bad she was a total bitch and I actually ended up defending them more than anything. I remember thinking how cool it was to learn their language and go to their house and see what a Vietnamese family or laocean lived like. I remember thinking that the world should be a place where people can take advantage of what people from different perspectives have to offer and that it could be some day. As I got older, I felt like it wasn’t there yet but there was potential, that it was showing signs/hope that it could be.
Then came George W Bush, the pinnacle of the “ugly American”. Just when I felt like things were on the edge between the optimistic, adventurous, and curious minded that had the potential to love and understand and the passion to make a better world and the American who preferred to stay within the confining walls of fear, isolation, and lifeless monotony that rejected the inclusion of “foreign” ideas and who not only thought people from the US were superior to the rest of the world, but that they are the only people in the world. I didn’t know what to do. I felt like the chances for this world I was hoping for, the world that had a chance to exist, whatever forces were in place to carry out this world were cut off. I feel now like he was there long enough to really ingrain intolerance into the American system. I’m disappointed because I feel like this intolerance is not only an attitude, this “ugly American” that goes to a foreign country and doesn’t understand why people don’t speak English, has now spread to the point where English and the “American way” is dominating other countries through commerce, “free” trade, and war at an accelerating pace. Instead of an attempt at putting us in a box that, with determination and curiousity, we could step out of, they are expanding the mono-cultural corporate box, crushing all the space outside of it leaving more and more people running around in circles grasping for a change of scenery.
During the Bush years, I did what I could to protest. I stood on the corner of a busy street with others every friday with an orange jump suit on and signs to impeach the president and gathered signatures to try to get San Diego to join some other cities around the country that had agreed that he should be impeached. I went to large protest joining millions of others who realized the damage being done and its apparent irreversability.
While I protested, I continued on a path of doing what I liked creating situations for people to get to know each other across barriers. Langauge exchanges with people in Tijuana. I live in Tijuana and started a project where people would get to know each other, literally across the US/Mexico border. I enjoyed and was inspired by this work and never looked at it as a protest or confrontation to “the system.” It wasn’t a reaction to the political situation, it was a continuation of my inspired hope for what I saw could create a better world. A continuation of my innocent assumption that this was a path that existed, a path that satisfied my desire to get to know the “other”. I didn’t know how many were on this path or if gatherings of common interests at the border (yoga, poetry, language learning, etc.) would spark interest. My main drive was simply following my passion get people to come together to make friends. I didn't look at this as the only path, I looked at as my path, my contribution. I felt validated when some of the events gained popularity and the goal of people from different walks of life getting to know each other was sometimes accomplished.
Turns out that people’s desire and enthusiasm to participate mattered little as far as the state was concerned. As the years went on, Border Patrol increased its presence and made the bi-national gatherings more and more difficult. The only thing to do was to protest, and protest some more. Make waves. My activism and my hobby/passion kind of came together when a group called Friends of Friendship Park formed in 2008 in order to stop the closing of the only place along the entire US/Mex border where friendship and family gatherings could occur, the same place I was holding these common interest themed events. Despite support from political representatives, civil disobedience, talks with higher-ups in Washington DC, publicity in the media, and pressure from religious, environmental, and cultural groups, the secondary wall was erected in the park in 2008 and access was completely prohibited to the bi-national friendship area. We continue to struggle to regain access and established a relationship with local Border Patrol. This is where my clearest experience has been as far as seeing the evidence of a system that imposes and ingrains intolerance. Through my work over the last couple years, I’ve dealt with DHS on a fairly regular basis, namely local Border Patrol and their superiors in Washington DC. I’ve learned that their policy has no room for the idea of friendship and people getting to know each other, having the priveledge of discovering a new perspective on life across cultural barriers. These opportunities still exist through art and other cultural efforts. My hopes for them to be a part of the power structure as opposed to a permanent challenge to it, have dwindled. Perhaps it was naivite from the beginning. David beat Goliath but he never should have had to be in the impossible situation he was and overcome it with a miracle. If he had what was at least a good argument of being the righteous one, why shouldn’t he be on even ground with Goliath? And why couldn’t the two work together to improve the situation? Why does Goliath have to have all the power to start with and why does there need to be an activist “struggle”?
When I started out with the bi-national gatherings that represent my ideals and my childhood passion for getting to know the other it really didn’t seem like that big of deal or that there would be any type of opposition to it. Why would there be if there was an actual space already created and designated for it? My path with Friends of Friendship Park is now to get back to this place, back to the way it was when it wasn’t a big arrangement or struggle, just a simple meeting of friends on a common ground.
The current path of the world brings up questions for me. Is it too late? Is it inevitable that we’re to become a monoculture? Are we on a path of global Starbucks, McDonalds, GM and Walmart supported by a military/media/industrial complex? Is now the real struggle between classes? I feel like my insistence on people getting to know each other across cultures might be a little out dated. Are we so far along the corporate monopoly that the only antagnosim left is along class lines? My friend David, who is a great traveler and linguist says that beneath the superficial appearance of blue jeans, iphones, and French fries, that cultural nuances in foreign countries still hold strong. I hope he’s right. When I see the power being concentrated in the hands of ever less people and ever more across political lines being thrown into the proleteriate box, I wonder about Marx’s idea that the greed and profit over humanity capitalist ideals contributing to the power of the people who are being forced in the box to start a revolution. I honestly hope not because, if the box exploded in violence and destruction of the ruling class I fear that many would die across all classes and I don’t understand how this revolution that Marx predicts would erase the classes and not result in a new ruling class. Should I accept that we’re all more the same now and work toward making a better monoculture? Is diversity in cultures becoming a thing of the past?
