In Search Of Real Americans

The people at our southern border have come here because deep inside, they have a strong desire for freedom, a reasonable expectation of justice and a powerful instinct for democracy.

I think that says quite a bit about them - but it says even more about the people who see them as enemies, and want to keep them out.

Jesus Rodriguez, Politico Magazine:

The caravan migrants who arrived at the border nearly a month ago don’t have a country. But they do have a government.

In the time since the caravan left Honduras in mid-October, the asylum-seekers have fashioned a proto-democracy out of their group of some 6,000 migrants overwhelmingly from Central America, most of whom have walked for most of the trip, at times hitching rides in the backs of cars or trucks.

To hear President Donald Trump tell it, the caravan is nothing more than a “lawless” mob of potentially violent criminals. But dozens of phone interviews and WhatsApp conversations with advocacy groups and migrants, as well as social media updates from groups on the ground, show that the migrants have organized a surprisingly sophisticated ruling structure, complete with everything from a press shop to a department of public works.

When the migrants needed to make public announcements, debate the best routes and vote on different plans, they established a nightly general assembly as a forum open to all, Athens-style. Their legislative floor was an abandoned truck parking lot or an unused sports stadium. Some of the migrants even took turns as communications directors, drafting press statements that were transmitted through a media group of more than 370 journalists on WhatsApp.


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Ask some on the right to define the caravan and they might conspire about highly organized hordes of criminals funded by the Venezuelan state or billionaire philanthropist George Soros who want to rush the American border. (“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Trump said Oct. 31 in reference to the Soros claim, one day after the migrants elected their Governance and Dialogue Council.) Some liberals, on the other hand, will try to convince you that this is a hapless, hopeless lot with no agency, no rights and no recourse for help.

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The only U.S. government representative who has taken action so far has been Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who traveled to the border in early December and helped broker the passage of five asylum-seekers across the border. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) swiftly criticized Jayapal, blasting her as a “congressional coyote.”

(Walter) Coello, the Honduran migrant who once had to negotiate for his life with MS-13, thinks he could rise above the classic Washington mudslinging and appeal to a higher sense of humanity. He knows exactly how he would lobby Trump if he was sitting across from him.

“First, may God bless you,” Coello would say. “We want work. We are not criminals. We hope that God will soften your heart.”

You know we're going to see The Ten Commandments at some point between now and Year Year's Day. And you know I'm about to reference the scenes where Chuck Heston's saying let my people go and Ann Baxter's fucking with Yul Brynner "hardeneing Pharoah's heart", right?  And I knew you knew that.