On April 25, the Patagonia Town Council voted to join 34 other borderlands communities to adopt a No Border Wall resolution. Patagonia will join a collective of municipalities whose goal is convincing lawmakers that a $25B wall is not only unnecessary, it is expensive to taxpayers, damaging to borderland ecosystems, and deadly, for both crossers and for residents within floodplains.
I was one of the 40 people attending the Town Council meeting that evening, during which many area residents spoke. While some may argue that taking a stance on border enforcement policy is outside the Patagonia Town Council’s purview, the concern and commitment of those present demonstrates otherwise.
Speakers included Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada, who shared Customs and Border Protection statistics which reveal that the majority of drugs are moved in vehicles through ports of entry, arguing that the border wall is an inefficient use of taxpayer resources; Exelee Budd, a senior at PUHS; Dan Millis, Sierra Club Borderlands Program Coordinator, who argued that the border wall impedes migrating wildlife and flowing waterways; Patagonia resident Julie Olbrantz, who gave statistics on border crossing deaths; Cesar Lopez, of the group Seeds/Semillas, a grassroots youth leadership group in Nogales, who spoke about the harm the border wall has caused in his bi-national community; and India Aubrey, of Voices From the Border (VFTB), who said that as a border community, Patagonia has “a duty and a responsibility to justly represent the reality of life in the borderlands to the millions of people in our nation who don’t know what it’s like to actually live here.” Members of VFTB brought along postcards, signed by 100 Patagonians in favor of the resolution.
In adopting the resolution, the town of Patagonia is not acting alone – we’re standing alongside dozens of other borderland communities. I’m inspired witnessing democracy work. Patagonians requested action from our local government, and the elected officials acted on our behalf. My hope is that the thoughtful action of Patagonia’s Town Council will spark the adoption of No Border Wall resolutions in neighboring communities. And that the addition of each community’s collective voice will magnify our truth – that the borderlands do not need to be further divided.