Confronting the Cruelest Policy of All
My Journey from Outrage to Activism to Abolition Begins
It was family separation and “kids in cages” that first compelled me to the US southern borderlands. But personal family milestones and emergencies kept me away until January 2020. When I finally got there, I thought it was to witness the many humanitarian crises kicked off by the Trump administration — and to serve. What I found was far worse: a decades-old, many-headed hydra that enabled their wretched band to crank the cruelty to 11. Sadly, Biden has yet to reduce the volume.
Showing us a better way forward are the humanitarians and heroic defenders of human rights. Now, all over the world, wherever borders have hardened and grown deeper, taller, and increasingly cruel, you will find everyday people doing extraordinary things to welcome strangers with the dignity they deserve, even if nations will not.
My 2020 road trip transformed into a journey of awakening. Documenting it became my pandemic project. And what started as a series of stand-alone tales, published in Medium as a Get Out The Vote effort, has become a story collection, memoir, history lesson, and exposé all in one.
Launching in November 2023, THE FIRST SOLUTION: TALES OF HUMANITY FROM THE BORDERLANDS charts my adventure from outrage to activism to abolition as I unpeel, layer by “broken” layer, a deterrence-to-detention-to-deportation pipeline set up to fail everyone — save the profiteers and demagogues who benefit from it — and has fast become the US’s most shameful export, driving a global apartheid.
Yet within this complex of cruelty, there is hope: in the extraordinary acts of ordinary heroes, who prove, every day, there is a better way. By elevating their voices and celebrating their efforts, I aim to show that we can welcome with dignity. In unmasking the real root causes of the so-called “crisis” in global migration, I hope to compel everyone to act before the first solution becomes a second, even a third, as we surge pell-mell toward a conclusion history will not soon forgive, nor forget.
Subscribe to get sneak peeks from THE FIRST SOLUTION: TALES OF HUMANITY FROM THE BORDERLANDS in your inbox at least twice each month. You’ll earn a front-row seat to my race to publication and become part of the Launch Team for the podcast I’m starting to support the book.
Please share this post with others who care about these issues as deeply as you and I do, and who also appreciate a good yarn!
Together, we can touch hearts and minds. Together we can create a movement — while there’s still time! — because #CrueltyIsNotOk.