Texas Border Business
Mission, Texas — The Environmental Awareness Club at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley will hold its annual 6th annual Climate March at the National Butterfly Center this Sunday, March 3, 2018, at 2:00 pm. The march will draw attention to the impacts of climate change, the border wall, immigration, Native rights, and what can be done to address these issues at the national, state and local level.
The march will begin at the visitor’s center and will end on the floating dock that sits on the Rio Grande where speeches and music will be heard. Food vendors, games and music will go until 4:45 p.m.
We call on the immediate cessation of border barrier construction across the U.S. We also call on local leaders to address the harm border barriers will undoubtedly incur on Valley communities. Border walls will fragment endangered habitat, obstruct floodways to and from the Rio Grande, deposses and forcefully relocate residents and landowners who have committed no crime except for building their homes, families, and livelihoods along the Rio Grande Delta, our lifeblood.
We will condemn and call attention to the Trump Administration’s “waivers” of 28 federal laws in order to speed border barrier construction. The ability to “waive” laws discredits the pretense that there is a rule of law. We assert the human rights of our community.
On February 15, President Trump declared a national emergency in order to militarize the Southern US border more than Congress already approved. However, although declaring a national emergency on the Southern Border is to declare war on nobody else other than refugees and border communities, construction of barriers approved in March 2018 began destruction of the La Parida Wildlife Refuge Tract. We reject the militarization of our communities not just from Trump and Republicans but also from Democrats who deal in lesser evils such as border “fences” rather than border “walls”.
We condemn the Border Patrol, its subsidiaries, sister agencies, and overarching Department of Homeland Security as a rogue, paramilitary force responsible for innumerable crimes against humanity, evidence of which should be brought before international criminal tribunals.
Because of these threats to our communities, climate march organizers are calling on local governments and others from across the state, country and other nations, to come together in solidarity with us.
