The Ex-Worker

Welcome to Episode 10 of No Wall They Can Build, the Ex-Worker Podcast’s serialized audiobook exploring borders and migration across North America. Over the past two months, we’ve explored the ins and outs of irregular migration across the US/Mexico border. Where does it leave us? As the crises produced by climate change and economic exploitations intensify across the world, revolutions turn in to wars, which beget tyranny, which in turn provoke revolutions. In this climate of escalating chaos, what can we do? This episode explores the meaning of revolution in the twenty-first century, looking at the forms it has taken and assessing what it would take to defend it today. The Zapatista struggle offers one of the most durable and promising models of autonomy we’ve seen in recent decades—yet the limits it has encountered point towards unavoidable contradictions facing those who wish to avoid warfare and bloodshed but also cannot defend their achievements against remorseless foes without the force of arms. A harrowing story about the siege of San Juan Copala, an indigenous community whose effort to secure autonomy from the Mexican state was brutally crushed, illustrates the agonizing dilemma that faces would-be revolutionaries today. This episode offers an unflinching look at the perils confronting those who would defy these global systems driving displacement and death, setting the stage for our final installment next week on solidarity and coming home. {June 6th, 2019}   -------SHOW NOTES------   Table of Contents: Introduction {0:01} From East to West {0:14} Chaos and Order {6:25} Story 1: The Parable of the River {10:35} Transformation {16:25} Frederick Douglass on Struggle {16:35} Revolution {17:42} A Hard Lesson {20:40} Story 2: The Siege of San Juan Copala {27:10} A Last Word From Malcolm X {39:50} Conclusion {40:04} Note: For this audiobook, we will not provide full transcripts of the text of each episode as we do for The Ex-Worker or The Hotwire. If you want to read along, you can find the book in PDF. This week’s episode covers pages 174 to 196. You can check out our poster diagramming the North American border regime and immigrant solidarity stickers. Stay tuned next week for the final episode in the series—Episode 11: From East to West, Part II: Solidarity, and Home.  

Welcome to Episode 9 of No Wall They Can Build, the Ex-Worker Podcast’s serialized audiobook exploring borders and migration across North America. The border doesn’t end at the border: the violent regime of citizenship constrains and ruins lives throughout the north, as a chilling story of a narrow escape from death makes clear. Yet this ongoing migration constitutes, against all odds, a powerful form of resistance that is changing the United States in unpredictable ways. This installment begins to explore what it might take to actually end death in the desert—which would also mean dismantling the global systems of exploitation, colonialism, white supremacy, and state power that lie at its roots. We can take inspiration and strategic guidance from some of the stories that appear in this episode, ranging from an extraordinary migrant whose ingenuity and determination helped him to survive multiple crossings against unthinkable odds to a team of civil disobedience activists whose simple action managed to briefly grind part of the migrant detention industrial complex to a halt. Listening won’t offer a single path, program, or tactic that’s guaranteed to work, but rather a way of thinking about resistance at multiple points of intervention that can start wherever you are. Whatever action you take, it’s time to take sides.   -------SHOW NOTES------   Table of Contents: Introduction {0:01} Immigrants {0:43} Story #1: A Solidarity Offering {2:04} Migration as Resistance {3:42} Story #2: The Fragility of a Life {7:53} John Brown’s Prophecy {11:33} Choosing Sides {12:00} Where to Start {17:41} Story 3: A Real American Hero {20:17} Resistance: Points of Intervention {28:35} Story 4: Shutting Down Operation Streamline {31:14} “Live to be Free…” {37:55} Conclusion {38.35} Note: For this audiobook, we will not provide full transcripts of the text of each episode as we do for The Ex-Worker or The Hotwire. If you want to read along, you can find the book in PDF. This week’s episode covers pages 153 to 173. You can check out our poster diagramming the North American border regime and immigrant solidarity stickers. Stay tuned next week for Episode 10: From East to West, Part I - Chaos and Order, and Transformation.  

Welcome to Episode 8 of No Wall They Can Build, the Ex-Worker Podcast’s serialized audiobook exploring borders and migration across North America. This installment continues to explore the reality of border policy by taking a closer look at the agency that enforces it, describing the atrocities that its agents perpetrate and their mindsets to justify it. The Border Patrol is merely one of the largest and most vicious players in a game that brings lucrative profits to a host of players on both sides of the border, at the expense of the vulnerable migrants who are driven into the desert. The episode concludes with a discussion of the environmental landscape of the desert itself and a poignant reflection on its harsh beauty, envisioning the healing of the land when one day it will no longer be scarred by borders. {May 22, 2019}   -------SHOW NOTES------   Table of Contents: Introduction {0:01} Story #1: Fleeing the Dogs {0:46} Assata Shakur: On Morality and Power {4:32} The Border Patrol {4:49} Story #2: The Hills Have Eyes {10:30} The Game {12:25} The Desert {14:27} Story #3: Under the Blue Sky and the Merciless Sun {16:02} Conclusion {18:52} Important Action Alert: No More Deaths is asking that supporters around the US take a moment this week through May 24th to call the US Attorney’s office in Arizona to demand that the government drop all charges against volunteer Scott Warren, who faces felony charges for humanitarian aid work in the desert. Please follow this link for contact information and a script to follow when you call. It will only take a moment, but will be an important gesture of solidarity. Please do it! For this audiobook, we will not provide full transcripts of the text of each episode as we do for The Ex-Worker or The Hotwire. If you want to read along, you can find the book in PDF. This week’s episode covers pages 140 to 152. Episodes 7 and 8 comprise Designed to Kill, which was originally released as a ‘zine in 2011. You can read or print the zine version here. You can check out our poster diagramming the North American border regime and immigrant solidarity stickers. Stay tuned next week for Episode 9: The North.    

Welcome to Episode 7 of No Wall They Can Build, the Ex-Worker Podcast’s serialized audiobook exploring borders and migration across North America. The Border Patrol, with its swollen budget and lavish technologies, clearly has the technical capacity to stop most, if not all, traffic across the border, yet their behavior seems to be at odds with their stated objective. This installment investigates the actual goal of border policy—which is not to end “illegal immigration,” but to control and manage it. While preventing this migration altogether would have catastrophic effects on the US economy, using selective enforcement to funnel traffic into increasingly remote areas while militarizing and hyper-policing certain areas maintains the labor supply while ratcheting up the profits to be made at every step in the process. A variety of stories—some heartbreaking, some hilarious—illustrate how this approach to enforcement impacts the lives of everyday people as they attempt to travel north into the United States. This episode identifies the various parties—both Republicans and Democrats, private prison and tech corporations, Mexican officials and cartels—who benefit from this counter-intuitive and cruel border policy… while reminding us of its horrific cost in human lives. {May 15, 2019}   -------SHOW NOTES------   Table of Contents: “Answer the Question of Who Benefits or Profits Most…” {0:01} Introduction {0:24} Designed to Kill: Who Benefits? {0:53} Story #1: Lost in the Desert {3:01} The Real Objective of the Border Patrol {4:27} Why No One Really Wants to Stop “Illegal Immigration” {6:20} The Politics and Economics of Border Policy {10:03} Story #2: Desperation {20:00} The Profits of Border Militarization {23:35} Dangers Along the Trail {28:00} Story #3: Good Guides and Bad Guides {30:59} The Unholy Trinity: Governments, Corporations, Cartels {33:07} Story #3: Nacho, Chucho, and Don Bigotes {35:32} Conclusion {42:54} Important Action Alert: No More Deaths is asking that supporters around the US take a moment this week and next week to call the US Attorney’s office in Arizona to demand that the government drop all charges against volunteer Scott Warren, who faces felony charges for humanitarian aid work in the desert. Please follow this link for contact information and a script to follow when you call. It will only take a moment, but will be an important gesture of solidarity. Please do it! Content advisory: in the section “Dangers Along the Trail,” beginning around 28:00, there is a brief discussion of the forms of violence, including sexual assault, to which migrants are vulnerable when crossing through the desert. For this audiobook, we will not provide full transcripts of the text of each episode as we do for The Ex-Worker or The Hotwire. If you want to read along, you can find the book in PDF. This week’s episode covers pages 115 to 140. Episodes 7 and 8 comprise Designed to Kill, which was originally released as a ‘zine in 2011. You can read or print the zine version here. You can check out our poster diagramming the North American border regime and immigrant solidarity stickers. Stay tuned next week for Episode 8: Designed to Kill, Part II – The Border Patrol, The Game, and The Desert.  

Welcome to Episode 6 of No Wall They Can Build, the Ex-Worker Podcast’s serialized audiobook exploring borders and migration across North America. This installment investigates the three-tiered border and the process of crossing it, focusing on the places where the most deaths occur—southern Arizona and South Texas. The story of Arivaca, a small community of ranchers and hippies, shows how state arrogance and vigilante brutality turned the population towards solidarity with migrants. The complex politics of the Tohono O’odham reservation at Komkch’ed e Wah ‘osithk (Sells) reflect the fraught relationship between migration, colonialism, and the challenges facing indigenous communities today. The barren deserts and army base lands around Ajo mark some of the most grim and hazardous terrain of the entire border, while the recent surge in deaths around Falfurrias indicates the urgent need for further solidarity. Explanation of the actual mechanics of crossing the border, and the terrible perils faced by vulnerable migrants along the way, is supplemented by a poignant story about two flawed heroes of the desert. This episode paints a vivid picture of where and how migration into the United States actually happens, and the dangers stalking every step across the harsh landscape of the borderlands. {May 8, 2019}   -------SHOW NOTES------   Table of Contents: If You Hear the Dogs, Keep Going {0:01} Introduction {0:52} The Border {1:11} Arivaca {6:26} Story 1: El Pelón and Crazy Mark {14:05} Komkch’ed e Wah ‘osithk (Sells) {19:22} Ajo {24:05} Falfurrias {26:40} Story 2: Calling 911 {34:08} The Crossing {36:23} Conclusion {39:55} Please take a moment to read this powerful article from the Intercept on the prosecution of No More Deaths volunteer Scott Warren: “Bodies in the Borderlands”. Note: For this audiobook, we will not provide full transcripts of the text of each episode as we do for The Ex-Worker or The Hotwire. If you want to read along, you can find the book in PDF. This week’s episode covers pages 90 to 113. You can check out our poster diagramming the North American border regime and immigrant solidarity stickers. Stay tuned next week for Episode 7: Designed to Kill, Part I – Who Benefits?.    

Happy May Day, everyone! Welcome to Episode 5 of No Wall They Can Build, the Ex-Worker Podcast’s serialized audiobook exploring borders and migration across North America. Having discussed the political and economic forces that drive migration north, this week’s installment examines how people get from Central America to the US/Mexico border. The routes vary in risk and cost, and are stratified depending on a traveler’s wealth and nationality, from navigating the expensive and infuriating process of attempting to secure a visa to braving La Bestia, the notoriously dangerous freight trains heading north. Some hazard the northeastern route to Reynosa through Zetas cartel territory, while many traverse the northwestern route to Altar through Sinaloa cartel lands and towards the Sonoran desert. The “unaccompanied minors crisis” of 2013–2014 serves as a case study for how the machinations of powerful states, cartels, and corporations can impact the lives of migrants. Understanding the dynamics of border crossing requires an in-depth look at the economics of the marijuana trade, concluding with a thought-provoking analysis of politics of drug legalization and an unflinching look at the customs and border patrol corruption that makes the trade possible. This episode reframes our understanding of the multi-stage process of migrating north and the power relations and economic imperatives that shape the experiences of migrants as they set off into the desert towards the United States. {May 1, 2019}   -------SHOW NOTES------   Table of Contents: Introduction {0:01} L.A. Onda, “How To Stop a Wound From Bleeding” {0:13} The Trip {1:13} Story #1: Rethinking the “Unaccompanied Minors Crisis” {12:55} The Product: Capital {16:54} The Product: Labor {25:10} Conclusion {30:21} Note: For this audiobook, we will not provide full transcripts of the text of each episode as we do for The Ex-Worker or The Hotwire. If you want to read along, you can find the book in PDF. This week’s episode covers pages 69 to 89. You can check out our poster diagramming the North American border regime and immigrant solidarity stickers. Stay tuned next week for Episode 6: The Border.    

Welcome to Episode 4 of No Wall They Can Build, the Ex-Worker Podcast’s serialized audiobook exploring borders and migration across North America. This week’s installment continues the previous episode’s exploration of the conditions south of the border that drive migration north by surveying the situation in the three countries of the “Northern Triangle.” Guatemala’s malnourished, heavily indigenous population languishes in poverty under oligarchic rule, the legacy of centuries of colonialism and a devastating civil war. Our narrator analyzes the numerous problems plaguing the country and examines the unfinished struggle for freedom and dignity that prompted the war, including its impact on global revolutionary imagination through its influence on the Zapatistas. The horrifying levels of violence in El Salvador trace their roots both to economic pressures and to US support for the former reactionary military regime during a bloody civil war. The section concludes with a hair-raising anecdote about the guerrilla movement’s creative revenge against a genocidal army officer. A brief note on the profound dysfunction of Honduras, stemming from the structure of North American economy, is followed by a discussion of the tensions between these four Central American nations and their inhabitants. This episode rounds out our picture of the recent history of the region and the dynamics that push people from their homelands on the perilous trip towards the US/Mexico border. {April 24, 2019}   -------SHOW NOTES------   Table of Contents: Introduction {0:01} Guatemala {0:35} Story #1: The Influence of the Guerrilla Movement {16:30} El Salvador {17:40} Story #2: Revenge at El Mozote {25:05} Honduras {28:07} Story #3: A Souvenir {30:52} Tensions {31:22} Conclusion {34:51} Note: For this audiobook, we will not provide full transcripts of the text of each episode as we do for The Ex-Worker or The Hotwire. If you want to read along, you can find the book in PDF. You can check out our poster diagramming the North American border regime and immigrant solidarity stickers. Stay tuned next week for Episode 5: The Trip and The Product.    

Welcome to Episode 3 of No Wall They Can Build, the Ex-Worker Podcast’s serialized audiobook exploring borders and migration across North America. This installment begins exploring the conditions south of the border that drive migration north by exploring the recent history and economy of Mexico. As NAFTA’s “free trade” policies impoverished and displaced millions, border militarization altered previous patterns of seasonal migration and established a permanent undocumented underclass of millions in the United States. The author cuts through myths around the “drug war,” helping to explain the complex web of players from the Sinaloa and Zetas cartels to the Mexican state and the social movements that contest them both—and how the situation might be transformed, if US drug and immigration policies changed. The episode concludes with an inspiring story of the determined and colorful resistance to state violence by the community of San Salvador Atenco. This episode provides a brief introduction to the fierce, many-sided conflicts across Mexico resulting from the actions of the US government and exacerbated by the Mexican state and cartels, but always contested by popular forces. {April 17, 2019}   -------SHOW NOTES------   Table of Contents: Introduction {0:01} The South {0:25} Mexico: Labor, “Free Trade,” and the Roots of Migration {1:25} Mexico: Cartels, the State, and the “Drug War” {9:24} Story #1: San Salvador Atenco {23:21} Conclusion {26:34} Note: For this audiobook, we will not provide full transcripts of the text of each episode as we do for The Ex-Worker or The Hotwire. If you want to read along, you can find the book in PDF. You can check out our poster diagramming the North American border regime and immigrant solidarity stickers. Stay tuned next week for Episode 4: The South, Part 2 – Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.  

Welcome to Episode 2 of No Wall They Can Build, the Ex-Worker Podcast’s serialized audiobook exploring borders and migration across North America. This installment continues last week’s introduction by Defining Terms—just what do we mean by the border, migrants, refugees, solidarity workers, and other key phrases? To begin the long section describing movement From South to North, The Aftermath lays out an unflinching view of the 500-year history of colonization, slavery, and genocide on which today’s capitalist economy and border regimes are based, followed by a harrowing tale of survival by a desert migrant. The Travelers lays out the forces pushing migrants from Mexico and the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras) north towards the United States, illustrating the economics of the situation through a moving story in which migrants and solidarity workers work out the mathematics of international exploitation together. This chapter demystifies the basic dynamics at play in North American migration and evocatively illustrates their human cost. {April 10, 2019}   -------SHOW NOTES------   Table of Contents: The United States Is War {0:01} Introduction {0:22} Defining Terms {0:42} The Aftermath {4:24} Story #1 {7:45} The Travelers {10:06} Story #2 {17:11} Conclusion {20:56} Note: For this audiobook, we will not provide full transcripts of the text of each episode as we do for The Ex-Worker or The Hotwire. If you want to read along, you can find the book in PDF. This week we heard discussion about intervention in a Border Patrol stop in Tucson, AZ and a roundup of resistance to border wall construction and ICE around the country. You can check out our poster diagramming the North American border regime and immigrant solidarity stickers. Stay tuned next week for Episode 3: The South, Part 1 - Mexico.      

The Ex-Worker Podcast Collective is kicking off the serialized release of our first full audiobook, No Wall They Can Build: A Guide to Borders and Migration Across North America. We’ve divided this riveting first person account of life and death in the borderlands into eleven chapters, and over the next three months, we’ll be releasing them in weekly installments each Wednesday. Today, you’ll hear Episode 1: Introduction, which describes how the book was written by a solidarity worker along the US/Mexico border over years of trials and tribulations, and lays out a basic framework for understanding the global apartheid enforced by the border regime. You’ll hear a heartbreaking story about the brutality of migrant detention, and an inspiring one about surviving the journey north against all odds. This episode sets the stage for the in-depth analysis and longer stories of the chapters to come. {April 3, 2019}   -------SHOW NOTES------   Table of Contents: Introducing the Border {0:01} Title and Front Matter {1:18} Dedication {2:02} Preface {2:11} Epigraph, from Mojado by Ricardo Arjona {3:37} Story #1 {4:35} Introduction {11:17} Story #2 {18:43} Epigraph, from Edward Abbey {20:44} Conclusion {21:08} Note: For this audiobook, we will not provide full transcripts of the text of each episode as we do for The Ex-Worker or The Hotwire. If you want to read along, you can find the book in PDF. Also, you can check out our poster diagramming the North American border regime and immigrant solidarity stickers. As we mentioned in our episode announcing the audiobook launch, the claim made in this episode that no volunteer with No More Deaths has ever been convicted of a crime for their humanitarian work in the desert, while true at the time the book was published, is no longer accurate. For the latest updates on the legal charges facing solidarity workers along the border, keep an eye on the No More Deaths legal defense campaign. If you’re feeling inspired to take action, follow the latest from the #BlockTheWall network. You can also check out this interview by the Final Straw with Comunidad Colectiva, a North Carolina-based group doing rapid response anti-ICE organizing. Stay tuned next week for Episode 2: Defining Terms, The Aftermath, and The Travelers.