“Let us be reminded that before there is a final solution, there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third. The move toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then another, then another.”
— Toni Morrison, 1995
You might think there’s only one story in the world these days — how humanity is going to survive the global pandemic that’s got so many of us locked down and stocking up for the end of days. But there was one sobering story of human endurance already in full stride before anyone had ever heard of COVID-19 or social distancing, and it’s sure to continue long after: The humanitarian disaster locked up inside ICE detention centers, stranded along the US/Mexico border, and being deported to death as we self-isolate.
It’s a crisis of genocidal proportions, cynically orchestrated by the Trump administration, which, it turns out, is competent in at least one area.
That’s the story The First Solution aims to tell.
The tale unfolds through the voices and actions of the volunteer foot soldiers I met while traveling the Tex/Mex border in January 2020. These accidental heroes continue to fight a guerrilla war for human dignity, flying the tattered flag of American values, as their nation’s leaders right now commit unspeakable human rights violations.
Tired of just being outraged by the smattering of news stories emanating from the border, my husband and I went there as the new year and decade dawned to see for ourselves what was happening. We planned to bear witness from Brownsville to El Paso, with a bit of “we” time in Big Bend in between. But what we witnessed was far worse than we imagined. Indeed, the headlines barely scratched the surface of the cruelty and criminality practiced by the Trump administration.
Once stuck in with Sergio and Mike from Team Brownsville, Cindy and Madeleine of the Angry Tías, Patti from the refugee camp and Joshua and Camilla from the Witness at the Border’s #RestoreAsylumNow#EndMPP vigil, we couldn’t bring ourselves to leave Brownsville.
Trump & Co haven’t just stopped people at border; they’ve stopped their stories from coming across, too. At the urging of all we met, I resolved to capture them and share them in this travelogue of a road trip, and nation, gone awry.
I interviewed humanitarians as well as detainees, tangled with security personnel as we hunted up kids’ jails, and witnessed the poor excuse for due process at the border’s Kafkaesque kangaroo tent courts. I was entrusted with harrowing accounts of perseverance and survival by migrants now living in squalor in Matamoros — one of the most dangerous places on Earth even before COVID-19 joined the Gulf cartel to pose a daily threat to their lives.
Examining the US’s troubled history with racial equality and its southern neighbors, and exposing the profiteers feeding off this human tragedy, I provide context for the stories of humanity and heroism highlighted in The First Solution. My hope is that readers will see themselves in these stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things despite fiercest of odds and become empowered to act on behalf of fairness and justice, dignity and democracy as well.
The challenge is to reach them before November 2020. That is why I’m publishing The First Solution episodically, as I write, right here on Medium. I invite you to share them on.
The stakes are just too high, and the stories too urgent.
Potential publishers, documentarians, collaborators, etc., please don’t hesitate to contact me here.