No Borders! People tend to see borders as those imaginary lines drawn on the surface of the planet by various power-mongers. However within those “borders” that surround “your” country, there are borders. There are areas of “no-go” territory, places of confinement, prisons are borders, those in can’t get out, those out can’t get in. Schools are borders, again once in, your not supposed to get out until the authorities tell you, you can go. They are all around us, detention centres, military property, places of employment, you can’t just walk in, and once in you can’t just walk out, you need somebody’s authority, or you pay a price. Even the glitzy shopping mall, you may go wandering in and leave, in fact you will be encouraged to come in, and you can just walk out, but the owner controls the right of entry, you can be banned from entering and you can be removed, if you don’t function as “expected”, it is not a public space.
Then there are the other type of borders, things you can't have, places that you can't go, barred for financial reasons, these borders are probably the most insidious, they slither through our society, separating the "haves" and the "have-nots", herding the poor into areas of deprivation, and making sure they stay there.
Borders have become so entrenched in our psyche that there are borders we don’t even recognise, they become part and parcel of our life, an accepted fact of this society. This makes it all the more difficult for people to see the dropping of those imaginary lines that the power-mongers drew on the surface of the planet with our blood, but fall they must.
We can never claim to be free when we live in the midst of so many lines we cannot cross without a “higher” authority. We have to recognise all the borders within borders, a place of work should not be a place of confinement, but a place of willing creativity, schools should be an integrated part of our society, not a camp for shaping people to suit the needs of a capitalist “economy”. Prisons should be seen as what they are, an abomination and a scar on humanity, a system of repression.
Freedom means just that, freedom of movement, but must be linked to freedom to stay, with or without “documentation”. Borders are an anathema to freedom, our love of freedom means they will always need to be enforced, by a "higher" and "powerful" authority.
Burn your passport! ... I did it.
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