Thread by @memomiller

1/ Yesterday was publication day for Build Bridges, Not Walls.Always a nerve-wracking affair, but especially for a book that will question borders and insist it is time to imagine something radically different. citylights.com/book/?GCOI=872…
Check out the video.Or follow this thread:

https://twitter.com/CityLightsBooks/status/1379496953734520835

2/ It is a book based on more than a decade of reporting on the fortification of borders around the world: thousands of miles of walls, barriers,surveillance towers, high-tech cameras, ground sweeping radar, implanted motion sensors, biometric systems.

tni.org/en/morethanawa…

3/Of reporting on armed, neo-colonial border guards filling and preparing to fill prisons with the climate displaced and those on the wrong side of a highly racialized inequality divide.(2,153 billionaires have more money than 4.6 billion people combined?) citylights.com/book/?GCOI=872…

4/ And of reporting on a U.S. border that doesn’t know borders. versobooks.com/books/2908-emp…

5/ All this comes together to create a perpetual humanitarian/displacement crisis (a border can never be IN a crisis, that is a joke), the constant brutalization of human beings on the US Mexico border, on the Mexico Guatemala border,DR-Haiti border,Jordan-Syria border, etc etc

6/ And because of this I consulted refugees, migrants, philosophers, poets, visionaries, scholars, rebels, indigenous people, borderlanders, border agents, politicians, journalists, activists,a Franciscan monk,a Buddhist Dharma teacher,song writers,artists,children, among others.

7/ What results is a calling for a more humane world, a more just world, a world donde quepan muchos mundos, as the Zapatistas say, a world where many worlds fit, a world based in dignity, respect, kindness, and love for our fellow human beings and the living planet.

8/ It is a call for“modest criminality”and a“fugitive spirit,” as put byNigerian visionaryBayo Akomolafe.A move towards sanctuary and shifting shapes to “places that are not there yet,not yet dawned,not yet built, places where failure meet success,amniotic places still emerging.”

9/ And it is call for abolition. As put by abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “if we want to think about a world without borders, we have to live as if borders can go.”

10/ It is a call for artificial borders to melt away and the interconnectedness to be cherished. Like with the subterranean mycelial networks of trees, this is a way we can weather the 21st century storms, and begin to build something new, perhaps even a more beautiful world.

11/ A world where, as my 5 year old says at the end of the above video, border walls can be crushed, melted down, and turned into bikes.

A special thanks to @brandonshimoda, @ANaomiPaik, @BenEhrenreich, @deanspade, @nickwestes, @adamconover, @jbwashing, @ReeceJonesUH, and John Gibler for your generous endorsements of the book. I am very grateful.

Oh and @Oswaldo__Zavala! Somehow I managed to erase your handle before posting! Thank you, and much gratitude.

And finally to launch the book, I will be in conversation tomorrow night (April 8) with @nickwestes at 6 pm PT/9pm ET. The event will be hosted by @CityLightsBooks. I hope to see you there! eventbrite.com/e/todd-miller-…