Imagine There's No Countries

            I knew at the beginning of this project that I wanted to make a poster about immigration reform, however due to the fact that immigration is a topic that is currently in the limelight finding an issue within the subject was not easy. Especially since my ‘Textual Poaching’ assignment was involved in the subject of immigration reform, I knew that touching the same subject again was a hard sell. But I felt that I shouldn’t shy away from the challenge, or something in which I believe so profoundly.

            I explored a variety of issues within the immigration subject but most issues I felt did not meet the requirement of being ‘inadequately represented’. After reading a few articles (see links below) I found a thought that I struggled to remove from my head. This thought was the contradictory nature of walls and freedom, the fact that we are building and want to continue building bigger and “better” walls to keep people out. I thought about other famous walls, the first two walls I thought of was ‘The Great Wall of China’ and ‘The Berlin Wall’. Both actually were good options considering the violent history of the construction of China’s wall, and the liberty limiting history of Berlin’s. I decided that Berlin’s wall to be more poignant due to it’s youth in history, and it's relation to liberty. When I searched ‘berlin wall’ I discovered this comic that in turn became the inspiration and thesis for my poster.

The historic words of President Reagan when he cried out “Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall!” rang in my ears as I conceptualized and designed my poster, I wanted to combine two images that would represent the similarities of the Berlin Wall and the U.S. Mexican Border Fence, that would bring together these two moments in history. This was the resulting piece.

After I showed it to my wife and uploaded it awaiting responses my wife mentioned that I was being singularly minded to the U.S. public by posting it solely in English. This reminded me of what Chimamanda Adiche spoke about in her presentation at TED, when she detailed how when she was growing up the only stories available to her where British stories or American stories. I realized the border wall isn’t a decision and an issue solely for Americans, but for Mexicans as well. There voice has been completely ignored on the issue, while the U.S. congress debates how much funding the project deserves. By only releasing my poster in English I too was playing to that tune. So I sat down for another short while and reproduced my poster in Spanish so that all Mexicans could contemplate it's message as well.

So with both of these posters released on my Facebook I bunkered down and waited for the debates to ensue… two days later, nada! I was disappointed and began to re-share the posters hoping to engage some kind of conversation. I didn’t achieve this until the very night that I sat down to write this blog. My friend wasn’t very aggressive but inquisitive about my perspective, by the end of the conversation it resulted in me saying “Freedom is a world without walls, it’s countries with no borders” to which he responded “So it’s a world without countries?” Bingo! This conversation was productive, and even though I wasn't successful in initiating a heated debate about how silly a border wall is, it was great to evolve my point of view by having a sincere conversation with another person. John Lennon said it best, "Imagine there's no countries, It isn't hard to do... Imagine all the people, Living life in peace... You may say that I'm a dreamer, But I'm not the only one, I hope someday you'll join us, And the world will be as one."

1.http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/immigration

2.http://www.fairus.org/issues

3.http://www.no-border-wall.com/

4.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/washington/21fence.html?ref=borderfenceusmexico&_r=0

5.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall

6.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico%E2%80%93United_States_barrier

7.Imagine- John Lennon