MARCH OF SILENCE
December 7th, 2008
12 noon
Starts at: Hollister St. & Tocayo Ave.
San Diego, CA 9215
Organized by the Raza Rights Coalition
With a cacophony of sounds heavy machinery opens way for the installation of the wall of death in the last corner of the open wound, the US-Mexico border. A place where ancestral lands meet the Pacific Ocean, a place where families come together, couples come to celebrate their love, regardless of the walls, regardless of disruptive destruction going on around them.
Using the dictatorial powers given to them, the Department of Homeland Security has chosen to disregard any civil rights, and has chosen to ignore the law. This has created a constitutional limbo at the border, where the government has imposed itself and destruction takes place.
Long has been the martyrdom of this border, there have been many deaths, and multiple abuses committed against our communities. We have carried with this tremendous burden always, from here, from this forgotten corner of the earth, we have held high the principles of dignity, justice, and liberty These concepts have come under attack by the laws that those in power have imposed, but that we have revindicated, and continue to struggle to defend them to make them a reality.
Friendship Park, a spectator in the horrifying reality of the border, where sea and wall meet, continues to be the place where for decades has been a meeting place for our people, to laugh, to sing, to meditate, to cry, to celebrate, to listen, to love, to play, and to believe that another world is possible. The government seeks to destroy this.
The Raza Rights Coalition, today makes the call to our people, to students, to the youth, to the intellectuals, to artitsts, to those who fight for environmental rights, to the working class, to religious people, to all those of us who live on this border, to all those who continue believing in that other world, to unite forces, to fight, to march with us to save Friendship Park and way NO! To the wall of death.
This time we will march in silence, so that our silence breaks the discord of the destruction of this place by the government, that imposes multi-million dollar walls, walls of death in our community. For those from above that impose, remember that the power of silence is not where its headed, but where its coming from. Our silence works to open the lines of communication, so that never a day goes again where someone dares say that the horror that is this border is justified, that it is a necessary evil, and that it is for our security.
No one can give us a voice, a stranger's voice does not belong in our throats. We are not those without a voice, we are those who have fought so our people do not have to live in shame, we are those who will place ears on those who have refused to listen to us, and our silence will me much louder than the horrifying one coming from the mechanized wall of death.
Let us struggle now, for change belongs to all of us, we are the change. Let us struggle now because this wall will come rumbling down.