The people who actually live by the border wall
Elliot Ross: "The singular most surprising thing going into
this was seeing this core issue of building a wall as not this really
divisive thing. Within the national discourse it is, but once you get to the borderland and meet the people who live with the border as a part of their daily life, across the board, rather than it being a divisive issue, it's one that brings people together in opposition. That was
surprising to us.
From far right to far left, and for different
reasons. The Republicans have very Republican reasons: They want to
avoid federal overreach — and the government coming in and taking their
land, using eminent domain for the border, is the definition of federal
overreach.
For all the thousands of people that we met, we only met a handful who
were pro construction of the wall, and that's something that is not
really acknowledged. I feel like so much of this conversation is driven
when anecdotes are needed from a very few select group of people, most
of whom don’t even live in the borderland."
Photo credit: Eliot Moss