Welcome to the pod, John Washington! He’s just published a great new book called The Case for Open Borders, and on KK&F this week, for our 161st episode, we’re asking him to lay out that case for us. What would it mean, in the midst of a humanitarian crisis — when conservative border policies mean brutality and loss of human life for people seeking safety and opportunity in the U.S. — to radically reimagine border policy in this way? What (if anything) is gained by our current punitive, murderous system, and what does humanity stand to gain by the United States getting rid of that system?
Image from Haymarket Books
We hope you’ll join us for this urgent conversation with a brilliant thinker on his fascinating new book. If you’re a paying subscriber to KK&F — only $5 a month! — you can access the video version of our convo when it’s released Friday night. Everyone else can tune in Saturday evening when the episode drops as a podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and other major streaming platforms. See you soon!
Let's stop using the term "conservative" to describe right wing nut jobs. It affords them a legitimacy they don't deserve.
For most of human history there were no borders to keep well-meaning people from entering or leaving a place. The USA began with exclusions of people from China and then expanded exclusions to other groups but not all. People might have had identity paperwork to tell where they came from but not as an exclusion criteria. Back and forth from Mexico and Canada were well accepted visits from Neighbors. Captive people, seeking freedom often went to Mexico or Canada to escape racist policies and laws. Let's start with neighbors where we can share, develop and plan cooperative ways of solving the climate crisis, if for no other reason., ( like trade, employment, utility and grid expansion, protections from dangerous chemicals in food and products, and about a million other reasons like watersheds, wildlife and yes, humans moving to survive climate calamity that can befall us any time.