Yellow-headed blackbirds (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus) settling in the bulrushes where they will roost overnight. I estimated the flock at about 2000 birds. At the Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area near McNeal, Arizona.
Wow! It was great to see hundreds of our neighbors show up today to protest the short-sighted, environmentally disastrous plan to extend the border wall across the San Pedro River.
Below is a short address given by environmental activist Michael Gregory at the Hands Across the River rally, held today on the banks of the San Pedro River in Hereford, Arizona. The San Pedro is the last free-flowing river in the southwest, and it is threatened by the construction of a pointless, unnecessary wall on the border with Mexico. In a way, the wall, and its impacts in a small corner of southern Arizona, are an emblem and a cautionary example of the way democratic norms are being eroded and abandoned in the United States. It’s a small river, in a small part of the country, but everyone who cares about such things needs to know. Michael has given his gracious permission to share his brief remarks here. I agree with every word.
In 1988, thirty-one years ago, after more than ten years of public campaign and political horse-trading, the endangered San Pedro Riparian Area was given federal legal protection in a bill passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by President Reagan.
Now another president is trying to override dozens of laws and regulations — including the one that created the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area — in order to build a wall that will serve no purpose but political ambition.
The wall is
• an environmental disaster and biological obscenity
• a humanitarian disgrace and monument to racism
• an economic swindle and engineering embarrassment
• a political power-grab and national security hoax
Dithyramb 