letnotutbeaz

Daily Herald story
Deseret News story
Couldn't find anything on ksl or sltrib.

I was glad to be one of the I'd say 150+ people who braved the descending cold to be on the steps of the Utah State Capitol building. Though I can't help seeing chants from a meta perspective, sometimes shouting along, but often just amused by them.

Good speakers, though not always the best speeches. Each speech cycled to hit the same key phrases, which works as a kind of poetic rhetorical mnemonic, but i'ts a bit on the blunt side.

I signed up for United for Social Justice's mailing list, though for the time being I work during their meeting times. I'm leery of the other group there, the UVU Revolutionary Student Union. Their main organizer is clearly bright, passionate, and dedicated, but they go out of their way to specifically say they're not closed to those who believe in violence.

Ideally, I like the idea of open borders. In a free world, anyone should be able to live where they like. Practicality should consist not in lamenting the impossibility of the ideal while reinforcing its opposite, but in working incrementally to make the reality more like the ideal.

Nations are an occasionally useful fiction. Fixed borders are a more recent and philosophically suspect notion. The borders of a place were the vague area where a power couldn't reliably project its control.

It's ironic and hypocritical to blast the people coming to our shores and borders when what drives them here is economic situations often imposed on their home countries by our corporations, our strategic doctrines, and our Department of State.

Our laws need to be reformed to make legal immigration easier, and yes, amnesty will need to figure into that. Stricter enforcement of bad laws won't fix a broken system. Strict enforcement of disrespected law undermines respect for the rule of law.