Politico takes the time and effort to look at how the thousands camped out in Mexico on the US Southern Border have moved to organize themselves and are NOT the ‘lawless’ group Donald Trump is trying to make political points against as ‘lawless invaders’…..
They are human beings , desperately trying to do what others have done to better their lives and live without fear for their lives and well being….
The caravan migrants who arrived at the border nearly a month ago don’t have a country. But they do have a government.
In the time since the caravan left Honduras in mid-October, the asylum seekers have fashioned a proto-democracy out of their group of some 6,000 migrants overwhelmingly from Central America, most of whom have walked for most of the trip, at times hitching rides in the backs of cars or trucks.
To hear President Donald Trump tell it, the caravan is nothing more than a “lawless” mob of potentially violent criminals. But dozens of phone interviews and WhatsApp conversations with advocacy groups and migrants, as well as social media updates from groups on the ground, show that the migrants have organized a surprisingly sophisticated ruling structure, complete with everything from a press shop to a department of public works.
When the migrants needed to make public announcements, debate the best routes and vote on different plans, they established a nightly general assembly as a forum open to all, Athens-style. Their legislative floor was an abandoned truck parking lot or an unused sports stadium. Some of the migrants even took turns as communications directors, drafting press statements that were transmitted through a media group of more than 370 journalists on WhatsApp.
When a few of the men started drinking in the evenings to distract themselves, and mothers worried the noise was keeping their children awake, the general assembly set up a kind of internal police force made up of about 100 unarmed volunteers to reprimand the men with megaphones and keep them out of the migrants’ makeshift camps after the 7 p.m. curfew.
And when they needed to lobby higher-level entities, such as immigration advocacy groups, human rights watchdogs and local governments, the migrants elected a nine-person Governance and Dialogue Council to press for their most basic needs: food, shelter and safety. (The council formed after a group of migrants spoke with a phalanx of federal police who were blocking the route on the way from the southern state of Chiapas to the state of Oaxaca and convinced them to let them through.) Some of the representatives have served as secretaries of transportation at times, speaking directly with state and city governments to try to secure buses or rides to take them to the next stop in the meandering route….
image..wdrb.com