So freedom to stay is included. They list five main activities that they do, which are: 1. the deportation alliance 2. the border camps 3. the international action days around October 4. The Campaign to combat global migration management 5. The struggle against deportations and against detention centres and other forms of privation of freedom.

None of these strike me as being aimed at a demand for states to actually abolish borders, in the sense of a call for an end to border. I could be wrong, though. They seem more to me to be aimed at mobilizing against the machinery that maintains the borders as the exist - border policing, which is a big part of borders existing. It strike ms as less a matter of solving the question of what would happen if the borders all went down, and more a matter of attempting open and/or widen holes in the borders as they exist now.

Beyond that, to be honest, I’m not sure what you really mean by the “how are we going to fix these problems” question - and I’m not trying to be coy, I really mean that. Whose the we, and what problems precisely? The problems of borders? Well, the noborder stuff around a trying to gum up the works of border policing seems like a decent start to me, given what (little) I know about the issue.

If you mean the problems of what’s going in Indonesia and elsewhere, to be honest, I have no idea. I know a little bit about how to do workplace organizing in the US and that’s really really hard, even if it may well be comparatively easy in relation to a lot of other activities in a lot of other places. I have no idea how to do much of anything in Indonesia or anywhere else, nor what I can do about those issues from the US. The first place to start, were I involved in that, would be to try and get in touch with some people trying to organize in Indonesia and see what they want and need and how I can be a part of that.

I think in a way this is touching on issues close to what we talked about before regarding guilt and so forth. One can never do enough, depending on one’s point of view, but I don’t find that very livable. As Angela said to me once, “we muddle through”. That’s not very satifying but I think it’s the best we really get. I also think that the absence of a fully worked out plan for the problems of the world should not be considered that much of a fault - nobody’s really got one as far as I know, except perhaps some Leninist fucks who are merely fantasizing and not likely contributing to much that’s actually worthwhile. I think when faced with the question “how are we going to fix these problems” it’s totally fair to turn the question back on the asker - what do you think Thiago? My own view is something like workplace organization, because I know something about that, but I don’t know much about much else so I’m not sure if that’s particularly helpful. It’s also very different to ask that conversation in a planning sense (what will do about this friend who is going to get fired/deported?) versus to ask that in a general sense outside of a context of collective organization. (Not to say the latter shouldn’t be done.)

take care,
Nate

The point is that this stuff has little to do with the camps. Getting rid of detention centres in Australia would be a monumental first step, but what would that do in terms of what is going on in Indonesia? Isn’t it a reproduction of the nationalism of concerns to think that we should fight for Indoensians freedoms - once they have crossed the border? I find that odd and parochial. Some people argue that getting rid of border would bring about a situation in which horrible inequalities could not be sustained. It is certainly completely hypocritical to argue that you could remove the inequalities whilst propping up the border, but the converse policy, of opening the border without thinking through the inequality, just hoping it will go away somehow, that to me seems to be an abdication.

The point of ‘policy’ isn’t typing up some draft law or something like that - but the minimal consideration of, how are we going to fix these problems? A lot of radical politics/theory/writing revolves around different ways of making not answering that question seem clever. I find that lamentable and boring, but I can also understand how some people find it offensive. How are you going to organize anything without some idea of what you want? Angela, as I understand her, sees a metaphysical politics at work in the phrasing of this question, so wanting things is somehow just a way of not getting them.

I agree that what I was calling freedom movement is often a compulsion to movement. All I mean to say is that there\’s no sense in talking about people as simple victims or incapable of activity, especially not if one thinks one is one those people\’s side in some way.

As for noborders and all that, I\’ve only encountered it through Angela\’s stuff so I can\’t really speak to that, Angela may, and could do so much more eloquently that I could, if she wants. I\’m definitely a fan to the degree that I know what\’s going on. I\’m not sure what to make of the policy and outcomes stuff - I\’m generally averse to projects that aim at policy, in the sense of changing laws and state practices via some kind of communication process with the state. I just don\’t see it being very likely to work re: what I care about. (I\’m willing to have my mind changed, though.) I think about this stuff in analogy with workplaces more, as that\’s something I understand better. To my mind, contracts with employers and labor laws are for the most part codifications of balances of power. So the project is to impact balances of power by organizing the bases for the exercise of power (with work it\’s power on the shopfloor, fighting over wages and conditions etc and in the process building relationships, understanding, and skills). If the bosses and the state want to codify those gains, they\’re welcome to do so, but generally I\’d want to say that codification follows from power not the other way around. I don\’t really know how power could be built and exercised around noborder stuff, but I like the little I\’ve read about trying to sabotage the mechanisms of detection and deportation - trying to defend and extend what is, in some sense, a practice of porosity of borders. Again, I\’m not sure about this as I don\’t know the border stuff very well. That is exactly how I\’d want to put it in terms of workplace organizing, though.
take care,
Nate

I am almost an absolutist for freedom of movement, and I think that the detention camps, at least in Europe and Australia, are monuments to everything that is wrong here, and they cleary must go, no further questions asked. But I am pessimistic about the results of that. I think nothing much would happen. The world would still be a shithole and capitalism would find a way, the state would do fine, as it did before when the borders were open. What pisses me off about the camps is that they are just this arbitrary piece of cruelty, a tyranically petty malice. The suffering on the wrong side of the border dwarves it.