The No Borders Camp was a 4-5 day camp on the border between Calexico and Mexicali in the second week of November 2007, and will be the first time that such a camp, straddling both countries, has been attempted on this border. The weekend included visioning, strategising and logistics meetings as we tried to create a collective vision of what the no borders camp could look like and what it could achieve.

2 womyn from Sydney gave a workshop on the Australian experience of anti-detention centre camps in order to give some history to US comrades who are new to this type of organising. The context of camps in Port Hedland, Woomera and Baxter were especially useful due to the similarities of distance, desert and isolation. Engagemedia proved to be an extremely useful tool for us to download the video material we needed. We showed footage from ‘Through the Wire’, 'Baxter 03' and 'Where is Freedom'. The people in the workshop responded really positively, obviously not to the situation in immigration detention, but to the active dissent from those both inside and outside detention. The video footage was especially useful in vividly describing the experience, the forms of resistance and police brutality, in a much more concise and stimulating manner than mere words.

The form of the camp remains anything but definite, however some sort of framework has been developed to encourage autonomous actions and organising. Participants agreed to adhere to the PGA hallmarks and to use the term ‘borders’, plural, to emphasise that we are opposed to all forms of borders and divisions including but not limited to gender, ideology, racism, xenophobia, nationalism and class. There is great interest to make this an international action against borders in all their forms, globally. There is a call out to the international community to have a global day of action against immigration detention centres, borders and migration controls on the 10th of November, which corresponds with the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall in Germany. It would be excellent to see solidarity actions in Australia and the Pacific on this date. Together we are working to create a world without borders.

We believe that borders are prisons and that all people in prison for crossing “illegally” are political prisoners. For more information, including the proposal from the Zapatista Encuentro over new year in Oventic, see http://deletetheborder.org or email growyaown@gmail.com.au for more details on the enquentro and actions in Australia.