Tear Down These Walls: Decolonial Approaches to Barriers and Liberation

All too often, justification for building walls (physical or virtual) is advanced by those benefiting from said wall to mask oppressive social, political, and economic structures. Tear Down These Walls is a comparison study on the impact of walls upon colonized people living in occupied lands. We are told that walls must exist to keep out terrorist (as per Israel), punish anti-democratic systems (hence the Cuban embargo), keep out caravans of illegals seeking to freeload off our generosities (as per anti-immigrant U.S. citizens). Seldom do we explore the impact of walls on those constructed as a threat and as an Other.