Dear Subscribers, I’m writing this to you as I watch Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show. “We are all America,” reads the football he carries throughout a performance that pulses with the best of the country and culture I grew up in, the place my heart will always call home. His final statement — naming all the countries that comprise America, from Argentina to Canada, as he dances back and forth across the Levi’s Stadium 50th yard line, accompanied by flagbearers from each nation — resonated deeply with me. This is precisely why I never refer to the United States as “America.” Even my book’s subtitle defies expectation, for it uses America not refer to a place, but to express a double-entendre: It is code for the mentality that allows this linguistic legacy of Manifest Destiny, of the era of enslavement and genocide and stolen lands, to still linger unconsciously in our speech; it is also a celebration of the rich diversity encountered in borderlands, where Americans from throughout the Western hemisphere meet and mingle in creative exchange.
Referring to one country by the name of two continents, an isthmus, and numerous island nations perpetuates the US’s original white supremacy project, helping to keep it alive in the age of Trumpism. I urge you to call the place by its rightfulname: the United States of America, easily shortened to the USA, the US, or the States.
Words matter because they form thought, which is apropos of this week’s podcast episode about the power of art and activism, like Bad Bunny’s, to tear down the walls that oppress and divide us…
On December 7, 2025, I hosted a virtual book launch for two new must-read books poised to bring a potent, first-hand view of the walling-off of the US Southwest borderlands to audiences nationwide:
Borderlings, a book of poetry and pictures by nature advocate Russ McSpadden, juxtaposes the extraordinary natural beauty and unique biodiversity of the US borderlands against the ecological devastation being caused by Trump & Co’s boondoggle and ecocidal border wall. Bearing witness from the front lines of border militarization in Southern Arizona, Russ pays homage to the resilience and interdependence of human and wildlife habitats, while revealing how walls serve only to fracture, divide, and destroy. ORDER BORDERLINGS HERE.
Yo’Oko Roars, an art and storybook for children and youth by Kate Scott (author) and Virginia Maria Romero (illustrator), joins Borderlings as well as Crossing the Line in sounding the alarm that the act of erecting “an immense metal fence that makes no sense” cuts nations and cultures off from on another, making it impossible for people and wildlife to find their ways “home” again. Walls create loss, longing, exile, danger, and endangerment. The story of young Iris putting her body in front of the “monsters of metal” illustrates how we should be addressing our collective problems: by building bridges, privileging friendships, and acting in solidarity through mutual aid so that we may all roar again. ORDER YO’OKO ROARS HERE.
So, why the delay in getting this important podcast episode to you? Mauerkrankheit.
The book launch event coincided with one of my sisters, her daughter, son-in-law, and three grandchildren passing through London, where I currently live with my daughter, husband, and our dear canine companion, Gryffindog. They were traveling in celebration of my sister’s birthday, just as we were about to ring in my daughter’s milestone 30th year of life. Living abroad as we do, it’s a rare treat for us to get quality time with close relatives. We were thrilled, therefore, to extend an invitation to host them. We were looking forward to introducing them to our London, to breaking bread with them, to clinking glasses of bubbly at our home or pints of craft brew at our local Pub, and to showering our two birthday girls in song.
But they refused to see us, erecting an emotional wall.
They ghosted us, adding a secondary communications wall that left us in a state of unknowing for weeks.
When they did reach out, they did so by proxy and through text messaging, hiding behind a technological wall and fracturing our family ties even further with a lie: The children had a bucket list of “touristy things” they wanted to do in London, evidently (FYI: The kids are 4, 6, and 8 🤷🏼♀️).
None of these fences made any bloody sense. We are not above “touristy things.” And besides, who wouldn’t want to party with this guy?
A wall of dishonesty wove, like concertina wire, into the double fortification of emotional and communications walls erected using a technology wall, leaving a “no-man’s land” of cold silence and conjecture between us. We could only conclude that they are Trump supporters. And knowing that we are most definitely not, choose to hold up the political wall he has weaponized to tear families, literally and (in our case) figuratively, apart.
My heart exploded into a billion tiny pieces. I fell into a deep, dark malaise, which I’ve come to understand is a kind of Wall Disease, aka Mauerkrankheit:
A psychological condition first identified in Cold War Berlin, which had particularly devastating effects on the residents of the walled-off Eastern Zone of the city, and is characterized by a combination of depression, rage, anxiety, and apathy caused by the oppressive presence of divisive and deadly fortifications.
Then, coarse salt was rubbed into open wounds, with Trump & Co’s December putsch as their paramilitary goons marched into Minnesota’s Twin Cities, from which the Towle family hails.
With “Operation Metro Surge,” the 2025-26 holiday season was turned upside-down by the very ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) walls of impunity we experienced in the summer of 2020, now on steroids. These were the walls of masked agents bearing armaments, rather than judicial warrants, that I warned in Crossing the Line could become an oppressive social reality if Trump & Co were allowed to invade the White House once more.
The walls of militarized Department of Homeland “Security” (DHS) agents occupy Minneapolis to this day. Their walls of clubs and harassment tactics and tear gas canisters and rubber bullets and flash bangs and automatic weapons and belief in their immunity from legal accountability (they are not) have resulted in the execution-style deaths of two US citizens, Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti (may they rest in peace), as well as the kidnapping, incarceration, and expulsion of thousands of decent people just living their lives.
The Reign of Terror unleashed by a “mad” (in the British sense) wanna-be king has rained economic devastation on the lives, futures, and businesses of Twin Cities inhabitants, who are still reeling from the unexpected erection of physical, militaristic, and extrajudicial walls.
“The b******s are everywhere, patrolling in their SUVs with the blacked out windows, even in my very white neighborhood,” states one of my Minneapolis-based family members.
“I live blocks away from the murders by DHS, and have been very involved in protests, observing and providing community support,” reports another who, untilthe rise in Trump fascism, had never been touched by ICE or Border Patrol impunity before.
They are new to protesting, which illustrates yet another result of Wall Disease, the very thing that drove everyday Berliners to grab pick axes and tear the Cold War monstrosity down with their bare hands: activism fueled by anger at oppression that seeks to divide us and take away our right to roar…
History shows us that in the face of state-led violence, some will succumb — like my sister, her daughter, and son-in-law, potentially (I can’t be sure, since they won’t talk to us) — choosing to turn away from the truth, much like the “good Germans” who allowed the Holocaust to happen. They will take others along with them, as my sister and her progeny did, when they walled off their hearts to me, and I crashed, overcome by Mauerkrankheit.
Which is my way of explaining to you, Dear Subscribers, why it has taken me two whole months to produce and publish this important podcast episode. But thanks to Russ, Kate, Virginia, and the hundreds of thousands of heroic Minnesotans who are taking to the streets every day, I have found hope and my voice again. I am back and ready to ROAR once more!
With the border now everywhere, we are all suffering from Mauerkrankheit. In this conversation with Kate, Virginia, and Russ, we discuss how we can and must overcome it. I hope you’ll draw inspiration and energy from our discussion, as I have
Just click the play button in the image above to get started ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼
Then, be sure to buy and review these beautiful books. Help us to get them into the hands and hearts of those who, if they only knew, would be outraged too and compelled to say “no!” to Wall Disease and tear down all the barriers that divide us!
CLICK HERE TO ORDERYO’OKO ROARSBORDERLINGS
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Additional resources and content referenced in the podcast:
