At the border with Mexico in Arizona, for the first time in history, a tree sit is blocking the construction of the border wall that Trump promised his voters. This wall is cutting a ragged wound across the precious and diverse ecosystems that defy the myth that the border represents a natural division between worlds.

Two weeks ago, one protester decided it was time to block the machine that was about to destroy the last of four ancient cottonwood trees that stood in the way of the wall’s construction. A sheriff arrested him; he was released twelve hours later with no charges filed. This arrest galvanized the community.

Less than two days later, friends installed a platform in the tree. Since then, it has been impossible to level this one part of the land because there is someone living in a tree and many supporters on the ground making sure everybody knows it. If the tree is felled, our friend in the tree is likely to be killed along with it. Knowing this, the general contractor, Fisher Sand and Gravel, as well as their private security, Vision Quest, the United States Army, Border Patrol, and the Santa Cruz County Sheriff have not yet been able to remove us from the shade of the old growth cottonwood that has likely stood here since before the land was acquired by the United States.

We invite you to join us in refusing the border regime—whether that means coming here to Lochiel, Arizona or take action wherever you are.

The border is everywhere

that their networks of violence extend.

What follows here is an account from within this emerging struggle.

We have been experiencing a moment of relative stillness within a historical eddy. This summer has been full of fleeting conflagrations, weather hotter than we remember last year, and the feeling, never quite departing, that all of this can’t stay as precariously stable as it seems. The stability of the United States project has felt suffocating. We hear whispers of true resistance and see photos of joyful rupture, but our day-to-day lives have largely remained the same, with perhaps a few more friends, commitments, and Signal chats to keep up with than this time last summer.

Gathered under the last of four ancient cottonwoods in the path of the new double border wall construction, we have found a moment of possibility. For now, we have managed to stop the regime in its tracks. The wall cannot be built where this grandmother stands so long as we, too, stand here.

For over a year, environmentalists and local community members have been spending time together in Lochiel, Arizona. This town is all but abandoned. Many buildings here are becoming ruins, illustrating Lochiel’s peripheral relationship to the metropolis just a few hours to the northwest. These gatherings have built a compassionate and cohesive network that stretches far beyond the roads, buildings, fences, livestock, and ecology of the valley in which Lochiel is located. A few individuals have brought together many people to witness the splitting of this valley, and our world, apart.

Lochiel sits directly adjacent to the US-Mexico border. One of the houses in the town, the old customs house for the now-closed port of entry, butts up so close to the border that the owner was concerned that it too would be demolished to make room for the double wall. People on both sides of the border fence live much the same way, raising cattle and singing together under the same shade of cottonwoods in the same valley, under the same bright blue dome of the sky. The many very old cottonwoods at the bottom of this valley used to reach across the border, creating a continuous canopy over the road. This high-elevation prairie ecosystem is one of the most biologically diverse in the world, with countless varieties of insects and grasses, flowering plants, and many threatened bird species along with coatis, coyotes, bears, and jaguars. All of this life is at risk here.

A few years ago, in the fall and early winter of 2022, in the Coronado National Forest, which lies east of Lochiel, a similar composition of people resisted another attempt at building a border wall. This effort to block then-governor Doug Ducey’s container wall was ultimately successful. The participants employed much the same rhetoric and similar tactics.

Yet today, the political climate has changed dramatically. In 2022, during the Biden years, Governor Ducey broke many laws to use shipping containers to “fill the gaps” left by Trump’s first …