Reasons To Be Cheerful · 12 hours ago

A Wall Meant to Divide Is Uniting Left and Right in Texas

When bulldozers began tearing into the mouth of Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend, Texas, something unexpected happened: a nationally divisive symbol started pulling people together rather than apart. Republicans and Democrats, sheriffs and river guides, ranchers and Indigenous advocates found themselves standing side by side in the mud, united not by ideology but by love for a landscape. "People think the Rio Grande divides us," organizer Hillary Pierce told the crowd, "but what the river actually does is unite us." The coalition that formed - refusing contractor rentals, filing lawsuits, holding rallies that drew thousands - helped achieve what public lands advocate Laiken Jordahl calls something he has never seen before: the federal government appearing to change course on border wall construction in response to citizen pressure. What this story quietly insists is that shared reverence for a place can do what political argument rarely manages - remind people that they belong to something larger than their differences.