i want to be clear, i'm not saying that we should just round the refugees up and fly them back and yell "see ya later" as we drop them out in parachutes.

we should train them in construction & send them back with bags of concrete, beams of steel and hard hats galore.

we should teach them how to demine, and let them loose.

give them shovels & cranes & other tools to pull back the rubble with.

i just think we need to redefine solidarity. we can't absorb the whole world,. and, even if we take in hundreds of thousands of them, it doesn't rebuild the country, which remains a pile of rubble. so, i want solidarity to mean helping rebuild destroyed cities, helping to fight gangs, dismantling systems of oppression...

the old saying is to teach a man to fish. i think that generalizes to teaching people to fight, and teaching people to rebuild.

this isn't outside of our history, either. remember the marshall plan? well, understand that it wasn't charity - unless you understand it as corporate welfare. building things means awarding contracts....