The Berlin Wall’s Children
Fifty years after construction of the Berlin Wall was begun, its enduring legacy is not the inspiring notion that freedom and the will of the people can knock down any barrier. Instead, the lesson learned has been that border walls are relatively effective at preventing the movement of poor people.
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HONOLULU – Fifty years ago today, on August 13, under the cover of darkness, East Germany broke ground on the construction of the Berlin Wall, which became one of the most iconic symbols of violence and exclusion the world has ever known. When the Wall fell in 1989, the images broadcast around the world of Germans clamoring atop and dancing there, before tearing it down piece by piece, became an equally iconic symbol of the rapid decline of Soviet-style Communism. It also raised hope that a new borderless world of democracy and globalization was dawning.