‘Unlike the wall, these ladders are functional,’ artist and activist Scott Nicol points out to local magazine Texas Monthly
For millennia two bitter foes have been in constant conflict with one another: the imposing, stout wall and the nimble, convenient ladder. That same struggle continues to play out today in the Rio Grande Valley along the southern border of Texas, where migrants crossing over from Mexico find themselves confronted with towering impediments to their journey, built by presidents Republican and Democrat alike, and decide to simply climb over them.
A look at this structural struggle came this week in a story in Texas Monthly. In the piece the magazine follows along with a local artist and activist named Scott Nicol, a man who has become an expert spotter of wall ladders, which he often finds discarded after one use and photographs them. “It’s made of cheap, rough wood, quickly nailed together because it is only going to be used once,” Nicol says of one he finds along a walk by the border.
