global village

If you’re not a boomer or a grad student, you may not have heard of him, but theorist Marshall McLuhan—the coiner of enduring aphorisms “the medium is the message” and “the global village”—warned us about today’s digital descent a long time ago.

They come from Brazil, Burkina Faso, Uzbekistan, India and dozens of other countries, a moving global village of hundreds of thousands of people crossing the Rio Grande and slipping through gaps in the border wall at a pace of nearly 9,000 people a day, one of the highest rates of unlawful crossings in months.

We’re each assigned a spot in that global village, the homelands reflecting the international nature of the refugee crisis: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia all get competing, squabbling enclaves.

Local businesses told the BBC there had been a Global Village festival earlier in October, showcasing Itaewon's cosmopolitan character.

Officials also could have also temporarily closed Itaewon’s main road to cars, as they did during the annual Itaewon Global Village Festival earlier in October, thereby giving people more room to spread out, Kong said.