Where we came from, where we are going

As you are enjoying your coffee or latte, eating your breakfast burrito or sandwich, dreading your 40 minute commute to your workplace on Monday, imagine you were desperate enough to change your life that you leave the place you were born on foot.

Imagine walking for months, not knowing how you were going to eat, but knowing ahead there’s a place where you can eat regularly, maybe even have  bed, where the threat to life is only occasional and accidental. Where exploitation is as minimal as it can be.

Then imagine the toil of getting there and having to deal with arbitrary constructs called borders and imaginary obstructions to finding reasonable way of making a life let alone a living, that were lumped in with legitimate law, as you pass through one country to another, until you finally reach your destination and find they put up the biggest artificial constraints of all.

We enjoy our privilege because our grandparents or theirs made this journey themselves – many on boats, but many on foot too. All of them taking their lives in their hands. And unless you are Native American, this is your family story. And we enjoy what we enjoy because they were given the opportunity to join this country.

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In New York for one evening on a training, I rush to Battery Park to catch the last boat to Ellis Island to view my Grandparents names on the wall there (my Aunt went through trouble of getting their passage recognized, as thousands have). All four of my Grandparents came from Europe, over on boats. orphaned by the Russian Revolution, others with their parents, looking for a better life.
As I looked at Yasha and Helen’s names on the wall, I was overwhelmed with gratitude, with the memories of these dear people, who worked so hard, changing their lives and subsequently making mine possible.

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The people making their way here are doing so because they are at best in poverty and need and at worst, in danger. We are the 3rd largest country in the world. We have a population density of 36 people per square kilometer – maybe a little higher (number is 2016). In India it’s 416 per square kilometer. Our fear of scarcity in this, the most lush and vibrant economy in the world, is unfounded. Our prejudices about people of different origin and in some cases different skin color based in scripting from generations of prejudice and propaganda, especially in the propaganda of these political years, where one party has decided that calling these people the enemy will allow them to stay in power.

In a self made crisis, in one of engineered mismanagement and underfunding, they are pointing as these people, who are fundamentally us, as a threat. Clearly, as we look at the past, anytime someone has pointed at an unorganized group of humans as a threat, it’s been a move to further themselves (think of McCarthyism. Think of the interment of Japanese Americans. Think of the Nazi persecution of Jews. And on and on.) We not only have the ability to welcome more, but a moral one. Being born somewhere is hardly good criteria from which to separate humans.

Yes, we need to screen and understand who is coming here and try to ensure they are not bringing hate with them (just as we see, we need to do a better job of this within our borders, for people who were born here). But this crisis is a political stunt, done with malice and hurting thousands, ripping families apart as a grab for control over a fearful part of our populace, by an oligarchy, with the goal of staying in power, to further exploit the populace, through government and business.

We cannot allow this to continue to be our way. We are the land of equality and the land of opportunity – not in perfect practice, but in declaration, in purpose and we need to strive to pull ourselves back on to that path.
We do that by;

• Voting in people who believe in and act on diversity, human rights and secular law
• Influencing government, business and neighbors to understand and work for these goals once again
• Build laws that help prevent this from ever happening again, that value human dignity and account for basic human rights and needs for all of us. 

And if you think this is not what this country is about, then read through our founding documents again. Read the words of our great women and men – and understand. We are not here to stake a claim against the rest of humanity, but side by side with them. There is no us and them. It is just us.