IN THE WAKE OF CHARLOTTESVILLE, THIS JUNE POST FROM MARGOT WELCH

ON THE SPIRIT OF RESISTANCE

Margot Welch June 7, 2017 One comment
In August it will be ten years since Grace Paley died — when the goldenrod she loved was dancing all over her Vermont hills. Her voice alive, her brave, vibrant stories, poems, and essays (newly available again) capturing her passion for people, social justice, life. She’s with us on playgrounds, protests, army bases, Wall Street, Washington Square, at Seabrook, the Pentagon, Seneca Falls, in jail cells, Paris, Sweden, China, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Hanoi. As always, she begins again. As we must.

The malice of the current administration — and knowing that hate does not feel hateful to so many Americans — is what most frightens me. Trump’s cabinet appointments, and many of his executive orders are nasty. Mike Capuano tracks mandates we don’t know about. But why must Secretary Kelly cut the Temporary Protective Status review time for Haitians from a routine 18 months to 6? Thousands of empty beds in county jails and closed ‘re-purposing facilities’ are available to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Still the agency is ordered to use “all legally available resources to immediately construct, operate and control facilities to detain aliens at or near the land border with Mexico.” Bids flood in. We, the people, will pay.

Hate and fear deaden hearts, silence voice. We must name what is happening. Consider how little most Americans know about immigrants’ everyday lives. We ‘refer’ to the issue, even as we depend on immigrants for so many services. But we don’t really imagine what it’s like, now — to be so fearful for your family and friends that you’re afraid to go to the Emergency Room, to pick up the legal WIC allotment for your hungry baby, to send your kids to school, to call the police when you — or someone outside your window — are battered. In the first three months of this year, 41,000 immigrants were deported. 95% of all those ever deported have no criminal record.

I want you to meet Conrado and Reina — two dreamers who, like tens of thousands of undocumented youth, came here when they were very young with parents fleeing violent, chaotic nations. Parents determined to give their kids better lives. Many are now young adults, have beaten great odds, excelled in our schools, and know no other land as home.

Conrado’s parents left Brazil, overstayed a tourist visa, and saw their son excel in schools. In Junior year, at Somerville High School, a Guidance Counselor told him be-cause he was undocumented he couldn’t go to college. His grades fell, he was dropped from the honors program, thought of leaving school when he encountered the Student Immigrant Movement (SIM), a grassroots organization of and for undocumented youths, focused on political education, leadership training, protection, and mentor-ship. Conrado worked two jobs to pay for one year at UMass Boston. So far. Lead Pro-gram Coordinator for SIM, Conrado reports that his parents, too stressed by anxieties about their health and their children, have returned to Brazil. He will not be able to see them.

Reina came to Massachusetts from El Salvador, near the end of the terrible civil war, when so many women and children were killed. Her mother fled; Reina was raised by grandparents until she herself was sexually abused. Her mother asked Reina if she wanted to join her. Alone, at 11, she made the decision and the dangerous journey to finally meet her mother at a California juvenile detention center. When the two re-turned to Massachusetts, a judge ruled that Reina could not stay. Over the next years the little family moved from town to town, until Reina graduated from Everett High School. She now works as a Student Organizer for SIM.

The morning after the election, Conrado wrote, he was afraid and alone with many questions he couldn’t answer. What would happen to his DACA status? His undocumented family members? Friends and dreamers he knew? That morning, however, all the dreamers, sharing the same fears, felt new resolve. Together they would resist, take care of each other, and defend their human rights.

Listen to Paley:

…what we need right now is to imagine the real…really think about it…
call it to mind…not simply refer to it all the time….(or) you lose (it) entirely.… .

Once we really imagine, really hear, we must join, “light up” what otherwise stays invisible, unnamed. This is “what justice is about,” Paley adds. Resistance. Courage. Energy. And hope.

Some Sources:

A Grace Paley Reader, eds. Kevin Bowen & Nora Paley (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
American Civil Liberties Union: aclu.org
Unitarian Universalist Mass Action newsletter:  uumassaction.org
My Undocumented Life: myundocumentedlife.org
Student Immigrant Movement: simforus.org
Michael Capuano’s Behind the Curtain mandates: capuano.house.gov
Mass. Immigration and Refugee coalition: miracoalition.org
We are Here to Stay: weareheretostay.org
Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM): fairimmigration.org
Centro Presente: cpresente.org
Brazilian Immigrant Center: braziliancenter.org
United We Dream: unitedwedream.org
Center for Popular democracy:  populardemocracy.org
Backers of Hate: backersofhate.org
Center for Popular Democracy:  populardemocracy.org