IT’S THE MOST IMPORTANT and the simplest things we forget. So much energy poured away, or stones carried far and then dropped down in our own path and with our own hands.
IT’S THE MOST IMPORTANT and the simplest things we forget. So much energy poured away, or stones carried far and then dropped down in our own path and with our own hands. When I look at the world and the trouble in the world and this governments responses to trouble and too many parents’ responses to their childrens’ challenges, the criminal justice system and the razor rifts in our relationships, the rising hate crimes the war of terror the increasing militarization of culture…
I think of that story I was told as a child about the sun and the wind competing to make a man remove his coat. I think about how poorly most people respond to punishment or control tactics. I think of how quickly and easily the human being jumps into arguing, condemning, judging, fearing, negativity, and how easily we forget to breathe, relax our muscles, drink water, take care, nourish positivity.
I think of how good we can be at pushing people away when we want them to be near, or stoking our own anxiety when we want to be free from fear. I think of how quickly we can deny another what it is we most want ourselves.
I think of the “immigration issue.” How much easier it seems to be for people to stoke up fear, talk about jails, talk about walls, operate as if we need to protect something from people, when they are part of all we are, when we can all help make each other’s lives more full and beautiful and nobody has to lose. And yet, it seems it is so much easier to get people to fear and hoard than it is to convince them that they are safer when giving, sharing, taking care of others.
This human and stubborn negativity-attracting dynamic is only one of the obstacles The Sanctuary has to work against. The mainstream media and too much of the mainstream blogosphere: either absent from the moral conversation, vitriolic and opposed to anything except persecution, punishment, deportation or maybe just unaware of how to help. But even by remaining silent in the face of so many wrongs, Good People help the climate of fear and racism and xenophobia grow more dense and pervasive as it scoops up even well-meaning people and drops them down a horrible hole. ICE operates outside the law and under the radar and none of that much matters because who’s gonna protest?
And yet, insultingly and depressingly, this imbecilic calculating political conversation rattles on, like a cracked shit-peanut inside a skeleton’s head. Talk of Harsher Enforcement and More Walls and more raids! No matter how many children the aggression hurts or how many people it drags down into degradation pain or death; no matter how many families are torn into pieces or how much of our own social fabric is compromised by our insistent return to a duller, paler age when we thought we had to kill everything in our path, run from it, or hoard it before someone stole it right out of our cave. Still, we celebrate fear. Still, the fierce wind of ignorance rages and we wonder why this world can be so cold.
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yes…i am like you. it just baffles my understanding.
OH and i love your icon, donna.
LOL my icon is too true! I thought the least I could do is warn people.
This hit home for me recently, when BFP pointed out that there were actually real conversations going on about whether Angie Zapata even had a right to be in the US just because she was a latina when she was murdered.
I was aware of and against it all before, but to see people trying to excuse a young woman’s murder on that basis (as well as being trans) made it much more personal to me.
That’s not to say it didn’t also hit hard when women were being deported and separated from their (sometimes nursing) children. Or when I heard about latin@s being stopped on suspicion of being illegally in the country. Or any of the other inhumanities and indignities heaped upon people.
My naive-yet-rhetorical question is “Since when is it okay to treat human beings like this?”
yeah i’m full of those Naive-Yet-Rhetorical questions myself…
Good to see ya. 
Over at The Sanctuary is there any plan to push for a nationally recognized Ombudsman to have the right to enter any detention facility at any time and ask questions about any person there? Waiting for a judge did not do Ng any good. Given the long drawn out legislative circuses we are going to be facing for a long time, some other measure is needed in the interim.
Estimado Nezua,
In Rhode Island we will NOT let Mr. Ng’s death go without questions and protest.
I missed the press conference this past Friday, but the local ACLU and a wonderful group, Olneyville Neighbors in Action (ONA) and others were present…
Thank you for all that you do…and I am so happy to see my ( Sandinista Sistah) quote on your site!
La lucha continua.
la lucha continua, nomi. gracias, and i am happy to see you.
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And yet, it seems it is so much easier to get people to fear and hoard than it is to convince them that they are safer when giving, sharing, taking care of others.
That part should be bolded and repeated, and bolded and repeated again!
I told my son that I would like to think that people care about each other and that we try to make sure that everyone has shelter, food, health care, and other necessities; but it’s not true. Too many have completely bought into the capitalist way of thinking that is all about- I got mine and too bad for you. I said to him, even if all he cared about was his own self interest and didn’t give a damn for other people, that desperate people are angry and dangerous. This is the place where revolution, riots, and other uprisings comes from. Therefore it is self-interest that says that we should provide the basics of life for everyone, or we should not be surprised when the world explodes.
I feel sick about Hui Liu Ng. The prison guards who came into contact with him daily must have had some inkling of the horrendous pain he was in, how could they walk away from that? How could they watch him suffer and not do anything?