How our hopes, our lives unraveled
Apparently the country I am living in is now simultaneously belligerent and isolationist. It's a pretty terrible combination. Tonight my mother and I were discussing the Syrian refugee crisis and her desire to write a letter to the Boston Globe—which I encouraged—expressing her disappointment in Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker, who recently declared himself, along with twenty-nine other governors of the United States, "not interested in accepting refugees from Syria." I'm sure everyone has invoked Emma Lazarus vs. hypocrisy in this discussion already, so I've gone with a slightly later Jewish poet.
Copper-plated, nailed together, buffeted by ocean weather
Stands the queen of exiles and our mother she may be
Hollow-breasted, broken-hearted, watching for her dear departed
For her children cast upon the sea
At her back, the great idyllic land of justice for exilic
Peoples ponders making justice private property
Darling, never dream another woman might have been your mother
Someday you may be a refugee
—Tony Kushner, "An Undoing World"
[edit] Courtesy of
rushthatspeaks: an online petition from Massachusetts voters to Governor Baker.
Copper-plated, nailed together, buffeted by ocean weather
Stands the queen of exiles and our mother she may be
Hollow-breasted, broken-hearted, watching for her dear departed
For her children cast upon the sea
At her back, the great idyllic land of justice for exilic
Peoples ponders making justice private property
Darling, never dream another woman might have been your mother
Someday you may be a refugee
—Tony Kushner, "An Undoing World"
[edit] Courtesy of
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"America, nation of immigrants" is a very problematic conception, but it is a fact that I exist because my ancestors on both sides were allowed into this country despite being, respectively, Jewish and Irish, ethnic groups identified at different times by mainstream America as classically undesirable. It would be irresponsible of me not to offer support to future people in need, including from places on Earth whose politics freak me out. No one in my family came over in the 1930's or after the war,* but what does that matter? You don't need a personal connection to know a humanitarian crisis when you see one. At least, I feel you shouldn't. I don't know what it says about you if you do.
* My grandfather's father was the second of six children. His younger brother Pesachia joined him in America; his descendants live in Miami. Another brother emigrated to Israel and I believe my mother is still in touch with the current generation. Everyone else died in the Holocaust: Chełmno and Auschwitz. A thing that was very strange for me to realize recently is that all those lost relatives would have been of the same degree of kinship to me as
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Apparently when Germany agreed to up the number of refugees they would take earlier in the year, each German local authority was told how many refugees their community would have to absorb. His community held a meeting about it, and then had a vote.
They voted to say they would take twice as many.
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Good for Germany! I am glad there are people in the world who are making that decision. I wish some of them were in politics here.
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You're welcome. I asked
Boy oh boy, I have a lot of helpless anger about this issue.
You could write a letter, too. I am not joking.
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I think that's a worthwhile reason. And you never know: it might make it into print. When silence looks like assent, it's always worth speaking out.
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Except I don't think of my anger as helpless. I have a governor I can direct it at, for starters.
Thanks for the poem and the petition link.
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You're welcome.
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Thanks for the link to the petition.
I was fantasizing about making a T-shirt that said, "For I was a stranger, and you welcomed me."
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I hadn't seen our governor's comment until the night I put up this post. It is something I care very much about.
[edit] When I looked up Governor Charlie Baker, I was mordantly amused to see that his family has been in this country since colonial times: the refugee or even immigrant experience is not a recent one in his family stories. He has always been able to think of himself as "All-American," with no inconvenient minorities or marginalized identities. The thing is, I still expect people to be capable of empathy and compassion without a direct personal one-to-one correspondence. The alternative works, and it can be very powerful and very affirming and very binding of communities, but it also feels very limited to me, if it's the only option. The effects are visible throughout history and I don't like them.
Thanks for the link to the petition.
You're very welcome.
I was fantasizing about making a T-shirt that said, "For I was a stranger, and you welcomed me."
It's not necessarily a terrible idea.