sovay: (Psholtii: in a bad mood)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2015-11-19 10:40 pm

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 [livejournal.com profile] rushthatspeaks: an online petition from Massachusetts voters to Governor Baker.
kore: (Default)

[personal profile] kore 2015-11-20 03:58 am (UTC)(link)
It's especially awful when you consider how many refugees and immigrants came here (like my grandfather, and grandmother's parents, so altho it's not the same thing as other peoples' grandparents fleeing actual life-threatening stuff it weirds me out). MELTING POT! WTF.
davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)

[personal profile] davidgillon 2015-11-20 05:38 am (UTC)(link)
I wish I could say the UK was much better, response has been tokenistic at best. And how far short these responses fall are illustrated by the story I heard this summer from a friend who lives in Germany.

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.

[identity profile] teenybuffalo.livejournal.com 2015-11-20 05:15 am (UTC)(link)
Thanks for linking to the petition. I signed it. At least it gives me something to do. Boy oh boy, I have a lot of helpless anger about this issue.

[identity profile] teenybuffalo.livejournal.com 2015-11-20 06:18 am (UTC)(link)
It'll make me feel better, anyway.
drwex: (Default)

[personal profile] drwex 2015-11-20 09:06 pm (UTC)(link)
+1

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.

[identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com 2015-11-22 03:28 pm (UTC)(link)
My heart is full to bursting on this topic--so many feelings on so many levels.

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."