How our hopes, our lives unraveled

[sovay]

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.

Comments

[davidgillon]

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.

[sovay]

They voted to say they would take twice as many.

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.