Hello from the home of the Sisters of Mercy in the ranchlands of South Texas! Here I am writing to you after two months of radio-silence. I ask for forgiveness to anyone who has been patiently waiting for some kind of update (and to myself for not meeting my own expectations!). It has been an incredible and full two months and probably each week (even some of the days!) could be entire posts themselves.
These days I am reflecting on the present moment as I write from the Rio Grande Valley where there are hundreds and thousands of migrating people trying to access safety and work that these days seems more and more concentrated in the lands of the few. In response to the echo chamber of !crisis! And ?we can’t possibly help all these people? And of course the farther right narratives of invasion (God forgive us), I keep returning to the importance of taking the long arc view of the history of these beloved Americas.
Before I begin, I want to preface two things: 1. Please forgive me for my extremely long sentences, and 2. I hope you can appreciate my thematic generalization while knowing that each country’s complex situation is related to this history in its own unique and specific ways – in other words, there is a glacier of realities underneath the tip of the iceberg that I am outlining here.
There are hundreds of books, podcasts, and publications that can explain, so clearly, why we are seeing increasingly unlivable communities today given the global history of the past 300 years. My understanding is that it is, at least in part, the natural consequence of the imperialist and capitalist pursuits of the powerful and wealthy of the world during the 18th-21st centuries, pursuits which were conducted entirely or in part for the extraction of wealth from resource-rich lands (and/or from large exploitable labor forces). These pursuits included:
- installing corporate-friendly authoritarian leaders abroad and propping up their murderous regimes
- supporting genocides of the poor, of indigenous/native communities, of students and of church leaders and workers, of visionaries & revolutionaries in order to oppress, repress, and carry on business as usual – often by providing security, combat, & torture training to military & paramilitary forces as well as weapons & resources that have now been adopted by many gang, cartel & international criminal organizations
- creating extractive and environmentally degrading “free-trade” agreements that have decimated local economies in many places and forced the migration of millions of previously self-sustained rural farmers
- forcing the privatization of natural resources & public industries for profit (oil, minerals, bananas, palm oil, water, energy, etc) and the international abuse of governments who attempt to nationalize those resources or resist American-friendly trade agreements
Throughout the centuries, wealthy and powerful governments have taken every possible measure to create easy pathways for resource exploitation abroad and to ensure that a docile, exploitable labor force remains readily available to our manufacturing plants and produce farms by way of weakening other governments’ sovereignty and increasing their dependance on international aid while also strengthening their military and policing forces through training and arms to weaponize when there are uprisings or when people try to survive by migrating. And what we see today are these deep divides between the wealthy, industrialized, and rather stable societies and economies that the “developed” parts of the world enjoy and communities reeling from the lasting effects of poverty, instability, environmental degradation, and corruption in public and private life, and somehow along the way most of us have been taught to blame it on cultural inferiorities, individual political leadership failures, or, of course, communism.
All of this to say, the present moment that we are facing in the Americas is not at all surprising when we do our homework and understand why people are risking their lives by the tens of thousands in leaving their homes. It is this history of imperialism and neo-liberal economic policies that have extracted so much wealth and labor resources from these countries and have weakened their governments and social systems which brings us here today. Not only are people suffering grinding poverty, but they are also experiencing extreme and unbridled violence from gangs and criminal organizations who have sprung up in the pain and misery of generations of trauma (using the same violent military and torture tactics learned from our military and with the weapons manufactured here).
I think it is also worth mentioning that it matters little how open and welcoming the U.S. government is when people are fleeing life-threatening situations – and how absurd and shameful that we wield our power and wealth to abuse other peoples lands, workers, governments, and sovereignty, and then pretend that we are innocent and that the only factor to people making that choice is what the president says during his campaign? It is probably true that a small percentage of people who have listed their pros and cons and have the necessity to leave their homes will see a government’s amiability as the missing piece or the “green light,” but certainly nobody who was happy and safe in their homes would suddenly say goodbye to everything and everyone they know because another country’s president mentioned that they would be less cruel than the previous guy.
And so when we are able to take a look at the long arc, we can understand that what we observe in the world today is a consequence of 300+ years of very violent and short-sighted decision making of the most powerful and most wealthy of our global community. Just like climate change, human displacement is a reality of our world that we absolutely have to face, and when we try to hide from it – “America First! Build the Wall! Close the open/porous border” etc – we not only become responsible for the deaths and suffering of thousands of people who are trying to access protection and dignified work, but we also increase our own anxieties and stresses because we close our minds to the possibilities of facing the moment and become unable to see a way forward that would uplift the dignity and humanity of everybody involved. We owe it to our neighbors and those suffering loss of home, livelihood, and safety to reject the xenophobic narratives. By benefiting from the history I described, we are morally and ethically obliged to try to pursue justice for those who have suffered from it.
So in my humble opinion, as a person driving my little stick shift car around the southern border and meeting hundreds of people and reading news articles and praying all the time…
We need to lean into our deepest imaginations. Many of us struggle to imagine a different reality wherein people are free to move, economies support communities (and not the reverse), and human rights are respected and upheld to the extent possible in all corners of the globe, but I ask you to try! Try to imagine a radical hospitality embraced by our whole national community…
What would it look like to welcome people who are asking to be welcomed, like our ancestors did before us, offering as little or as much as we are willing?
What would it look like if every family, every church, mosque, temple, and place of worship, every school and university, reached out to one person or family or group of families in need, and accompanied them in their journey to dignity and thriving?
What would it look like if, instead of hoarding our resources, wealth, and time, we shared them with each other?
We cannot run away or isolate ourselves from those whose homes our corporations, militaries, and governmental leaders have directly or indirectly made unlivable. And so, I believe, the invitation is to run to them, compassionately and without fear, willing to offer welcome and reparations and draw on their strengths and skills to build a world that we would all like to live in together. We have to open the doors of our imaginations and mindsets, throw away the belief in scarcity and impossibility, and move into the beautiful and messy place of solidarity and creativity and working together as a human family.
We can build a world where there is room for everyone at the table, if only we dream of it and use our gifts and talents and opportunities to work towards it. For the love of God, laughter, joy, freedom, the Earth and right relationship, we must!
Check out this video: An Economic Hit Man Confesses and Calls to Action | John Perkins | TEDxTraverseCity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btF6nKHo2i0&t=71s
Ideas to get involved:
- Learn more and counter false narratives about people migrating and immigration policy
- Consider donating to a local non-profit that works with immigrants, or one on the border!
- Consider volunteering with a local non-profit that works with immigrants and refugees, or one on the border!
- Consider hosting an asylum-seeking individual or family in your home!
If any of these things spark your interest and you would like more information, please feel free to reach out to me! 🙂