Martin Luther King said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
I understand that immigration is an issue complex beyond the scope of a blog and that a solution must be found. Any solution which involves the separation of children from their parents and their caging is wrong period. If you feel that this is correct we do not have a difference of politics we have a difference of morals, justice, and basic human decency and dignity.
I think the inscription on the Statue of Liberty that grand old Lady of Liberty says it best: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shores. Send these the homeless, the tempest tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
I think that message that golden door where people yearning to breathe free represents the spirit, the hope, and ideal of America is a much better message that a great wall that spreads the message if you are not white you are not welcome. Make no mistake this is a racial issue if some disaster financial or otherwise was to befall Canada and their people began crossing our northern border there would be no caging of white Canadian children. I have said I don’t like labels because they lead to dehumanizing an individual. The label of immigrant and further label of immigrants as criminals has dehumanized them as people. That is how we should see them as people, people fleeing violence, poverty, oppression to come to a land to breathe free a land of safety and opportunity.
I am a great respecter of law and the constitution and that also is why I will speak up here. Enshrined in that constitution is the right of citizens to petition their government for a redress of grievances. When the government is wrong is the duty of citizens to say no enough you go to far.
Thomas Jefferson put it this way, “If a law is unjust a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.” Patriotism isn’t blind unthinking devotion to government but a desire to make it the best it can be. The law without mercy to guide it is not justice but tyranny.
3 quotes that I feel speak to my position my heart one from Martin Luther King another from Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce the last from Chief Seattle of the Suquamish.
If we are to have peace on earth our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation, and this means we must develop a world perspective.” ~MLK
The earth is the mother of all people and all people should have equal rights upon her. Chief Joseph (Him Mah Too Yah Lat Kekt) Nez Perce.
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. Chief Seattle Suquamish.
Peace love and light my brothers and sisters.
Observations in Autumn 