On the border

Recently, more than 400 clergy and people of faith took part in a nonviolent direct action at the border in San Diego as part of the “Love Knows No Borders” Moral Call for Migrant Justice campaign.

Closer to home, here in West Virginia, Saint John’s Episcopal Church in Charleston opened their doors to a multi-faith vigil to express solidarity with migrants, refugees, and particularly with those now trying to exercise their legal right to apply for asylum in the United States at the US-Mexico border.

At the event, my colleague at American Friends Service Committee, Rick Wilson, led everyone in a thought experiment: Imagine your house, and everything in it. Imagine your neighborhood, your community, and everything that is familiar to you.

That part is easy to imagine, right? What is impossible for us to imagine is what degree of desperation would compel anyone to embark on a dangerous journey, for thousands of miles, knowing that the outcome is entirely uncertain, that you may not be welcomed, and worse you will be regarded as a criminal, or an invader, and treated accordingly with tear gas, separation from your children or incarceration.

Jackie Lozano, a young mother living here in Charleston, shared how, as an infant in Mexico City, she had life-threatening health problems. Her mother, desperate to pay for the medicine Jackie needed to live, made the treacherous journey from Mexico to the United States.

Her story reminds us that we cannot know the multitude of reasons people are seeking asylum or a life here in our country, but that all monotheistic faith traditions give us clear instruction about how we should regard the stranger.

Rabbi Urecki of B’Nai Jacob told the crowd gathered at St. John’s that, “You shall love the stranger in your midst” is repeated 36 times, more than any other commandment, in the Torah.

The rabbi went on to say, “To be a Jew means we do not see asylum seekers; we see the face of our ancestors. We don’t see migrants, we see us. We do not see ‘them,’ we see God’s children.”

The Christian faith also demonstrates how to regard people at our borders seeking a better life for themselves and their children. In Matthew 25:35 it says, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

In Islamic tradition, according to Ibtesam Barazi with the Islamic Association of West Virginia, “We are taught to care for poor immigrants who are forced out of their homes and their properties.”

In stark opposition to any of these teachings, we instead see racist, nativist violence at the border today, all being committed by our government, in our name.

Whether these atrocious acts of violence continue in our name, or whether the “better angels of our nature” prevail, is up to each of us and the degree to which we are willing to speak out.

(This op-ed by Lida Shepherd of the American Friends Service Committee WV Economic Justice Project ran in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)