I love my kids more than life itself and would do anything to protect them and keep them safe. I know a lot of parents who say they would do anything for their kids. How often do we see people who actually do that anything? People crossing the border with their children “illegally” are doing exactly that thing. They are trying to take their kids out of a desperate, dangerous situation that they have no hope of surviving otherwise. And faced with the same conditions, I believe any of us would do the exact same thing.
I am blessed to have been born into a country where I have the opportunity to be relatively safe. I am lucky to have the ability to be a lot safer than even others in this very country. I live in a home where I can keep my kids warm in the winter, fed and clothed and we don’t fear our surroundings. My kids are happy and healthy; in fact, they are flourishing. Yes, we were lucky to be born here in a country like this, without the threat of violence or death. Without the need to risk everything to keep my kids safe.
Not everyone enjoys my level of safety. Not even in this country! But there are those whose lives are so desperate that they really have no other choice. So they come to America, “the shining city on a hill”, the moral country that has long welcomed those suffering souls in other countries. We venerate a statue with the words encouraging people to come here to be free. And yet, here we are, looking at our country that in a cruel and callous way demonizing and traumatizing those who seek to be somewhere they can be safe.
I was raised to treat others the way I want to be treated. I have lived my life by this credo. I know many in this country who claim to be “Christian” and claim this as a “Christian country”. Well, by your own definition of this term, the actions being done in our name is so not what my understanding and memory of it is.
What kind of people would tear kids from their parents the way we are doing to these people who have done nothing but what any one of us in their situation would be doing. They were not lucky enough to be born here. They wouldn’t be trying to come here if their families lives didn’t depend on it. And our “Christian” benevolent way of helping them is to rip their kids from them and throw those kids in detention centers no better than jail.
I have an 8 month old baby who wants Mommy. She cries when I am not right there where she can see me. The thought of these poor kids being put in these places with no support, makes me physically ill. I imagine crying babies in dirty diapers left to cry. I imagine workers at these facilities having to hear these cries and not being allowed to help these poor kids. I mean for crying out loud-they can’t even change diapers!!
Please tell me how this is ok! Please tell me how the cruelty being done in OUR name is ok. Tell me how anyone can stand by and not be outraged beyond belief! If this was being done to Americans in some other country and their kids you can damn well be sure there would be marching in the streets. And yet we hear people say how this is the law!! There was a law that allowed black people to be separated from their families and sold. That was the law, so no one should have tried to do anything about it, right? Those who helped runaway slaves were disobeying a law, so they should not have done it, right? This isn’t even a fucking law! This is an interpretation of a law intended to protect kids from human trafficking. This is a cruel and mean policy that shouldn’t be who we are.
We were the moral authority in the world once. We cannot make that claim anymore. I mean, there have been other things that made that term meaningless before this, but what we are doing right now removes all doubt. This country has chipped away at every ounce of decency over the past few decades until we have reached this. Children who have done nothing wrong being ripped from parents who have done nothing wrong. Some may disagree with me on that, but as a human being I will not say that parents trying to do what they need to do to protect their families are doing something wrong.
I look at my children who I am trying to teach to be kind and compassionate. I am teaching them to treat others the way they themselves want to be treated. I am teaching them to try to think of others who may be making bad decisions or doing something they don’t like and why they would be doing this thing. And then, in their name our country spits in the face of everything my parents taught me and I have been trying to impress upon my kids.
For a year now we have heard about how football players kneeling is disrespecting our country. Yet spitting on the flag and everything we have always been told it stands for is perfectly acceptable. Yes, kneeling is disrespecting our military, yet trampling all over everything they fought and died for is ok.
This is my country. This country belongs to all of us, and what is being done WE are doing. So, when you sit with your kids at the dinner table, or drive them to school, or play with your baby, remember that at the same time you hold your child, there are people on the border who had their kids stolen and don’t even know where they are. While you sing or read to your child, there are people on the border who haven’t been able to talk to their kids. And while your children live in the safety of your gaze and knowing you are there, hundreds if not thousands of kids sit crying and traumatized in detention centers alone not knowing what’s going on or where their family are.
There are babies crying, with no comfort. There are families suffering unimaginable pain unnecessarily in your name. And you and I will have to live with this stain on our flag and our honor as a country now. If we stand up and demand it be stopped maybe we can redeem ourselves some, but we will never be rid of the stain. I for one do not want to be a country that does this to people. I hope you feel the same. I hope this country is better than this administration would like to believe we are. We have strayed so far from the country we once were. We can decide to keep going down this path of cruelty, or we can say no more. I hope we are better than this.
