photo credit Peter Biro/IRC
An Open Letter to Those Promoting Hate, Fear and Exclusion around the Syrian Refugee Crisis
Do you even hear yourself?
America IS a nation of refugees. YOU are the child or the grandchild or the great-grandchild of refugees. We poured into this country by the millions to escape suffering and injustice.
Do you even hear yourself?
There is so much outcry now about "taking care of our own". Okay then fine. What are you doing personally? How have you helped the homeless, the destitute, the poor right here right now in this country? Do you lend a hand and a dollar or do you walk by, either figuring someone else will take care of it or just not really caring at all? How have you helped homeless and broken vets because just flying a flag off the front porch doesn't count.
Do you even hear yourself because everything you are writing has no place in a world based on love, inclusion, freedom and putting a hand out to a brother or sister in need. That type of thinking no longer works and we all suffer from it when we go there.
Do you even hear yourself because the type of country that wants "only Americans" in, and yes even white Christian Americans like Timothy McVeigh, is not the kind of country I'm willing to live in. Because, quite frankly, for the 99.99% of us sharing this planet who would never consider committing such such atrocities what the hell are you afraid of?
Would it ease your mind if they were whiter?
So listen to yourself as you speak, as you write, as you promote fear and hate and ask yourself if what you are saying comes from the heart or does it comes from a place of fear? Some day. Some day the tides just might turn and we might need a place to flee. Could be something as simple as a natural disaster. Doesn't have to be a terrorist attack. Who will open their doors to us? To you? To me? To my children? Who will open their hearts because it we don't start there in that soft space of Hope and Love then heaven help us all.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest lost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
~ Emma Lazarus, American Poet (ancestors from Portugal)
Do you even hear yourself?
America IS a nation of refugees. YOU are the child or the grandchild or the great-grandchild of refugees. We poured into this country by the millions to escape suffering and injustice.
Do you even hear yourself?
There is so much outcry now about "taking care of our own". Okay then fine. What are you doing personally? How have you helped the homeless, the destitute, the poor right here right now in this country? Do you lend a hand and a dollar or do you walk by, either figuring someone else will take care of it or just not really caring at all? How have you helped homeless and broken vets because just flying a flag off the front porch doesn't count.
Do you even hear yourself because everything you are writing has no place in a world based on love, inclusion, freedom and putting a hand out to a brother or sister in need. That type of thinking no longer works and we all suffer from it when we go there.
Do you even hear yourself because the type of country that wants "only Americans" in, and yes even white Christian Americans like Timothy McVeigh, is not the kind of country I'm willing to live in. Because, quite frankly, for the 99.99% of us sharing this planet who would never consider committing such such atrocities what the hell are you afraid of?
Would it ease your mind if they were whiter?
So listen to yourself as you speak, as you write, as you promote fear and hate and ask yourself if what you are saying comes from the heart or does it comes from a place of fear? Some day. Some day the tides just might turn and we might need a place to flee. Could be something as simple as a natural disaster. Doesn't have to be a terrorist attack. Who will open their doors to us? To you? To me? To my children? Who will open their hearts because it we don't start there in that soft space of Hope and Love then heaven help us all.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest lost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
~ Emma Lazarus, American Poet (ancestors from Portugal)
photo: Daniel Etter, The New York Times.
photo credit unknown: Ellis Island Archives
photo credit: Reuters
photo credit unknown: Ellis Island Archives
photo credit: Julian Hamilton, Daily Mirror
photo credit unknown: Ellis Island Archives
Photo credit Dimitris Michalakis, Reuters
photo credit unknown: Ellis Island Archives