[This is a guest blog post by Michelle Castillo]
I remember it like it was just yesterday: we had been learning about racisim and discrimination in Ms. Moxley’s fourth grade class. We had read a picture book about Rubi Bridges, and I had been reading Number The Stars – a book about a girl living through Nazi-occupied Denmark- as my take-home book on the unit.
And I was deeply affected.
I went home and at night in my prayer, I cried. I demanded that God tell me how people – how adults – could do such horrible things to other people, to hate so deeply without knowing them, just based on the color of skin or a different belief system. I promised God I’d do everything in my power to change that. And, as all little girls should, I felt I would.
In undergrad, I was blessed to have taken Trish Roberts-Miller’s class on the rhetoric of racism that helped me answer the “how” that comes down to, simply in my mind, fear. Fear of the “other,” that allows us to strip the “other” of humanity and project fear’s progeny of anger and hate into the unthinkable things we do to “others,” like enslave, hose, beat, bomb, and destroy.
Today, our government is tearing children, in some cases toddlers, away from their parents for seeking asylum in our borders. These are families that are fleeing violence and persecution from their countries, and the only way — let me say this again — the only way they can seek asylum is to present themselves at the border. And for doing that, our government is taking their children away. They could be us. Some of us are them. Some of us, our parents or grandparents or great grandparents were them. We could have been them had we been born in another place.
This administration is weaponizing the most powerful feeling on Earth, that many faith traditions use to explain God,
that of a parent’s love for a child — that would literally walk a thousand miles to protect their children from violence only to have that child ripped from their arms — to achieve its twisted immigration ends of deterrence.
Their message: “if you come here with your children fleeing violence, we’ll take your children, so don’t come.”
And this government is getting away with doing this state sanctioned violence towards children – today, right now – because 1) we’ve allowed Trump and his enablers to call immigrants “animals,” to strip all of us, really, that don’t see the world as they do of our humanity, and 2) because of the silence of some of our friends.
Friends that don’t like to talk politics.
Friends that voted for him because he was “prolife” but are now silent in condemning this torture of children.
Friends who, yeah feel bad this is happening, but it’s not happening to them, doesn’t impact anyone they know, so they’re staying out of it.
Friends that see this as a partisan issue and they’re Republican so even though they’re morally repulsed by the idea, they’re uncomfortable speaking out.
Friends that don’t yet know the power of their voice in creating change.
Friends, I realize this has been a long post, but since you’ve stuck with me this far, I’m here to ask you to break your silence. If you haven’t called your elected officials, if you haven’t donated for the legal defense of these children and their families, if you’re a person of faith and haven’t prayed for these families, please do.
As fourth grade Michelle quickly learned, she can’t change the entire world. But you can impact those around you. And that’s a hell of a start.