In
2 days I tried but could not click on this article. This particular low
point was too painful for me to even read about. It was beyond outrage.
Well beyond embarrassment.
I
thought about this article and how it described of ripping
babies from their mothers. It is some sort of Machiavellian “lesson” for people
fleeing to the US to be met with the exact opposite of safe harbor. They
are being met with a punishment even murderers with due process are not
subjected to.
I thought about the insensitivity, the injustice and the inhumanity.
But
most of all, I could not bear the pain of imagining a mother whose child is
taken. The white searing heat of it. The sheer torture these women and
children are experiencing.
So I didn’t click on the article.
Instead,
as is the way of Facebook, I deliberated on a pithy apology. One that
would be safe enough given my current occupation. One that wouldn’t
trigger criticism. But one that would somehow express all of those
feelings described above.
As
I crafted my response, words did come to me and when they did I was
surprised. The phrase that came to me is so well known. A throwback
cliche from another terrible moment in history.
When I heard and sang these words in the past, I often pondered the meaning for
these words seemed not to describe the earthquake of resistance and
ultimate victory. These words seemed not
nearly magnanimous enough to capture the successful efforts that led to justice
and equality in this country.
“We shall overcome,” I posted.
Suddenly I understood that this song was not written at the end of the
civil rights struggle. When I sang these words at events decades later,
they were not about the success but the struggle of civil rights.
As I wrote these words in response to the immigration catastrophe, I felt their meaning for the very first time.
