( – promoted by buhdydharma )
I won’t kid you.
Or maybe I will. Who knows what I’ll do. Ha!
Arizona just passed a law that is an unjust law.
But Arizona isn’t the only place this is happening.
Migrants living here who aren’t citizens are not the only ones suffering.
We suffer too.
It is the same suffering, there is no separation.
That’s what solidarity is. Always has been. Always will be.
Not “I will help you with your trouble,” but “this is my trouble, too.” That’s really all there is to it, but for some reason it becomes complicated in action in this crazy world.
Imagine the children in that little town in Iowa, what was its name? The one where there was that giant ICE raid and it ripped the town apart? Oh, hell, all I had to do was google “Iowa immigration raid” and the name came up — Postville. Postville, Iowa.
That was back around two years ago, May of 2008.
This is not a new story.
There were children who lived in the town of Postville, Iowa, they went to school … one day half of their class had just vanished.
Talk about a boogeyman story.
Imagine trying to explain to your children why their classmates had disappeared.
Imagine your children not believing you when you say, “Oh, but that will never happen to us!” and instead having nightmares of bad men and women wearing bad clothes coming to take you away in the middle of the night.
So solidarity is knowing this is happening to you whenever it happens to anyone, ever.
It can be denied but not changed. We are not separate. Our world and we are interdependent.
This is not new, what is happening to our fellow human beings. It is not limited to Arizona. It is not even limited to the US of A.
I’ve read and heard folks say that this new law is “really tough.”
It is not tough at all. It is weak with fear and hatred … and more fear.
It is the justice of the coward.
Little children know this is not a good idea.
No, not tough at all. For toughness requires strength, and whoever brought this law to Arizona was not strong but weak with fear and hatred … and fear.
Solidarity is not a complicated thing. It just is acknowledging what is real — that what happens to you happens to me as well.
Acting upon that is not hard, either, even though we are told by our official authoritarian social propaganda that it is too hard, that we have to prioritize suffering, there isn’t enough, there isn’t enough anything to fix all these horrible problems! Forget about it, just concentrate on what can be done!
Compassion is a renewable resource.
There is no limit to compassion and to solidarity. It is a view and a conviction that gives all of us the strength to look at all suffering and do whatever we can to alleviate it. It is a view. It is a state of mind. It doesn’t require federal funding. It doesn’t require stocks and bonds and fine mansions.
It seems so small in the face of all those “tough” laws with their powers and big guns and sticks and lord knows what else kind of weapons.
Solidarity seems so small.
And there is no limit to it, no limit at all. A complete abundance always ready to help us along the way, always coming from our own hearts as long as we draw breath.
It’s tough.
It is the love that leads to justice, love the content, justice the form (that phrase stolen from Wilhelm’s translation of the I-Ching).
A coward’s idea of justice is not filled with love, but with fear and anger.
We are rich if we’d only open our eyes to see it.
Solidarity. Action will flow from that state of mind as smoothly as a living spring of water gurgling up from its mountain source.
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… for solidarity.
Author
… over at kyledeb’s Citizen Orange about how to get back the narrative on this issue.
Kyle quotes Matias one of the Dream Kids, talking about how to get the word out:
Apologies to Kyle for ripping off his own editing.
We have the answers. We don’t need to do any more studies.
…. ICE deportation raids.
Story in the MSM media concurrently about Michele Obama’s big trip to Mexico and what she wore at every stop. She visited schoolchildren, her speeches were inspiring, her outfits color coordinated nicely with the Mexico’s first lady, they both looked splendid.
People know. That’s why the President got heckled at the Los Angeles DNC fundraiser over another topic, DADT.
So crowded under the bus, and now what is he going to do, just watch while a half million more get stuffed under it ? What is the answer, just not visit Arizona? They don’t care.
Other stuff going on in the Senate today, as the “leadership” jockeys for position. I really do not care for the Senate, today, at all. This is going to get even uglier.
without someone to hate or be afraid of? All the security companies and government departments would have no one left to “keep you safe” from.
Pretty soon there’d be no wars. No need for weapons manufacturers. Wall street could go bust. Politicians would all be unemployed. Nobody would bother collecting taxes. There’d be people of all different colors and shapes all over the streets everywhere you went. TV would go out of business. There’d be no market for toy guns or video games. The WWF would wither away to nothing.
It would be horrible.
The whole system could collapse.
you’ve expressed it so well.
Ive been saving this one. lol
Author
… weighs in:
about 2 years ago. Same thing where they tore the kids out of their parents arms and left them with a cop while their parents were hauled off.
It hit the news hard and brutal and not well. The local police have been instructed to not cooperate with ICE raids. Sheriff’s office is “depends” on the case, but no ICE raids since that one.
If it is our community it is happening to all of us. If we don’t speak up now we are totally complicit.
is that I have encountered people here in AZ that profess to be Democrats, yet who support the AZ racial profiling bill as a means to control illegal immigration.
It seems that racism is bipartisan.
If only we got this. Liberals are afraid to touch the poor, and some of the poor actually don’t want their dignity impinged by help from progressives. (Some of the comments I’ve gotten on Corrente about the unemployed.)
Immigrants and the support they have from the Latino community are one of the bulwarks against fascism in this country. Opposing this measure (and the forces behind it) is not only the decent thing to do. Not only the humane thing to do. Not only “our trouble.” It’s necessary for our survival. (And it pains me to have to appeal to anyone’s self-interest at all.)
Kitty, what can we do?
my hand is held out to all who would take it in solidarity