Jesus' strategy: Hearts and Minds

Let me start by telling you what you already know.

Today, my home State of Arizona is enacting Senate Bill 1070, an anti-immigrant law which, among other things, tasks local law enforcement with the duty to enforce federal immigration law.

Yesterday, US District Judge Susan Bolton enjoined four provisions of Senate Bill 1070 from going into effect until various lawsuits challenging the Constitutionality of the law can be settled.

For folks all around the country who oppose SB1070, the judge’s ruling is a victory. People outside of Arizona, who never had a say in this bill or even in the legislators who voted for it can celebrate a legal victory. For those folks, the law was neither moral, nor legal, and therefore the court did exactly what it was meant to do: defend the rights of the minority against the tyranny of the majority! Let the celebrations ensue!

But for those of us who live here in Arizona, legal battles are not enough. The fact of the matter is, many here in our state support this law and a judge cannot rule over the hearts and minds of a community. And this is my community. These are my brothers and sisters, both those being persecuted by SB1070, and those who support it. The folks who speak in broken English about the fear of broken homes that will result from this bill, and those who speak in angry tones about “illegals” and their drain on our society, these are all my people. Here in Arizona, there are no winners in these winner-take-all legal battles, whether they are fought in legislatures or court rooms. We are a broken people.

Fortunately, I believe in a God of broken people. I believe in a God who treks across human boundaries with migrants who care more about feeding their families than legal documents. I believe in a God who offers the powerful mercy and comfort in the face of fear, if they can just find a way to admit they are afraid. And I believe in a God who came down to hear our stories, feel our pain, and offer us a new life, and a new chance to be the loving neighbors and gentle stewards we were created to be.

And so, as much as this bill breaks my heart, you won’t find me protesting today. I won’t be carrying signs or attempting to shout down the voices of power. But you won’t find me idle either. I’m gonna try to listen to some stories today, from folks who need people like me - Arizonans, Christians, human beings like me – to hear their stories. I’m gonna try to talk to folks – respectfully, lovingly, honestly – to folks who don’t always agree with me. And I’m gonna try to pray, and trust that the God who can lead a people out of slavery in Egypt and out of slavery to our own selfish desires can lead my people, my home state, out of slavery to our own fear. In other words, I’m gonna try to give up the short game that makes me feel good about myself but does little to bring love into the world, in exchange for the long game. It takes time to build community with folks you don’t agree with, and even more to love them, and yourself, into the people that God created us to be. But maybe, if we take the time, we can create a world in which everyone wins.

Did I mention that I also believe in a God of miracles?
~brian schlemmer

Arizona SB1070 Update

Greetings OnFire bloggers and readers. Tomorrow, anti-immigrant law SB1070 was supposed to go into effect. This is an update from the Associated Press.

Good news from Arizona:

Judge blocks parts of Arizona immigration law

By JACQUES BILLEAUD and AMANDA MYERS (AP)

PHOENIX — A judge has blocked the most controversial sections of Arizona's new immigration law from taking effect Thursday, handing a major legal victory to opponents of the crackdown.

The law will still take effect Thursday, but without many of the provisions that angered opponents — including sections that required officers to check a person's immigration status while enforcing other laws. The judge also put on hold a part of the law that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times, and made it illegal for undocumented workers to solicit employment in public places.

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton put those controversial sections on hold until the courts resolve the issues.

Opponents say the law will lead to racial profiling and is trumped by federal immigration law.

But in celebrating this federal court ruling, let us not forget that this bill's existence is just another example of institutional racism that contributes to the culture of fear that is a daily reality for so many immigrant communities. Let us continue to pray and stand in solidarity with those fighting against SB1070 and those who continue to push for comprehensive immigration reform.

To learn more about what parts of SB1070 will still go into effect tomorrow and what has been blocked, check out an article from the Arizona Daily Star here.

Kneeling in Altar

So rock me mama like a wagon wheel

Rock me mama anyway you feel
Hey mama rock me
Rock me mama like the wind and the rain
Rock me mama like a south-bound train
Hey mama rock me
-"Wagon Wheel," Bob Dylan; Old Crow Medicine Show

The border, la frontera, is death. Again and again when I was in Nogales I heard this expressed by people who call the border home, people whose existence is this increasingly militarized space. Again and again, I saw white crosses, x's that marked the spot, signifying the death in the desert along that line drawn in pencil by men far, far away.

There is a dusty fear here. As a member of the OnFire Borderlinks delegation in October 2009, we traveled from Tucson to Nogales to Altar and back. These memories hit me this week as I sat in front of a computer working at Faith in Public Life when I came across this article by Elliot Spagat from the Associated Press:

Mexican drug cartel killings near Nogales increase

ALTAR, Sonora- Very few residents dare to drive on one of the roads out of this watering hole for migrants, fearing they will be stopped at gunpoint. They worry they will be told to turn around after their gas tanks are drained or, worse, be kidnapped or killed.

A shootout that left 21 people dead and six wounded on the road last week is the most gruesome sign that a relatively tranquil pocket of northern Mexico quickly is turning into a hotbed of drug-fueled violence on Arizona's doorstep...

Nogales, the main city in the region, which shares a border with the Arizona city of the same name, has had 131 murders so far this year, nearly surpassing 135 for all of 2009, according to a tally by the newspaper Diario de Sonora. That includes two heads found Thursday stuffed side-by-side between the bars of a cemetery fence.

The carnage still pales compared with other Mexican border cities, most notably Juarez, which lies across from El Paso, which had 2,600 murders last year. But the increase shows that some small cattle-grazing towns near Nogales are in the grip of drug traffickers who terrorize residents...

"If no one puts a stop to this, these will become ghost towns," said Jose Martin Mayoral, editor of Diario del Desierto, the newspaper in Caborca....

That phrase ghost towns echoes in my mind as I sit here, so far from this fear on the border yet still so affected by it. When I sat down to write this post, I thought about what it was like to sit in a van in Altar looking out into the desert at the road people took to get to the U.S.A. without documents. We couldn't get out of the van because the entrance to the road was patrolled by gangs. I wanted to write about NAFTA and the failed war on drugs, corruption and USAmerican citizens' own complicity with the violence that is migrating over this border in the way people are forced into drug and human trafficking. I wanted to compare the low levels of violent crime in USAmerican Border cities with the fact that Ciudad Juarez, just over the border from El Paso, Texas, is one of the most violent cities in the world.

Yet as I read this Associated Press article and think about what Altar and Nogales meant to me and why I am so saddened to read about the violence on the border, the image that keeps coming into my head is that of José, an eighteen year old who looked so much younger who came to the migrant shelter in Altar the night we were there. He was alone. I didn't get much of his story and don't know if any one of us did, but what I remember about José was the quiet way he sang along to the music as my friend David played guitar in the courtyard to the shelter. We sang song after song as the sun set and the coolness of the desert at night set in around us.

The sacred to me was in the movement of José's lips as we sang "Wagon Wheel" until the haunting beauty of the song dissipated in the darkness and we entered the shelter to eat.

As I continue to sit in front of a computer, I meditate on the movement of God in that moment and I just wish I could give it to you, the way the night air felt against my skin, the sound of Susanna's voice as she led us all in the song, the weight of it all. Would it change you, would it make you ask more questions, make you stop and think when you read about the increased violence of border cities on the Mexican side of the border?

"Wagon Wheel" is a song about traveling south, about getting to Raleigh to be with a lover, where if he died in Raleigh, he says "at least I will die free." I don't know if José ever made it north, but if he did, he only had a few months before SB1070 reminded the rest of us how undocumented people living in this country are not free, continuing to live in prisons of fear from a different violence. José reminds me why we need comprehensive immigration reform so badly, why I pray he is neither living in the border cities in Mexico nor in Arizona but that he has a chance to live free of that fear. That we all have the chance to live free of that fear.



***

All the pictures are from the OnFire Borderlinks delegation in October 2009. Check out the posts about our trip from David, me, Mallory, Lindsey, and Jen.

From Arizona to Palestine/Israel: Documentation, Deportation, and Boycott”

This blog was originally posted at OnFire member David Hosey's City of...blog.

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

A new order allows enforcement officials to stop anyone who “looks illegal” (read: has brown skin) and demand that they produce documents proving their right to be in a place they call home. Failure to produce such documents can lead to fines, jail time, or deportation. Widely seen as a violation of basic rights, this new order leads to widespread calls for boycott.

I’m speaking, of course, about Arizona’s new racist law, SB1070–but I could just as easily be talking about Palestine/Israel.

If you haven’t heard, SB1070 effectively mandates racial profiling by giving local police officers the right to demand immigration documentation from anyone they think might be in the country without documents. Here’s theWashington Post summarizing the new law (and insisting on calling human beings “illegal”):

“The law gives local police broad authority to stop and request documents from anyone they reasonably suspect is an illegal immigrant. It calls for aggressive prosecution of illegal immigrants, and officers can be sued if they do not enforce the law.”

SB 1070 is so racist and over the top that it has led to a wave of outrage around the country, including condemnation from a wide spectrum of faith leaders and President Barack Obama. Many organizations and individuals have called for a boycott of Arizona, including Arizona Member of Congress Raul Grijalva, award-winning author Tayari Jones, and Washington Postcolumnist Robert McCartney.

I support these calls, just as I support efforts to oppose so-called “Secure Communities” initiatives that would require local law enforcement to work with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a manner sure to promote racial profiling and ruin community policing efforts.

I have to wonder, though, how calls to boycott Arizona–including sports boycotts and boycotts on travel to the state–are so easily endorsed in theWashington Post (McCartney: “I like the idea of a boycott because it’s so all-American”), while calls to boycott Israel for its consistent violations of Palestinian human rights and international law are deemed “controversial.”

The connections are eerie: earlier this month, a new Israeli military order came into effect in the Palestinian West Bank, which would allow the military to demand that any Palestinian, anytime, produce proof of their right to be in their home. According to the Israeli newspaperHa’aretz:

“A new military order will take effect this week, enabling the army to deport tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank and prosecute them on infiltration charges, which carry long prison terms….The order’s vague language will allow army officers to exploit it arbitrarily to carry out mass expulsions, in accordance with military orders which were issued under unclear circumstances. The first candidates for expulsion will be people whose ID cards bear addresses in the Gaza Strip, including children born in the West Bank and Palestinians living in the West Bank who have lost their residency status for various reasons.”

Sound familiar? As with SB1070, the Israeli military order purports to be in response to illegal migration (“infiltration”), but is actually a license for racial profiling and mass deportation–i.e., ethnic cleansing. And yet where was the Washington Post call for boycott?

There’s more: The Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israeli violations of international law came one year after the International Court of Justice ruled against the Israel’s “Separation Barrier,” which annexes massive sections of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. That “Barrier” (read: apartheid Wall) is being built, in part, by Elbit, an Israeli military contractor that also has half of the contract on the U.S./Mexico Border Wall.

And SB1070 is likely to lead to the type of checkpoints and arbitrary “searches” and arrests that have been daily reality for West Bank Palestinians for decades. The West Bank currently has over 500 checkpoints, roadblocks, and closures–in an area the size of Delaware, not Arizona.

Of course, in Arizona and in Palestine/Israel, many of the people affected by racist laws and policies can trace their ancestral connection to the place back well before the current (predominantly white-skinned) regimes making such racist laws came into power. That’s how colonialism and occupation works. And as Jewish Israeli Assaf Oron writes at DailyKos, racial profiling linked to ID documents is a fact of life for Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel as well.

So here’s what I’m saying: all those calling for boycotting Arizona because of a racist “documentation and deportation” law–I’m with you. And everyone who supports the Palestinian BDS call should be with you too. But we’re asking you to support boycotts targeting such racist laws, mandating displacement and ethnic cleansing, that are supported by U.S. policy and U.S. corporations, no matter where these “laws” are being made.

And yes, that includes you, faith leaders who have rightfully condemned SB1070. The Palestinian Christian community is asking you for your support, too.

Now is the time. It’s the right thing to do. And it just makes sense.

–

For more information on how you can get involved with boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), check out the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation’s BDS resources. And check out the following video from Al Jazeera for more on the new Israeli military order that could lead to the displacement of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank:

Crossing Imaginary Lines

Check out OnFire member, Rachel Harvey, as she shares her story with the Reconciling Ministries Network. What's your story?

UMConnection: "United Methodists call for immigration reform"

The most recent issue of UMConnection, the newspaper of the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, has a great article about United Methodist participation in the immigration reform rally, including quotes from UMOnFire staff Jen Mihok, a reference to our BorderLinks trip, and a front page photo of OnFire members. Check it out:

United Methodists call for immigration reform

BY JOHN W. COLEMAN
SPECIAL TO THE UMCONNECTION














Baltimore-Washington Conference churches were represented among the tens of thousands of marchers who gathered in the nation’s capital March 21 to call for improvements in U.S.
immigration laws.

“The time for comprehensive immigration reform is now,” proclaimed United Methodist Bishop Minerva Carcaño of Phoenix, Ariz., leader of the Desert-Southwest Conference.

She joined a diverse procession of speakers representing religious bodies, advocacy organizations, labor unions and other groups. They urged Congress and President Barack Obama to move the issue to the top of the legislation agenda.

Churches from Washington, D.C., to Frederick, Baltimore, Hyattsville, Oxon Hill and other areas of the conference joined the colorful, enthusiastic, noisy throng of marchers, many of them shouting “Si, se puede” in Spanish and “Yes, we can” in English. Parading with signs, banners, baby strollers and even marching bands, they filled nearly five blocks on the national mall near the U.S. Capitol.

“This country says to you, ‘Harvest our fields, build our homes, take care of our children, serve our tables, clean up after us and then be gone,’” Carcaño told listeners.

She and other speakers called for humane, viable policies and procedures that would allow about 11 million immigrants now in the U.S.
illegally to attain legal status and to work and live with their families, safe from intimidation, arrest and deportation.

Carcaño, who chairs two of the denomination’s immigration task forces, called current laws and enforcement “a shameful state of affairs for a country that prides itself on providing justice for all.”

Hundreds of United Methodists were seen gathered and scattered among the crowd with identifying shirts and signs. They came via trains, cars and buses, some from across our region, others from across the nation, many riding all night to be a part of history.

“We have voices and power, and we are here to say we want this to be a fair and just system that treats people with dignity and respect,” said David Hosey, who attends Dumbarton UMC in Washington. He is a mission intern with the General Board of Global Ministries.

Part of the church’s active young adult group, he and others visited both sides of the border in Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales, Mexico, last October. They met with Mexican migrant workers and high school students through the BorderLinks program. “We saw the economic disparities and pressures they suffer,” he said. “They’re looking for opportunities, jobs and hope for their families.”

Jennifer Mihok, a member of Woodside UMC in Silver Spring and a mission intern at the Methodist Federation for Social Action, coordinated the trip. “I’m here because I don’t need to be in the shadows when so many others have to be,” she said.

“This was an amazing experience and a strong statement for our country to address the need for comprehensive immigration reform” said the Rev. Edgardo Rivera, who coordinates Hispanic/Latino Ministries for the Baltimore-Washington Conference. “Offering a path to citizenship for undocumented people and protecting them from harm and exploitation is an issue of justice and hospitality. I’m pleased to see our church represented here.”

Valerie Hames, of First UMC Hyattsville, worked with others across the conference since December to promote the march and organize buses to bring in church members. “But when I finally saw all the people gathered there at the march, I was overwhelmed,” she said. “The energy there was great, and hearing victims of enforcement and broken families speak their pain — especially one little boy — really resonated with a lot of people and opened their eyes and hearts to this problem.”

Hames, who came here from Sierra Leone 20 years ago, endured her struggles with the inefficient, expensive immigration legal system before finally receiving her green card just this year.

She is a volunteer in the Justice for Our Neighbors (JFON) immigration legal assistance ministry at First Church Hyattsville, and she chairs the conference’s oversight committee for the program which operates in three locations.

“I brought JFON volunteers to the march for them to see how important this ministry is to people’s lives,” she said. “And I felt stronger about my own involvement in JFON when I left there.”