Cities of Refuge

When we allow freedom to ring – when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, Free at last, Great God a-mighty, We are free at last.’

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

It’s a wonder I haven’t yet abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

~Anne Frank

In the past two weeks we’ve recognized Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and International Holocaust Remembrance Day. I say “recognized” because I don’t think to say “celebrated” is appropriate. Not now. Not today. Not in light of what’s happened in the first week of the new presidential administration our country has witnessed.

I think on Dr. King’s words, and Ms. Frank’s. They’ve been ringing in my ears for days now. These two, powerful and poignant statements of faith in man, faith in our leaders, faith in humanity, should ring like sirens in all our ears. Should we not all be free? Should we not all believe that people truly are good?

Shouldn’t these things, in the twenty-first century, in an age of advancement and progress, ring true without having to shout the words?

With the stroke of a pen, however, one man, one single man, proved Dr. King and Ms. Frank wrong.

But it wasn’t just one man, was it? Millions, and I will not say millions of us, or even millions of Americans, but millions, did this.

I find it conspicuously ironic that those I know that supported Donald Trump have been so silent these last days. They’ve said nothing as he signs order after order suspending the pay of our soldiers, threatening the health of women worldwide, and now eviscerating the very principal upon which this nation was founded: Inclusion.

Don’t tell me the immigration/travel ban is one of national security. Don’t. Don’t dare. It’s an outright lie and if you can’t see that fact, then you either support the misplaced rationale behind it, or you don’t understand it. Shame on you, in either instance.

More than three quarters of the September 11^th attackers were Saudi. Saudi Arabia, where the president has business ties, is surreptitiously absent from the list of nations from which even those legally entitled to be here have been denied entry into our country.

Scholars.

An Oscar-nominated director.

Family and friends of those I care about, possessing government issued visas and green cards.

Prohibited.

This is America now. Your tired, your poor, your huddled masses are no longer welcome.

What have we become?

And it’s only been a week.

Don’t tell me to wait and see. We’ve seen enough.

How? How can any American stand by and watch what’s happening, and accept this? How can people hide behind the veils of religion or self-righteousness, and not cry out at the top of their lungs in opposition to what’s happening?

I am beside myself. In the last week I’ve been addicted to the news, social media, any outlet into which I can sink my senses, because every fiber of my being is screaming to convince me that what I’m seeing, hearing, and reading isn’t real.

But it is.

If you told me I’d be writing this piece, lamenting the fact that the President of the United States of America signed an order turning away refugees from a war-torn, Middle-Eastern state, while at the same time allowing those from Middle-Eastern countries in which he does business to come and go as they please, I’d have called you mad. I’d have said to you that such a thing couldn’t happen in America. That we’ve progressed too far to fall back into banal ignorance and abject, blind nationalism. That we are better than this.

Yet here we are.

Who thinks this is acceptable? Who thinks this is what America is? Please write to me, or post a comment. Defend this.

You won’t.

Because you can’t.

Not rationally, anyway. Not with any ounce of compassion. Not with decency. Not with reason.

This isn’t a liberal position. This is a human position.

This isn’t a political crisis. This is a humanitarian crisis.

This is a statement to the world that America has abandoned its ideals. Its foundation.

And millions that reside here let it happen. And I’m ashamed.

When making statements like this in the past I’ve been accused of being hateful, divisive and angry.

Hateful? Because I dare to ask those that put this man in power to look into themselves and reflect on what they’ve done? Because I am reminding them that they have elevated a man who many medical scholars deem in their professional opinions to be mentally unstable? Because I remind you that you supported a bigoted racist, whose actions thus far have proven that?

That’s not hate. That’s pity.

And decrying support for a man who has by official action belied the very notion of our freedom and democracy is not divisive. It’s a reckoning.

They’ve got one thing right, though. I am angry. And if you’re not, perhaps you should ask yourself why you’re not.

But, again, you probably won’t, because I suspect many of you don’t really want to face the truth in the answer to that query.

I have struggled this past week. I have struggled mightily. I am desperate to understand why and how we’ve come to this dark place in our history. And it is a dark place, a dark time. And the light seems poised to grow dimmer.

I’ve never been so emotional about politics before. Never in my life. I’ve championed causes, and participated in the political process both as a candidate for office and as volunteer in a presidential campaign. I’ve donated, my money and my time, to causes in which I believed.

I’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with those who struggled with issues of morality and righteousness as they exercised rights that those before them fought with all their might to ensure.

But this, now? I am at a loss. I am at a heartbreaking loss.

Today is January 28^th, 2017.

Two Thousand Seventeen.

How?

Why?

I have already donated money to the ACLU. I have signed petitions. Called Senators and Congressmen and women. I’ve even marched. And yet my efforts seem so small. So ineffective. And it pains me.

Oh God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.

President John F. Kennedy kept this paraphrasing of a Breton Fisherman’s Prayer, attributable to Winfred Ernest Garrison, on his desk in the Oval Office.

Ours is a tempestuous sea, and our boats so terribly small.

There is more to the poem, however, that perhaps many if not most have never read. This passage is my favorite:

Thy world, O God, so fierce,

And I so frail.

Yet, though its arrows oft to pierce

My fragile mail,

Cities of refuge rise where dangers cease,

Sweet silences abound, and all is peace.

We cannot let what’s happening, the fate that’s befallen our nation, destroy us. We cannot let the arrows of ignorance, bigotry and hatred pierce our hearts. We must find the cities of refuge. We must be the cities of refuge. We must silence the danger, and the hatred, and be all that is peaceful.

I will stand. I will resist.

© 2017 J.J. Goodman. All rights reserved.