By Susie Zeiger For the past two evenings most of us have been serving food prepared by World Central Kitchen to approximately a thousand asylum seekers who line up and wait patiently to be served. I was told that there have been fewer people waiting recently because it’s been so cold in the evening. The …
Monthly Archives: February 2020
Witnessing in the Tent Court
by Annique Boomsma, Joan Epstein, and Karen Levine On February 11 several of us spent about four hours in the Tent Court just on the Brownsville side of the Gateway International bridge where asylum-seekers come for their court hearings. Below is a summary of our observations, including questions that arose for us. Our expectations going …
Humanity Is Here
In times where so many of us struggle against becoming numb from the onslaught of depressing news headlines, we have found hope and courage here at the border, from listening to the dreams of the migrants themselves, witnessing their perseverance and fortitude in putting up with untenable situations, and from the many people and organizations …
Our First Day
By Betty Lynne Wolfson Please take a moment to read a bit about our first day’s experience, here at The Border. Every person, parents and their children, here in their encampment on the Border, were so warm, open, lovingly kind, and full of faith. I spoke with a woman at the Medical Tent, this was only …
Privilege and Pain
Here we are, on the Brownsville/Matamoros Border, the place we’ve been talking about going to for months. Here we are, with our passion, our commitment, and our privilege, ready to do what we can to connect, to support, to witness, and to protest.We got up early this morning to meet Melba Lucio, director of the …
First Day: Escuelita
We crammed quite a bit into our first morning. Meeting at the Brownsville bus station, we joined a good-sized group of volunteers in a centering ritual before walking en masse across the bridge into Mexico. Crossing was smooth. They were telling people to open their backpacks for inspection, but when I got to the front …
First Day: Arrival in Brownsville
Not much to report from yesterday, but honoring the commitment to make sure there’s a new post covering every day of our witness and relief mission. Of the 10 members in our delegation, nine were on the same Hartford-Houston-Harlingen itinerary. The tenth, flying out of Boston, arrived a couple of hours later. Most of the …
Thank you, Scott Merzbach, for this Excellent Article About Our Mission
Daily Hampshire Gazette reporter Scott Merzbach interviewed three of our 10-member Jewish activists for Immigration Justice delegation and wrote this excellent article about our humanitarian mission, which starts tomorrow.
Why Are We Going to the Border? This Song is the Perfect Explanation
Build a conscience, not a wall.” Just in time for our humanitarian mission to the border tomorrow, I found a mini-flier with the URL of Amador’s (of Flor de Cana) powerful “Nana Rabiosa.” It starts with a beautiful lullaby and then morphs into a hard-hittting rap on the shame of our government’s cruelty toward migrant …
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Report on our Children, Trauma, and Art program with Dr. Simone Alter-Muri
Quick report on the amazing talk we sponsored this past Sunday on the art of children facing severe trauma by our good friend Simone Alter-Muri. She not only brought in images from the art show we have at Michelson Gallery through 2/21—but (like the show itself) brought in the historical context, discussing art that kids …
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