Light in the Dark

Having just returned from our week immersed at the southern border of Brownsville/Matamoros, I am struck by the many ways that I witnessed “light in the dark”.
In the face of enormous fear, danger, and harsh, cumulative injustice, the migrants of Matamoros, whose hearts seem buoyed by indomitable faith, carry on with beautiful resilience. We witnessed the ingenuity, creativity, enterprise, cooperation, gratitude and capacity to build a village out of dirt and hope. Likewise the capacity of those on the American side of the little green Rio Grande, who care deeply about the injustice happening in our names and with our taxes, have responded to this evil policy with a plethora of humanitarian efforts that roll out each and every day, requiring incredible organization, hard work, lots of money and volunteers. Together they bring meals, schooling, books, life affirming activities, warm clothes, needed supplies, medical care and legal advocacy, always responding to the changing conditions on the ground. They do this with a bottom up approach, not a top down approach, that is, they listen to the voices of the migrants and offer help that is requested, and support the empowerment of migrants to organize themselves and participate directly in all the many efforts to make the unbearable a little bearable.
I came back with a stronger feeling of how evil this policy is, how Kafka-esque and Nazi-esque it all seems, out of site of most Americans, by design.
But I also directly witnessed the vitality, that particular kind of human inextinguishable light in the face of darkness, the kind I heard stories about from my relatives who survived the holocaust, and from so many peoples’ struggles for justice past and present. I didn’t leave Brownsville/Matamoros feeling very hopeful about justice winning over injustice for our asylum seeking brothers and sisters, as the system is almost totally rigged against them. But seeing and feeling their light, strengthens my conviction that we can not stop trying.