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 Escuelita for Team Brownsville. We were surprised to find 50 or more people gathered by the bus station near the international bridge, with wagons overflowing with yoga mats, blue tarps, books, toys, and schools supplies. Apparently it takes the group 48 hours each week to put all this in “beach wagons,” so they can trek it across the border for the one hour school on Sunday mornings. Sometimes, apparently, the group with Melba are waved across by the border guards, but today the officials wanted to know what was in each backpack for the children and to see the name of each children’s book we were pulling across.
In any case, we made it to the other side, and first saw small children with their faces pressed against a fence, watching us. Their families’ tents were set up near the fence, in dirt that could easily fall or crumble or get washed away by the rain. But apparently some are reluctant to move to the covered area set up by the Mexican government (not clear whether this is local or national government) because they want to be very close to the border, where they will have the best chance of making it across when their number is finally called.   I have heard that some are devastated when they find out that even once they have their first hearing, they will be sent back to Mexico, to live in tents again, and that they will probably be required to go to the tent courts 4 times (over the course of months) before their cases are finally decided–almost in every case, decided against them: “No,” our government declares (with a judge speaking to them through a video screen), “In spite of what you have told us about your fears for your life if you return to your home country, you are not eligible for asylum.”

As the 10 of us work to make decisions together and live in close quarters for 8 days, we hear that there is almost no fighting among those who are living on the dirt, in tents, sharing limited clean water, food, and other essentials.  Every child, teen, and adult we met was so warm and friendly, it made me wonder how they could seem so open to us, when our government is treating them with such disdain and lack of humanity.  

We were given a tour of the encampment by a longer term volunteer who is working with the group Angry Tias and Abuelas, and who was able to answer a lot of our questions.  As we walked around the camp, we were able to lure a child of 3 away from the crumbling banks of the Rio Grande because we were afraid he would fall in.  We were able to talk to adults who had somehow managed to build stoves, or trenches to keep water away from their tents.  I was able to say to a few of them, we are here from the US, from MA, because we want to go home and tell everyone we can about what our government is doing to you.  We think our government is wrong and that we should be welcoming you, instead of turning you away.  

One of the hardest parts of the day so far was our return across the international bridge to Brownsville, Texas.   There were lines of cars crossing, and lines of people waiting in line–not asylum seekers, for sure, but those who had travel visas or some other kind of permission to enter the US.  Adults and families with children, waiting patiently, as they must each time they cross, to get permission to step across into our precious, protected land.  And we, we with our white skins and US passports, got to go through door after door, saying “disculpe” as we walked in front of those waiting, because we, we the privileged, are allow to walk easily through a special line made just for us. 

In the camp, I tried to connect whenever I could, with a smile and a wave and words in Spanish.  I connected with small children, and with their moms, as they sat listening to us reading stories in Spanish.  I connected with teens, as we shared the book “Somos Como Las Nubes/We are like the clouds” (poems written through the voices of migrant youth) with them.  I tried to connect with each of the warm and open human beings who we saw beside their tents or makeshift stoves.  But with the people we passed by on the line into the US, we with our privilege and they without, I had too much shame to say buenas tardes, or hola, or even to smile.  We knew that this was not right, and yet, we took advantage of our privilege as we followed the rules, and could thus more quickly get across and rest our tired feet.  If anyone has not experienced their white skin/US privilege in a visceral way, I suggest you walk across the bridge, from Matamoros to Brownsville, with your passport in hand.   You will feel, as we did, in your bones, and your spirit and your heart, that this is not right, that human beings should not be divided into groups of those with rights and those without, of those who are waved through and those who are made to wait.  And for the asylum seekers, it is even worse.  They have no right to enter, even if they wait and wait and wait.  On the days when they are granted (from the US, on high) the right to cross, because of a paper that indicates their court date, they must get to the bridge 4 hours ahead of time, in order to be sure that they’ll be at the tent kangaroo court on time, which means they may need to arrive at the bridge at 4 a.m.

And so, I am struck by my privilege, in a way that is painful and that I hope to never forget.  I’m not sure, at this moment, why so many people think the US is such a wonderful place.  At this moment, I am ashamed of my government, and ashamed of what we are allowing our government (“of the people, by the people, for the people?”) to do to our fellow humans.  For those I spoke to and smiled with, and those who I passed by in shame, I must commit myself to do everything in my power to force a change, to stop MPP (“Migrant Protection Protocol”–but really, “Stay in Mexico”) and to treat those who enter our gates with compassion and welcoming hearts.  

For today, I must sit with my privilege and my pain.