Address Before Brownsville City Commission

I gave this speech at last night’s City Commission meeting.

John Bruciak isn’t the only one “caught in the crossfire,” to quote Commissioner Atkinson.  All of Brownsville is ducking for cover as racism, xenophobia, and hatred, spit from the lips of Tom Tancredo and Lou Dobbs are aimed at our beloved borderlands.  Even our city commission has become wounded with rancor.  Who among us will have the courage to stand up amidst the fray and fight for our land and our way of life?  I will tell you who: over 98% of the residents along the border wall route, that’s who.

 

This week, members of Border Ambassadors, CASA, and the No Border Wall Coalition have met with 123 landowners along the route of the fence and 121 of them (over 98%) signed the Mayor’s declaration, deciding they aren’t going to act scared anymore.  Given the will of the people, will this commission continue to capitulate, or will it stand up and fight for what it claims it wants: No Border Wall!?

 

And who among us will be the peacemakers, for as Jesus said, they will be called the children of God?  This wall was started by those who think the United States and Mexico are enemies, and it will be stopped by the peacemakers who recognize the brotherhood of mankind.  This wall is motivated out of fear, but as John said, “Perfect love casts out all fear.”  Who here is willing to love this country enough to stop it from building its own Berlin Wall?

 

I urge this commission to find the love, forgiveness, and courage to join the people of Brownsville.  Put aside your animosity and unite in our common fight.

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Video of the March Against the Wall

 

 

Hold On to Hope

Today, I gave this speech to the Brownsville City Council Meeting during the public comment portion.  The Brownsville Herald ran an article on Sunday that said that the Mayor was betrayed by the City Council who went behind closed doors to allow the Army Corps of Engineers onto city land to survey for the wall.  It is in response to that that I wrote this speech-on the back, and in the margins of the agenda.   

Yesterday, Princeton University recognized five of my 8th grade students for essays they wrote on the topic “What would Martin Luther King say and do about immigration?”  Princeton opened this year’s essay contest to my students because they used my blog, nonviolent migration, as a resource for their contest.  These five students, Melissa Guerra, Yessenia Martinez, Abigail Cabrera, Vanessa Trevino, and Blanca Gonzalez were the only five students who had the faith to submit an essay and all were recognized by Princeton. 

I asked the rest of my 121 students to speak honestly about why they had decided not to write for the contest.  The overwhelming number of students responded that it wasn’t worth trying because they felt that because Princeton is in the North, they would prejudge their work since they live on the border.  This experience reminded me once again just how excluded these children feel.   Even though this wall will be South of most of my students, my students are smart enough to know that the same motive behind this wall is also shouting at them, saying, “You are not us; keep out!” 

These students, who started with such enthusiasm when the contest was announced, lost hope and they let their fears overcome their faith.  This broke my heart because I love my students, but your capitulation is something other than heartbreaking because you are no longer 8th graders.  We expect you to hold out hope.  We expect you to keep the faith.  We expect you to work for us, and let us fight this fight. 

At this time, we want to express our love… and forgiveness… to all the members of the commission.  However, as a result of your action, we must now find a legal way to undo what you’ve done so that my 8th graders don’t come to learn that you prejudged them too. 

 

Alternative Spring Break in the Rio Grande Valley

Stop the wall this spring break. 

A year and a half ago, Border Ambassador Jay Johnson-Castro went on a 15 day walk through the Texas communities that will be affected if the Secure Fence Act of 2006—already federal law—becomes a reality.  His walk, which he undertook basically alone, was covered by the BBC[1] and other international media, as well as multiple articles in the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express News.[2]  Hearing of the walk, Republican Governor Rick Perry (a proponent of the wall) held a press conference about border security in the tiny community of Rio Grande City while Jay was walking through town.

Why would one man require a response from such a powerful person?  Why would Governor Perry even care about one Don Quixote-like figure plodding through the long stretches of nothingness?  Why would the Houston Chronicle give its front page as a pulpit for a solitary nobody doing something so crazy?  These questions have elusive answers, but those familiar with the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s are better equipped to make sense of them than most.  Two clues are found in familiar phrases from that generation.  “Unearned suffering is redemptive,” which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. often said, and “You got to move,” a favorite phrase of the Highlander Folk School—who trained Rosa Parks and others—have oriented my understanding of why a walk can be so powerful.

Following that motto, “You got to move,” this spring break—from March 8^th to the 16^th—local educators and students, along with religious and civic leaders will walk 115 miles (13 miles each day for 9 days) from Roma to Brownsville as a form of nonviolent direct action.  We invite you to partner with us in an alternative spring break, by following this link.  http://www.mysignup.com/noborderwallwalk  There you will make a commitment to participate and input your information.  We will then contact you with the necessary details.

The purpose of this walk is to show support for local landowners who do not want to give the Army Corps of Engineers access to their property.  These landowners are facing litigation by the U.S. Government, and are acting very courageously in spite of this threat.  Many more landowners would resist the government if they knew they were supported.  A second purpose is to gain the attention of the nation, especially during this election year.

Through today’s New York Times,[3] land owner Eloisa Tamez’s plan for resistance was shared with a national audience.  Eloisa works closely with Jay Johnson-Castro in the fight to prevent this wall from segregating our community, but she isn’t the only land owner along the proposed fence route.  Now is the time to share her story, Jay’s story, and spread the message of our collective struggle.  Please join us and invite your friends, family, and neighbors to do the same.

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[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/international/newsid_6184000/6184849.stm

[2] http://texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=679

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/us/13border.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=border+wall&oref=slogin

 

The Sword That Heals [Unjust Immigration Restrictions]

The next three week’s readings come from Martin Luther King’s most influential book, Why We Can’t Wait.  In this week’s chapter, “The Sword That Heals,” Dr. King discusses many of the same principles that we have discussed in earlier weeks.  This time, the principles of nonviolent civil disobedience are told in their historical context.

 

Civil Disobedience

            One of the most persuasive passages I’ve read about civil disobedience comes from this chapter.  Dr. King wrote,

          There were no more powerful moments in the Birmingham episode than during the closing days of the campaign, when Negro youngsters ran after white policemen, asking to be locked up.  There was an element of unmalicious mischief in this.  The Negro youngsters, although perfectly willing to submit to imprisonment, knew that we had already filled up the jails, and that the police had no place left to take them.

            When, for decades, you have been able to make a man compromise his manhood by threatening him with a cruel and unjust punishment, and when suddenly he turns upon you and says: “Punish me.  I do not deserve it, I will accept it so that the world will know that I am right and you are wrong,” you hardly know what to do.  You feel defeated and secretly ashamed.  You know that this man is as good as you are; that from some mysterious source he has found the courage and the conviction to meet physical force with soul force.

            So it was that, to the Negro, going to jail was no longer a disgrace but a badge of honor.

When I read these paragraphs, I am completely convinced that nonviolent civil disobedience—when practiced widely—has more power to break the psychological shackles of unjust laws crippling our community than almost any other principle.  Moving across international borders to pursue happiness is not wrong!  We must stop acting like it is.  We must challenge (not just ignore) the laws that prevent that pursuit.

 

Constitutional Litigation

            In this chapter, Dr. King gave a summary of the various approaches for equality since Emancipation.  He started with Booker T. Washington’s admonition to work hard, moved on to W. E. B. Dubois’s call for education, explained Marcus Garvey’s ideas about racial pride and a return to Africa, and ended up describing the NAACP’s recourse to Constitutional litigation.  It is then that Dr. King said, “Nonviolent action, the Negro saw, was the way to supplement—not replace the process of change through legal recourse.”

            This quote brings me back to a problem I have been wrestling with for quite some time, without sufficient success.  What success can we hope to see in a civil disobedience campaign without Constitutional litigation?  This is difficult because of the plenary power doctrine, which says that Congress has absolute power of the area of immigration and the courts cannot overturn its legislation.  If the Supreme Court is unwilling to apply the Constitutional guarantees to immigration law, how damaging is that for us?  How necessary is litigation in the fight for rights in the United States?

Nonviolent vs. Violent Reform

            I love King’s quote here in pages 27 and 28, and just have to share it.

          Angry exhortation from street corners and stirring calls for the Negro to arm and go forth to do battle stimulate loud applause.  But when the applause dies, the stirred and the stirring return to their homes, and lie in their beds for still one more night with no progress in view.  They cannot solve the problem they face because they have offered no challenge but only a call to arms, which they themselves are unwilling to lead, knowing that doom would be its reward.  They cannot solve the problem because they seek to overcome a negative situation with a negative means….  The conservatives who say, ‘Let us not move so fast,’ and the extremists who say, ‘Let us go out and whip the world,’ would tell you that they are as far apart as the poles.  But there is a striking parallel: They accomplish nothing.

Let us not be guilty of the same accusation.  When I am properly trained, I plan to actually do what I’m talking about.  I plan to break the law and submit myself to arrest.  I am trying to get in contact with a law student who is organizing a civil disobedience campaign for this summer in the Arizona desert.  He plans to defy the law that makes it a felony to aid someone that a reasonable person would consider to be an “illegal immigrant.”  Given that people are dying in the desert, he plans to provide food, water, and a car ride to anyone who needs it.  I’m hoping he plans to get arrested.  If so, I’ll likely join him.

 

The African American Example

            Dr. King knew this day would come.  On page 31, King said, “The Negro saw that by proving the sweeping and majestic power of nonviolence to bring about the beloved community, it might be possible for him to set an example to a whole world caught up in conflict.”  He often said some variation of,

          When the history books are written in the future, somebody will have to say ‘There lived a race of people, black people, fleecy locks and black complexion, of people who had the moral courage to stand up for their rights.” And thereby they injected a new meaning into the veins of history and of civilization.

When I study history, I am compelled to say it – to quote it just like King said it.  When I study history, I am compelled to look at the sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands who marched, the thousands who were jailed, the hundreds who were beaten, and each person who was killed, and say ‘I will not let your lesson go unlearned.’

 

The Time for Freedom [of Movement] Has Come

From this week’s reading assignment, I have just two points and a question. First, I will reexamine how King determines what makes disobedience civil. Then I will make an argument about segregation and tokenism as it regards immigration. The question I’ll leave you with is about whether we are in a time of sowing or reaping.

In contrasting the differences between civil- and uncivil-disobedience, Dr. King says:

“In disobeying such unjust laws, the students do so peacefully, openly and nonviolently. Most important, they willingly accept the penalty, whatever it is, for in this way the public comes to reexamine the law in question and will thus decide whether it uplifts or degrades man.

“This distinguishes their position on civil disobedience from the “uncivil disobedience” of the segregationist. In the face of laws they consider unjust, the racists seek to defy, evade and circumvent the law, and they are unwilling to accept the penalty. The end result of their defiance is anarchy and disrespect for the law. The students, on the other hand, believe that he who openly disobeys a law, a law conscience tells him is unjust, and then willingly accepts the penalty, gives evidence thereby that he so respects the law that he belongs in jail until it is changed. Their appeal is to the conscience.”

King lists the qualities of civil disobedience as: peaceful, open, nonviolent, and accepting of penalty. King lists the qualities of uncivil disobedience as: defiant, evasive, and circumventing of the law; and unaccepting of penalty. King lists the outcomes of civil disobedience as: public reexamination of the law, and increased respect for law. King lists the outcome of uncivil disobedience as: anarchy, and disrespect for law.

 

King’s lifelong fight was against a system that prevented all people from freely associating with those of a different race in all aspects of life. In the United States of America from (roughly) 1896 to 1965, that system was called segregation. In South Africa until the mid 1990s, that same system was called apartheid. In the United States of America, that exact system is called restricted immigration. I cannot freely associate with those who I choose to if the government tells them they do not have a legal right to be here. I think we should come up with a name for restricted migration that makes this reality clear. Perhaps the term “national segregation” could work. I’m not sure, what do you think?

 

Understanding restricted immigration as segregation makes clear that a system which gives a few people permission to enter the United States, while denying hundreds of thousands of others, is a system of tokenism. Tokenism is also giving amnesty to the undocumented immigrants currently living in the country while blocking the way for others. Ours, instead, “is total commitment to [the] goal of equality and dignity,” and not just for those currently here. This is why Reagan’s amnesty plan failed.

Abraham Lincoln and the Reconstruction Congress well understood this principle. Tokenism for them would have been emancipating a generation of slaves while maintaining the institutions of slavery and the slave trade. Our situation is no difference. We are not fighting for the Mexican; we are fighting for the Chinese, the Japanese, the Indian, the Irish, the Italian, the Mexican, and whatever ethnic group will come next. To paraphrase Dr. King, God is not interested in the freedom of movement of black men and brown men, but in the freedom of movement of all men. Our goal must be unrestricted migration, not just because it is necessary for democracy, but because it is morally compelling.

 

My question comes from this line. “The current breakthroughs have come about partly as a result of the patient legal, civil and social ground clearing of the previous decades.” While there has been social ground-clearing, there hasn’t been any legal ground clearing (not for 125 years at least). My questions are these. Would civil disobedience be premature right now? Does the legal have to preceed the social? Dr. King’s movement came after the major legal battle to end segregation (Brown v. Board). Is something similar required before civil disobedience will be effective and useful, especially given that disobedient immigrants are not jailed, they are deported? Civil disobedience is designed to change unjust laws. Dr. King used it to change unjust local laws that were out of compliance with newly implemented federal standards. Immigration law is an unjust federal law. Do we need to advance international law before we use civil disobedience to challenge the more local, federal laws?

 

An Idea Whose Time has Come

In 2006, the Secure Fences Act was passed in both Congress and the Senate. The funds have since been approved, and the entire project is merely pending a few token studies concerning its impact on the environment, its feasibility, and its pecuniary implications. How did we arrive at such a place in American history?

The whole nation has been crying out for immigration reform since well before the 1960s. JFK heard their voices, but he was killed before he could radically change the quota system. Since then, restrictive immigration laws have been tightened and roughly enforced on our nations’ southernmost border and in our reluctance to accept asylum-seekers (refugees in other countries).

Our borders are places of violent clashes, deportation, and imposing fences.

Our legal immigrants are forced to become pochos, forced to forget their homeland in an effort to distance themselves from extralegal citizens the government and the media has vilified and quietly deported.

“Illegal” immigrants live in terror, working low-wage jobs, foregoing medical care, and paying extortionate rates for normal amenities in an effort to remain in a country which disrespects them and the country they left behind.

The entire nation cries out for immigration reform. Even the politicians could hear it on Capitol Hill. They could hear it, but amidst the din of partisan politics and the difficulty of making tough decisions on true immigration reform, both the Democrats and the Republicans opted for an easy way out, a symbol of border security and “immigration reform.” The wall was passed overwhelmingly by most major politicians, including my own Texas senators Cornyn and Hutchison, as well as mainstream presidential candidates such as Obama and Clinton.

And so here we are today. Brownsville, Texas, will be studied later on this month so that construction of the wall can begin in 2008. The symbol of a wall, laughable and medieval and impossible to believe, looks as if it will be coming next year unless the citizenry of the United States can raise its voice once more, refuse to be distracted by “token” gestures of immigration reform, and demand a real solution instead of this expensive “tokenism.”

Victor Hugo famously said, “There is no greater power on earth than an idea whose time has come.” The idea of immigration has been a long time coming, and it must be nonviolently urged to the forefront of American thinking.

The clearest fight for true immigration reform and against pseudo-solutions is the proposed border wall on our southern border. As Martin Luther King, Jr., outlines in “The Time for Freedom has Come,” we must do this by three key steps. First, any efforts to halt the construction of the border wall must expose the moral defenses of pro-fence politicians. The moral element never figured into the border wall monologue, but if this fence is to be stopped, a dialogue must begin which addresses the moral element of such a symbol of separation. This blog site is a beginning, but it must be preached from the pulpit and headlined in our newspapers. It must be sung over webcasts and it must be written in informed letters to our politicians. The moral element is clear – a Mexican border barrier signifies mistrust, racism, and nationalism – but the message has not been clearly voiced nor loudly proclaimed.

The second keystone concept of nonviolent resistance for King is that it must weaken the morale of its opposition. If well organized, a national boycott against key companies or an illegal immigrant strike could certainly weaken the morale of an opposition which secretly welcomes illegal contribution to our national GDP but publicly denounces extralegal workers. This contradiction has existed for decades, and its demise must be one of the main aims of any nonviolent movement.

Lastly, a nonviolent call for true immigration reform and no border wall must work on our nation’s conscience. So far, deportation detention centers like those at Raymondville, Texas, and the processing centers like the one at Port Isabel, Texas, have worked largely under the radar of human rights groups and national publications. It is difficult to prick the nation’s conscience without media coverage. We must no longer wait for the Associated Press to run a feature article on a single immigrant in a single detention center. These violations of basic human rights must be forced into the public eye via nonviolent demonstrations. Illegal immigrants should no longer suffer in these places alone and unnoticed. The Bible beckons us to be a “voice for the voiceless,” and nonviolent demonstrations should aim to translate these muffled calls for help from Spanish or Sudanese to an English which will awaken the once-great collective conscience of our country which has been lulled to sleep these 45 years.

BY working on the American conscience (and by this I mean all the Americas), by weakening the morale of supporters of immigration tokenism, and by exposing the moral defenses of those who would call for a Mexican border wall, nonviolent resistance will not only block the construction of the wall but will fluently call for reconsideration and reconstruction of our nation’s outdated, provincial philosophy on immigration. But we must begin by countering the wall; to ignore this physical representation of bad immigration policy would make us akin to the priest in the parable of the Good Samaritan, plotting a sermon on brotherly love as he strides past the bleeding wayfarer. The time for this idea has come; the time is now.

 

Kingian Nonviolent Civil Disobedience applied to Immigration

Characteristics of Just and Unjust Laws

About halfway through this speech, Dr. King states that an unjust law, which we have a moral duty to disobey, “is a code that the majority inflicts on the minority that is not binding on itself.” MLK describes this as “difference made legal.” Let us take this idea and apply it to the situation of the paperless people in this country. Doing so will help us understand exactly what it is we should be working for.

Is the illegality of undocumented people a result of a code that the majority inflicts upon them that is not binding on itself? Yes. In essence the majority says, “You have to get permission to be in this country; I don’t. I can reside and work and exercise politically as a matter of natural right; you can’t.” I believe Dr. King would say that this legal distinction, based upon the “immutable characteristic, arbitrary from a moral point of view,” (Rawls words), constitutes a prime example of an unjust law. Just as under Jim Crow law, some were legally discriminated against by others because of the difference in the color of skin between the two groups, the whole idea of an “illegal immigrant” is one based on the idea of legal discrimination based on the difference in the place of birth between the two groups. So I think our goal should be to abolish the semi-slave status of “illegal immigrant” by recognizing that all people have equal claim to live where they want.

King goes on to say “An unjust law is a code which the majority inflicts upon the minority, which that minority had no part in enacting or creating, because that minority had no right to vote in many instances, to that the legislative bodies that made these laws were not democratically elected.” Because democracy is a system of government that derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, the Constitution doesn’t limit voting rights only to citizens. In fact, there is basically no Constitutional distinction between the rights of citizens and non-citizens. It could be argued (though I will leave it for another day) that because those excluded by immigration laws were denied the right to vote as to what the immigration laws would be, these laws are unjust and non-democratic. Given MLK’s standards for just and unjust laws, the goal we should have for this movement is to actualize the right of free migration.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[1]<!–[endif]–>

 

Nonviolence

Having identified immigration restrictions based on place of birth as unjust, Dr. King, I believe, would advocate our challenging this unjust system of segregation. But, “the means must be as pure as the end.” Dr. King talked about three competing approaches to social change. The first approach is resignation. Almost all people use this method to deal with injustice. They learn to adjust to injustice. The second approach, to “[rise] up against the oppressor with corroding hatred and physical violence,” is advocated by some today. As those who want to use nonviolence to bring about a free and equal society, we must not associate ourselves with either of these two methods. Just as Dr. King rejected the methods of Malcolm X, we must be very selective about how we will approach immigration reform. This is important because nonviolence is based in part on the idea that “the end is preexistent in the means.” Thus violence cannot (not just should not, but cannot) create a positive change. This is also true of “internal violence of spirit,” of hatred, and dehumanization. When we vilify those who oppose us or who debase and dehumanize undocumented people, we dehumanize them. We can never see them as our enemy, but as our future ally. We must realize that Jim Gilchrist, Lou Dobbs, and Tom Tancredo are children of God with infinite worth. “The image of God is never totally done,” and “even the worst segregationist can become an integrationist,” are powerful concepts. The civil rights movement sought not to advance the interests of one group over another, but knew that because their cause was just, it would benefit all people, even those who opposed them. This will require that we nurture and develop our capacity to love all humankind. Even more important than our unwillingness to tolerate an unjust system is our unwillingness to let that system cause us to hate. We must never call another human “enemy.”

 

Not Simply Disobedience; Civil Disobedience

It is interesting to read how strongly King supports the idea of civil disobedience. He does not advocate defying law. He even says “I submit that the individual who disobeys the law, whose conscience tells him it is unjust and who is willing to accept the penalty by staying in jail until that law is altered, is expressing at the moment the very highest respect for law.” Disobeying a specific law because of its immorality, but submitting to the general rule of law shows a very high level of respect for law. It is within that context of respect for the general rule of law, but recognition that some laws are unjust, that I encourage civil disobedience. We must break unjust laws openly and publicly, submit to the authorities, and trust that good people will not tolerate a system that allows good people to sit in jail because they refuse to “adjust to injustice.”

This means that we will be disruptive. Dr. King was constantly called an “outside agitator” for his unrelenting use of nonviolent civil disobedience. In this speech, he defends himself by saying that true peace was not disturbed, but only the “negative peace” of injustice. So it will be with us. We will be called outside agitators, we will be called disruptive. The analogy that came to mind for me, though, came from the “don’t rock the boat” idea. If a person is trapped under a small rowboat, s/he of necessity has to disrupt the apparent tranquility of the boat in order to stop from being drowned. But to suppose that because you are sitting in a stationary boat, peace must exist, is to neglect to see that your boat is potentially the instrument of someone’s death. As the drowning person pulls him/herself up over the edge of the boat, the rowboat dips toward the water on that side, but if the person sitting in the boat will be patient, the boat will regain its calm, but this time it will actually have peace, not just the appearance of it.

 

Question

My biggest question after reading this speech is this: how will the fact that restricted immigration is federal law make this civil disobedience campaign more difficult than the civil disobedience campaign for integration? Could they have succeeded in the 50s and 60s if they were still living under the decision of Plessy v. Ferguson?

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<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[1]<!–[endif]–> The system of restricted migration, like segregation, uses tokenism to claim that justice is being realized, but like Dr. King, I recognize it as a mirage of justice, not justice itself.

 

A Call to Preparation

Today on a blog I often read, xicanopwr, the author expressed the frustration I have often felt over the apparent apathy of people who should be protesting. He started and ended the article this way:

“There is an urgency this minute, I am alarmed by the complacency in reaction to the things that are taking place right here, right now in the United States of America…. A discussion needs to take place, opinions need to be expressed and shared. So who is in favor of this strategy? Let me hear your thoughts.”

The rest of the article can be found here.

I posted the following reply:

The civil rights movement in the United States had something we do not. They had a very clear goal: to build the “Beloved Community.” This Christian ideal of the human race living together as a family–as children of God–was what inspired people to make the sacrifices it took to succeed over deeply entrenched systems of racism, segregation, and militarism.

Make no mistake, we need a goal, but not any old goal will do. We need the same goal. Dr. King said “We are all tied in a single garment of destiny,” and “what affects one directly affects all indirectly.” Because of this goal, the civil rights workers of the 1960’s acted very peculiarly. They refused to hate those who hated them. They refused to hit those that hit them. They insisted on loving their enemies. When they were physically attacked, they did not return blows, nor even resist, but instead turned the other cheek.

John Lewis, then President of SNCC and now Congressman, (shown here) put it this way.

“It is not hard to find forgiveness. And this, Jim Lawson taught us, is at the essence of the nonviolent way of life–the capacity to forgive. When you can truly understand and feel, even as a person is cursing you to your face, even as he is spitting on you, or pushing a lit cigarette into your neck, or beating you with a truncheon–if you can understand and feel even in the midst of those critical and often physically painful moments that your attacker is as much a victim as you are, that he is a victim of the forces that have shaped and fed his anger and fury, then you are well on your way to the nonviolent life…. This sense of love, this sense of peace, the capacity for compassion, is something you carry inside yourself every waking minute of the day. It shapes your response to a curt cashier in the grocery store or to a driver cutting you off in traffic just as surely as it keeps you from striking back at a state trooper who might be kicking you in the ribs because you dared to march in protest against an oppressive government. If you want to create an open society, your means of doing so must be consistent with the society you want to creates. Means and ends are absolutely inseparable. Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. Anger begets anger, every minute of the day, in the smallest of moments as well as the largest.”

In so doing, they not only ended segregation, but moved our nation in the direction of unity and healing.

If we hope to have the kind of results they did, and hope to be the type of people they were, we need to adopt the philosophy and methods taught by Jesus of Nazareth, Mohandas Gandhi, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. If we fail this test of character we will have no more claim to the beloved community than the Minutemen.

Let me finish this statement by saying that if you actually want to do something to advance human rights, or immigrant rights, or the right to migrate, or any just cause, start your preparations by studying Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and practicing forgiveness and Christian love in your daily actions. Add to your reading list the writings about satyagraha (holding fast to truth and resisting injustice) and ahimsa (nonviolence) as taught by Mohandas Gandhi. Read what Martin Luther King Jr. said about love and natural law. Practice these things in your everyday life.

This preparation will take months, and the opportunity to use them will not give you enough notice. You need to start now so that you will be ready when called upon to make a difference.

 

Reconciliation

How to Bring About Reconciliation

Because the issue of illegal immigration is becoming increasingly divisive, a force of reconciliation must be introduced. If it is not, our generation may come to realize that while the problem of the Twentieth Century was the problem of the color line, the problem of the Twenty-first Century is the problem of the restricted citizenship.

If reconciliation—reconciliation for all—is not discovered in a profound way, nativism may become as cancerous to our century as racism has been in the past and continues to be. The force of reconciliation we so desperately seek is found in love – not the love of the troubadours, but the love of Jesus of Nazareth, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. The love which can reconcile is the kind of love that says ‘I refuse to let you dehumanize me, and I refuse for our mutual advantage.’ This is the kind of love that is so pure that it loves the neighbor as much as the self. It is the kind of love that sees the truth that both persecutor and persecutor are equally damaged by injustice.

If love is the method used to confront the system of oppression known as immigration restrictions, reconciliation will be realized.
Underlying all objections to open immigration is the faulty premise that mankind is in competition with each other. This mindset fails to realize the interconnectivity of reality. Dr. King said it well when he stated,

“We are tied in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. As long as there is extreme poverty in this world, no one can be totally rich, even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live longer than 28 or 30 years, no one can be totally healthy, even if he just got a checkup in the finest clinic of the nation. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”

I can never be a citizen as long as an equal is denied citizenship. Shakespeare’s Tybalt exclaims to Benvolio,

What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word,

Tybalt, never having known peace, has come to hate the word because for him it represents what the U.S. Navy calls “perpetual pre-hostility.” The word peace, when sounded in Tybalt’s ears means cowardice and dishonesty. Such is the word citizen for me. When I hear the word ‘citizen,’ what I hear is exclusion. Much like the message sent by a conspicuously absent symbol, when I read ‘citizen’ I see the absence of ‘person,’ and I am reminded that America is not yet what it ought to be.As long as there is a restriction of moral persons at the border, I can never truly move freely. Dr. King realized that “If democracy is to live, segregation must die.” So, too, must restricted citizenship. I will never know democracy until all have the opportunity to choose it. So I can say with the “illegal” immigrant as well as with Langston Hughes,

Oh yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath,
America will be.

Dr. King said in a speech he called Rediscovering Lost Values:

“All reality hinges on moral foundations. In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws. I’m not so sure we all believe that. We never doubt that there are physical laws of the universe that we must obey. We never doubt that. And so we just don’t jump out of airplanes or jump off of high buildings for the fun of it—we don’t do that. Because we unconsciously know that there is a final law of gravitation, and if you disobey it you’ll suffer the consequences—we know that. Even if we don’t know it in its Newtonian formulation, we know it intuitively, and so we just don’t jump off the highest building in Detroit for the fun of it—we don’t do that. Because we know that there is a law of gravitation which is final in the universe. If we disobey it we’ll suffer the consequences.
But I’m not so sure if we know that there are moral laws just as abiding as the physical law. I’m not so sure about that. I’m not so sure if we really believe that there is a law of love in this universe, and that if you disobey it you’ll suffer the consequences. I’m not so sure if we really believe that. Now at least two things convince me that we don’t believe that, that we have strayed away from the principle that this is a moral universe.

“All I’m trying to say to you is that our world hinges on moral foundations. God has made it so. God has made the universe to be based on a moral law. So long as man disobeys it he is revolting against God. That’s what we need in the world today: people who will stand for right and goodness. It’s not enough to know the intricacies of zoology and biology, but we must know the intricacies of law. It is not enough to know that two and two makes four, but we’ve got to know somehow that it’s right to be honest and just with our brothers. It’s not enough to know all about our philosophical and mathematical disciplines, but we’ve got to know the simple disciplines of being honest and loving and just with all humanity. If we don’t learn it, we will destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own powers.

“This universe hinges on moral foundations. There is something in this universe that justifies Carlyle in saying, “No lie can live forever.” There is something in this universe that justifies William Cullen Bryant in saying, “Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again.”

The purpose of this web log is to discuss ways in which nonviolence–in all its intricacies, and as taught by Gandhi and King–can be used to end immigration restrictions. It is a neo-abolitionist web log.