Repairers of the Breach

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Created on Sunday, 30 January 2011 00:00

Written by Craig Nowak

People who know me well know that I enjoy a challenge from time to time. For example, when it came time to write a final paper for my systematic theology class last year I chose, as Unitarian Universalist, the topic, what the Trinity means to me; for another class in which we studied church music I included with my final paper a hymn for which that I wrote the words and music. So when Gary, last Sunday, talked about a handful of biblical texts from the prophets that noted scholar Walter Brueggemann wagered few preachers ever use … well I just had to go home and figure out which one I was going to use today.

It wasn’t hard to see why a preacher would avoid such texts. They speak hard truths and demand that the hearer engage in some serious soul-searching, leading me to speculate that at least some of the concern around using such texts is that the truth will set the preacher free..by way of congregational vote.

Still, as the experiences and people from my recent trip to the US/Mexico border continue to speak to me, I am mindful of the words of the Jewish Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, who said, “I swear never to be silent whenever and wherever human lives endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented…When human dignity is in jeopardy, that place, at that moment, must become the center of the universe.”

The US/Mexico border is one such “center of the universe.” There, as I crisscrossed between the US and Mexico over a ten day period, I met and talked with people who hold a variety of views on the complex issue of immigration, including migrants preparing to cross the border and those recently deported and now back in Mexico; humanitarian and religious workers including clergy and lay volunteers; and law enforcement and government officials on both sides of the border, as well as, concerned private citizens.

The depth and breadth of what I heard and witnessed while at the border is greater than any words I can offer you here today, but this I can attest to: at the border human dignity is in jeopardy, human lives are enduring suffering and humiliation. To be blunt, the stench of injustice and cruelty is sickening and as such the issue we must confront here is not whether we are for or against immigration or immigrants, but whether we are for or against justice and the preservation of human dignity. On this I…we… must take sides.

And lest you think me self-righteous in saying this, let me assure you I do not acquit myself, I do not plead my own innocence before you or the suffering people’s of the world. I admit my participation in evil systems and confess my ongoing struggle to change in ways that will make manifest a more just world. Yet the difficulty of a task is no excuse for avoiding it, especially when that task is a moral imperative.

Justice is the concern of the prophets, who as we heard in the first reading from Isaiah, were not ones to mince words as they railed against the guardians of injustice…

^“Woe to those who drag iniquity with the cords of falsehood,
And sin as if with cart ropes.”

I hear these words and can’t help but think of the border wall: a hideous rusty blade forged in the fires of past wars and now gouged into the earth’s flesh at Nogales; a wound perpetually oozing the pain of separation and abandonment as many…too many, look on, or over it with indifference.

But let me tell you what I really think. This is no wall, it is a multi-billion dollar monument honoring oppression, a temple to the false gods of fear, greed, racism, xenophobia, arrogance, and self-righteousness… a temple conceived and constructed by a desperate political machine north of the border, designed to cover up and protect its own perceived self interest by framing it as a necessary…and patriotic…sacrifice for the security of the nation.

Eric, a young man in his mid-late 20’s whom I met at a shelter for migrants in Nogales, laughed when asked about the border wall. “I’m not crossing the border because I want to live in the US”, he told me, “I’m crossing because I’m trying to survive.” Eric told me he made the equivalent of $24. a week in Mexico. “The wall won’t stop me”, he said, “it doesn’t stop anyone.”

Again Isaiah takes aim…

^“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;
Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!”

“Free trade.” This is a term we hear tossed about by pundits and politicians alike. It is part of our economic vernacular. Yet the term “free trade” is a misnomer. NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, is one of the major factors driving the migration of people from Mexico into the US in search of work. This “free trade” agreement has resulted in a net loss of jobs here in the US and the economic devastation of countless Mexican farmers due to the near elimination of farm subsidies in Mexico and increased farm subsidies for agribusiness in the US. It has weakened worker’s rights abroad and the bargaining power of workers in the US. Further, it has led to increased pollution and environmental degradation. While our current “free trade” agreements may offer us lower consumer prices for certain products, such benefits come at a severe cost to human dignity. No economic policy… no trade agreement that consigns so many to a life of bondage through economic desperation can rightly be called “free.”

Lorenzo, a migrant I met in Altar told me he was crossing the border into the US because could not feed his family back in Oaxaca where he worked as a farmer. Al, an Arizona rancher and head of a right wing group known as the Patriot’s Coalition, whom I had lunch with, expressed deep resentment over what he sees as the failure of both the US and Mexican governments to address the economic concerns of their own citizens. Although Lorenzo and Al stand largely on opposites sides of the immigration debate, both men recognize the injustice of economic oppression.

Isaiah’s not done yet…

“Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes
And clever in their own sight!”

The prime objective of American immigration policy at the southern border is deterrence. Despite evidence to the contrary, the belief that unlawful entry into the United States can, and is being, reduced significantly through the employment of various deterrence measures, persists. Officially, these measures include Operation Gatekeeper, which, with construction of the border wall, watchtowers, lights, cameras, ground sensors, and an increase in the number of border patrol agents, has essentially resulted in the militarization of the southern border.

Another official policy of deterrence is Operation Streamline which seeks to criminalize the act crossing into the US without valid documentation, currently a civil infraction roughly legally equivalent to a minor parking violation. Under this policy recently apprehended migrants and others caught crossing into the US unlawfully are arrested, shackled, incarcerated, and processed through the courts in groups.

According to one public defender with whom I met, the process is so hurried that the defendants are denied adequate time alone with legal counsel, denied baths, and in some cases medical care. They are paraded into the court room, read the charges against them, enter a plea, and are usually given a short jail term or time served before being deported back to Mexico, now with a criminal record in the US which will earn them a felony charge if they reenter the US.

Unofficially, deterrence has often meant acts of physical violence against undocumented person apprehended within the US. According to the humanitarian organization No More Deaths, this has included the beating of both men and women, denial of treatment for serious injuries or medical conditions, denial of food and water, and in the most extreme cases, sexual assault and death.

Kat Rodriguez of Derechos Hermanos, with whom I met in Tucson, estimates 5,000-6,000 women, men, and children, have died in the Sonoran desert since 1995, casualties of policies of deterrence. Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service predicted that policies of deterrence, like Operation Gatekeeper, would result in deaths as migrants would seek to cross through the desert as the presence of law enforcement increased in the border towns. The desert, with its hostile terrain and deadly extremes of temperatures, was viewed as an ally, according to Meissner, in the deterrence effort.

Operation Streamline, a legal concoction that makes a mockery of our judicial system, continues, despite the fact that parts of it were found to be in direct violation of federal law by a US Court.

Here’s Isaiah once more…

^“Woe to those…
Who justify the wicked for a bribe,
And take away the rights of the ones who are in the right!”

Contrary to what pundits and politicians say, I’m not convinced that immigration is as much of a big “problem” as it is a big business. There’s nothing inherently wrong with doing business or making money, of course. However, how business is conducted, how money is made, and at what cost, is worthy of our attention.

Private prisons that contract with government are an increasingly reality in this country. They make their money by charging the government a fee per person per day for those in their custody and some, like many other businesses, spend millions of dollars lobbying elected officials. It was a private prison firm, Corrections Corporation of America, working through an organization known as the American Legislative Exchange Council, that helped author Arizona’s SB 1070, a controversial immigration bill that includes tougher and broader law enforcement measures which all but guarantee an increase in arrests, convictions, and rates of incarceration for undocumented workers and increased revenue for Corrections Corporation of America.

While not the same as bribery, such lobbying and intense legislative involvement by an industry that stands to reap significant financial gain from the imprisonment of human beings is ethically and morally suspect.

On the Mexican side of the border the misery of the migrant’s situation offers lucrative opportunities for human traffickers, commonly referred to as coyotes. In some areas, according to a priest I spoke with, local law enforcement is benefiting as well.

What I hope is becoming evident here is that justice demands that we, as people of faith, stand not against a few individuals, but that we stand against deeply entrenched systems of oppression that normalize poverty, racism, classism, exclusivism, and so on; systems of oppression that rob both the oppressor and oppressed of their dignity by denying our common humanity…systems that we have inherited and continue to breathe life into generation after generation even as some have also questioned, challenged, and resisted these systems.

If there is one image from my trip that will stay with me the rest of my life it is of the children of Nogales, Mexico who marched in a parade recently. As they meandered through the same slums where our group stayed during our time there, they carried a banner decorated with a large black heart with eyes wide open and no mouth. They chanted, “No Discrimination; No Exploitation; No Slavery.” We were told that the heart is wearing a mask; it sees what is going on but does not speak. It is the children’s hope, we were told, that we would speak of what we had seen, that we would give the heart a voice. Again the words of Elie Wiesel come to mind, “I swear never to be silent whenever and wherever human lives endure suffering and humiliation…Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Breaking the conspiracy of silence upon which injustice depends for its survival is not always easy for we who have so much. As Walter Brueggemann writes in his Prayers for a Privileged People, “We are half ready to join the choir of hope, half afraid things might change.” But this is where we can begin to “loosen the bonds of wickedness.” By simply acknowledging that, while we as individuals may not have created the systems oppression in which we live and others struggle to survive, most of us here in this room today have largely benefited from them, we invite humility into our hearts and grow in awareness of our interdependence. This can help us move from grief… to hope… to action. It’s a small start, but a start nonetheless; and if you’re like me, overwhelmed at times by the enormity of the suffering in the world, it’s a helpful way of breaking things down into smaller pieces so as to better discern where and how to effect meaningful change.

I witnessed so much of this in the humanitarian workers, the clergy and lay people all over Mexico and in Tucson. These were largely people of privilege, and some, like Father Prisciliano, a priest in Altar, openly acknowledged that privilege, and yet rather than shrink into a state of guilt or self-loathing, they sought and engaged ways to “divide their bread with the hungry, bring the homeless poor into their house, and cover the naked.”

Some worked to alleviate the effects of injustice while other worked to expose and uproot the causes of injustice. Both are essential if we are to, as the prophet states, “rebuild the ancient ruins; raise up the age-old foundations; and be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of the streets in which to dwell.”

Our Universalist forbears offered up a prophetic vision when, at their 1917 Convention they declared “The primal task of the church…to be the reconstruction the world’s civilization in terms of justice, peace, and righteousness.” This was a powerful call…as ancient as that of the Hebrew prophets and yet as relevant and in need of champions today.

Here I am Lord, the hymn I requested for today’s worship and which Beth so graciously embraced and worked hard to make possible, echoes the call of our Universalist kin of the last century. It is an invitation to us, as people of faith, to partner with God or join that which is greater than our individual selves in reconstructing the world.

Who will bear the light of hope? Who will speak truth to power? Who will work for justice?

Let us answer resoundingly, Here we are! We have heard the call; we will listen and discern the path of righteousness. We will make our heart a refuge for this suffering world and bridge the gap between our current reality of oppression and our hope for a just tomorrow. We will be called repairers of the breach!

May it be so.

Amen and Blessed Be

Sources:

The Bible, Isaiah 5:18-24; 58:6-12 (NASB)

Declaration of Social Principles, Universalist General Convention (1917)

www.derechoshumanosaz.net

www.eliewieselfoundation.org

www.nomoredeaths.org

“Operation Streamline costs taxpayers millions, tramples on the Constitution, treats immigrants like cattle and doesn’t work. So why are the feds so committed to it?”
http://www.dallasobserver.com/2010-10-21/news/operation-streamline-costs-taxpayers-millions-tramples-on-the-constitution-treats-immigrants-like-cattle-and-doesn-t-work-so-why-are-the-feds-so-committed-to-it/3/

“Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law&rdquo
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130833741" http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130833741

Prayers for a Privileged People, Walter Brueggemann
Abingdon Press, 2008.

“They Take Our Jobs!”: and 20 Other Myths about Immigration.
Aviva Chomsky Beacon Press 2007

© Craig M. Nowak 2011

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