Tuesday, April 11

We Are Not Criminals



I took this after work yesterday at the rally for immigrant rights that was held in Copley Square.

3 Comments:

Blogger Ryan said...

u should have seen them in atlanta and i am glad they were doing it.

10:42 PM  
Blogger Michael The Shadow said...

Well I say more power to them. Ya know, and I hope that this doesn't offend anyone, but the fact is that these people are willing to do work that "we americans" aren't because we think it's beneath us. Well F that!

I wish the world would just forget about borders sometimes and get on with us being humans :(

12:07 AM  
Blogger Sandouri Dean Bey said...

ryan-
thanks for that insight into the atlanta rally. i've been curious about other cities...

michael-
i'm not easily offended. your comment about forgetting about borders strikes a chord with me. a painful experience abroad last year served as a harsh reminder of the barriers between humans that governments have erected.

castor-
great site. i gave it a brief look, and it's fascinating. the church militant was brutal to the long-established pagan religions of the mediterranean.

brad-
well, my take is that we are a nation of immigrants. while there are many that work "under the table," there are many more that pay taxes and contribute to the economy in a myriad of ways, by being consumers, for example. wallmart probably wouldn't be the retail powerhouse that it is without the immigrant market.

i take issue with the rhetoric that portrays immigrants as parasites. they contribute to the labor force, as a source of cheap labor often in exploitative conditions. it is easy to focus on the abuses of the system because they catch our attention, but in reality, the large numbers of hard-working immigrants who are not abusing the system are for the most part invisible to middle-class white america.

i've tried also to look at the bigger picture here. that means balancing human rights with national security. however, it's very difficult for me to think that we'll solve our national security problems by focusing on building a wall between the u.s. and mexico, while our foreign policy is destabilizing the middle east and our economic imperialism is creating conditions of exploitation and desperation from which terrorism springs.

in that vein, i am mindful of the conditions that force people to leave their country in the first place. if latin america hadn't been so long exploited economically, perhaps it would be more stable today. and the united states has contributed to that destabilization by supporting brutal and repressive regimes that happen to be pro-american (and anti-communist). we have meddled in latin american affairs, both politically and economically. why should we now be surprised that people are leaving places that we have helped make unlivable?

in the end, i would like my response to be governed by both wisdom and compassion.

10:19 AM  

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