We are All Immigrants: Children and Grandchildren of Immigrants

By Monica    Columbus, Ohio

        Coretta Scott King once emphasized, in recent years, the level of sheer despise and disrespect along party lines people exhibit toward each other in the United States.  It so greatly grieved her that she said that her husband did not do all that he did in bringing people together and building brotherhood for this!  She pondered aloud where in the world this even came from, in both parties, and prayed that dialogue, respect, and courtesy would be rekindled among us all.

Today in Columbus, Ohio!

       Today I had the pleasure and duty of demonstrating at the State House here in downtown Columbus, Ohio against the U.S. immigrant and refugee policies that have more recently landed some small children in "jail" for days, terrifying them and millions of others.
      This includes my own ESL (English as a Second Language) populations as an ESL teacher in Colulmbus City schools for most of the past 11 years.  During the six years as a mainstream teacher, I always taught ESL students as well. In their honor mainly, but for all those suffering at the hands of these unbelievable policies, I joined thousands of others downtown in solidarity and protest.

   

       Their has been an extremely high anxiety level in many of my students and families, with lots of tears, and I have had to comfort many.  Several large families who have been at my school all five years "ran," meaning, left this school year, trying not to be found by moving around, or are attempting to move back to Mexico, Honduras, etc, into highly dangerous and poverty-stricken destitution.  It appears worth it for some who witness or hear of the trauma of what is being done to others, even children.  They wonder too, as do I, what is next if this is possible.
      WOSU media online just posted the following, which may surprise those who think everyone is overreacting or making these things up about the current state of affairs from a Trump administration spokesman:
 "From Tyler Houlton, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, welcomed interest in the immigration system and said only Congress has the power to change the law.

"'We appreciate that these individuals have expressed an interest in and concern with the critical issue of securing our nation's borders and enforcing our immigration laws,' Houlton said. 'As we have indicated before, the department is disappointed and frustrated by our nation's disastrous immigration laws and supports action.'"

     Today, I walked throughout the entire population of protesters --  I wanted to stand with Catholics to be a visible Catholic presence there -- I could find only two priests and about 6-8 Catholics that I recognized.  It had been put on by the Domestic Workers Alliance, The Leadership Conference, the American Civil Liberties Union, and MoveOn.org.  

       I confess to have only found out about it today by a dear friend who was at the 8:30 mass with me.  I do not own a cell phone or computer and rarely watch TV (I am not condoning this!), and did not realize so large an event was happening.  I was elated to lend support to something and to people so near and dear to me.

       Back to Coretta Scott King and the partisanship that seems to be pushing out level headed thinking and humaneness, I wonder where the Catholics were?  I have protested against the abortion mills and industry often with many, but why were they not here?   I understand why there were nearly no Hispanic people (many of whom are Catholic), and much of this is mainly for them, because they do not want to further be a target for themselves and their families.  But where were those who value the sanctity and sacredness of all human life, especially children.... Those who greatly value strong families and family ties, hard work, and family values?  One sign put it correctly:

Where is the Catholic Outrage? 

        This sentiment is in terms of the ordinary Catholic lay person protesting the recent crackdown of illegal immigrants and refugees.  Yes, our beloved Ohio bishops put out a clear and strong statement in their pastoral letter a year ago, (see last year's article on this site: "Bishops Speak Out on Trump's Policies Against Immigrants and Refugees," June 16, 2017).  Moreover, in June Pope Francis has recently backed the U.S. Catholic bishops in denouncing the new asylum-limiting rules as immoral, I am proud to say.  In general though, you typically do not hear middle class white Catholics speaking much on these things in sympathy toward the immigrant and the refugee.
      Here in Ohio, you would think there would be such gratitude among most white middle class Catholics from their own immigrant history 2, 3, or 4 generations back: of immigration to the U.S. and specifically to Ohio from Ireland, Germany, Poland, England, and Italy, among other places.
      Our families were the lucky ones, so you would think we would want to give back for the sake of others in the situation our forefathers were in a few generations back.  We truly are an entire nation of immigrants, except for the Native Americans.  The backlash against them is not new though, and it is worth looking back at newspaper headlines and sentiment in New York City and Boston during the 1800's against the waves and waves of mostly Catholic poor immigrants.
 "They're going to take all our jobs!"
"They're hooligans who drink and beat their wives!"
"They are ruining our society!"

        Some of the time the Catholic Church did reach out earnestly to help settle the genuine problems that the swell of poor people had created, compassionate people with a strong sense of social justice and the preferential option for the poor stepped in to help these people along.  Where has our compassion gone?
        My father remembers as a teenager, watching the news and seeing ocean-liners filled with pleading Jewish immigrants wanting to port in New York, and being turned away (1940's).  They would sale from port to port and nobody would take them, to finally head back to Germany and their certain death, unless compassionate people broke the law and hid them.
       In the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., Hitler was quoted as retorting, when under criticism yet seeing even the response of the United States, that the Germans did not want these "Jewish rats" either, so is this such a bad thing?

 

     
         A Hispanic man attested to 146 Ohioans being rounded up at a work site this past week and put into a migration camp, terrifying them all, but especially fifteen small children who were kept in "jail" for two days.  He kept saying, "Fifteen kids right here in OHIO!  It's happening right here in OHIO!" He also mentioned a 19 year old girl being gunned down and killed on the border of Texas in Texas this passed month.  In the United States of America?  There is not a humane way to stop someone coming in illegally?  I know I certainly shook my head in disbelief.

       I was interviewed by a television reporter and I explained the terrible situation of my ESL families, and that the Catholic presence is here at this protest, but not as strong as it could be.  While there were many Trump-bashing signs, which the thought probably kept some Catholics away,  most were thought-provoking and true.
      After expressing to the reporter my grave disapproval of President Trump's immigrant and refugee policies, particularly putting teenagers and children in equivalent to large dog cages, apart from their parents, I did say that he did a major feat in rescinding the Mexico Policy, by once again banning abortion funding when giving medical aid to foreign countries.  This is huge!
       The abortion industry and its support, in my opinion, are the most ghastly and horrific entities of our time. Killing off those U.S. citizens in their most delicate, vulnerable, and dependent state where you and I were at our most fragile point in our own lives, is the taproot of evil in our society. What can possibly compare?  All else is minor, though still worthy of protest.  Even our beloved Creator became only a few cells at one point, so great does He value the sacredness of human life.  Many abortions are performed long past this point though, sadly.
       Why though, do Catholics who live by the "consistent ethic of human life," in our Church's social teachings, not show up at both kinds of protest -- wherever human life and lives are gravely affected and even put at risk?  And conversely, why do these people on the liberal side, not show up at the abortion protests for saving human lives?  Coretta Scott King, and her beloved Martin, would be encouraging all of us to come together on all of these life issues.

       Since I do not own a cell phone and cannot show the brilliance behind many many signs there, I will simply change up the font for each one-liner.  These are only to make you think, and hopefully, to make you act on behalf of "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," as on our Statue of Liberty.
       I did not think that the few Trump-bashing signs were productive and I am not fully convinced that he was aware of the cages for teens and small children.  Sometimes the departments do their own thing, as with the handling of the Branch Davidian fiasco many years ago.  The fact that he immediately changed that aspect (from here on out of separating the parents and children -- he says) -- partly perhaps from the voices of so many speaking out on their behalf, tells me that it might not have been his idea. 
       Many of the conversations during this holy day were peppered with comments that I whole-heartedly agreed with about the solid work ethic of nearly all of the Hispanic population here -- how they do not ask for anything in return, do not take welfare, contribute greatly to society with strong family values.  I would be proud to have any of them be my parents!
       My favorite chant begun by one Hispanic presenter was:

El Pueblo

Unido

Jamas Sera Vencido!

      Translated, this means: "The People, united, will never be defeated!"  It was a tear jerker from someone who is powerless and had terrible things happen to him and his family.  How brave!
      After the protest and a few talks, we marched around the capital block chanting songs like, "No HATE!  No FEAR!  Immigrants are WELCOME here!"

Jesus was a Homeless Refugee

I’m Jewish, I know this story

The Mayflower was Full of Refugees

Concentration Camps Were Legal Too

Those Who do not Learn From History

are Doomed to Repeat it

We are all Immigrants, Children

or Grandchildren of Immigrants

Migration Camps= Internment Camps

Refugees are not Criminal

But Taking Children is Criminal

Strong People Stand up for Themselves

But Stronger People Stand up for Others

Awful and Unlawful

Reunite Children Now

          While President Trump did back down on any further separation of parents with children in the future, there are over 2,300 children already separated whose parents are in custody and this newer  crackdown is still going very strong, continuing to separate families now and in the future.  I can attest firsthand for the terror and anxiety in impossible life choices right now of the ESL hard-working immigrant families holding many jobs to support large mostly Catholic families.  I cannot begin to imagine what they are facing with trying to support their children with so many strikes against them.

            What is going on with beginning a community for the poor and forgotten in Columbus?  I believe I announced this but if not, I am parting with the Catholic Worker Movement but not with Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin and how they modeled and lived out the Early Church.  I only add charisms of the Holy Spirit to the level of the Early Church as well.  Dorothy loved the charismatic renewal and encouraged people of all ages to become involved in them.

           While I am still discerning and waiting, I have "gone into the desert"  for this summer between teaching jobs to do the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius as best I can without a constant spiritual director.  Fr. Denis Kigozi is giving ideas -- such as not to miss a day until it is done -- but he is in the process of moving to a parish three times as large at Church of the Resurrection. 

          One new thing I added with prayer from last year is that instead of "talking to Jesus" for 15 minutes straight every day, I changed it up to rotate around.  One day I do this as talking to the Father, the next to Jesus, and the third to the Holy Spirit.  It has been beautiful!!!

          I am still very open and wanting, very ready and waiting, for whatever comes my way in living the life of the Beatitudes and the Book of Acts. Whatever I do as one with the poor, I have and will continue to do all in the Spirit of Christ, and in the spirit of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin.  God saved my life through their intercessory prayers 3 years ago in my live liver donation to my nephew and the subsequent reparative surgery 4 days later.  It has a high mortality rate for the donor, 1-200 to 1-300 (because the patient loses a large of the largest lobe of the liver, damaging it badly), and as far as those who have researched can tell, I am the only living case in the world who required a second emergency surgery 3-5 days out -- meaning something wrong happened in the first surgery -- that survived.  Thank you Dorothy and Peter!!
         I am still waiting for community members for what God would have me do, and all that this life would entail (funds, prayers), God willing. Of course, I am also still praying hard for the canonization of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin.
        Two recent large churches here in the U.S. (perhaps more) have already chosen to honor Dorothy -- St. Paul's Catholic Church in Westerville, Ohio with a large painting above a main door, like a fresco, right on the wall; and a life-size statue of Dorothy in the vestibule of the Blessed Solanus Casey Shrine on Elliott Street in Detroit, Michigan.  Please, dear Papa, Pope Francis, go ahead and move her to venerable.  I believe you have your miracle!

          There is though, a new community or charity on the horizon that seeks to live as one with the poor -- Urban Encounter -- coming down the pike as an offshoot of Encounter Ministries.  The charismatic aspect sets it apart like a city on a hill, with the spiritual works of mercy, with the charisms of the Holy Spirit lived out, being right up there to the level of the corporal works of mercy, living the "profound poverty and profound joy" of the Early Church..  Pray for them! 
        A final sidenote is that the abortion mill that performed the first abortion in Ohio, and continued for over 30 years straight, as of June 25, 2018, has closed!  I went one month before it closed!!!!  I have prayed there for years, trying to go once a month with others, and we heavily, heavily prayed for the conversion of the abortionist.  If he's not there, nobody is there.
 Yes, there are miracles!  Now we need to stop the crackdown of immigrant and refugee people here who have worked hard for their families and for our society and could not have come in legally like our forefathers who just happened to be the "right" nationality and race.  Come, Holy Spirit, come!!

One Cannot Choose Life or Death for Another

By Monica, The Lamb Catholic Worker, Columbus, Ohio

     How pro-life is the Catholic Worker?  There are very few groups, even religious groups, who uphold the absolute and unequivocal sacredness  of all human life and lives - of all people everywhere, all the time, in every situation, even in the womb -as the multitude of Catholic Workers  from around the world. We believe unequivocally that all people, no matter how small, are sacred,  "made in God's own image and likeness," as Scripture tells us, having the "indelible stamp of the Creator" on each and every one, according to Pope Benedict Emeritus.  Celebrate with us over 18,000 viewers on this Catholic Worker website, sharing the same vision.
     Translated, this means that we are committed to never ever putting ourselves in any position to kill one other sacred human life, whether through abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, severe economic exploitation of the world's poorest and war.
     Dorothy Day put it most eloquently when she simply stated: "No one has the right to choose the life or death for another person."  It also follows from the Old Testament reiteration that God alone is the sole author of life and death, not us.  We usurp His supreme role and take matters into our own hands in any of these situations, deciding the very life or death of another person.
      It is a concept "so old it is new," going back to the first 300 years of the Catholic Church, particularly on not killing sacred human life in the Early Church's staunch stance on pacifism.  Peter Maurin wanted to originally call the Catholic Worker the Catholic Radical, because "radical" means going back to one's roots.  Dorothy wanted to name it after St. Joseph the Worker, and so it was.  Pope Francis has also repeatedly spurred all Christ followers in the world to become radical, to stir things up as Christ did, where there is complacency, where there is suffering and darkness, especially at the hands of others. His words on peace, on the preferential option for the poor, on the forgotten, and on being a great light to the world remind of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Thank you, Pope Francis!

Monica and sisters: Lisa Evans + Maria Horn

Monica with son Josh

Monica's nieces and nephews: Joseph Horn, Maria Evans, Jotham Allwein, Josh

Monica's Nieces Maria Evans and Dorothy Allwein

Monica's nephews Jotham Allwein Tom Horn Brendan O'Rourke

      This was the first time I marched in almost 30 years at this witness for life, and seeing at least 200,000-225,000 people based on the MLK 25th reunion and other large marches in which I participated.  The procession alone at the Shrine of the Immaulate Conception was over 40 minutes long of Cardinals, bishops, priests, and seminarians, with many many religious orders represented.  Every nook and cranny floor space was filled with mostly young people on fire for the Lord and strongly desiring to stand up for this injustice against our unborn fellow citizens. 
     Most moving were the brave, teary-eyed groups with signs that said, "I regret my abortion," and "I am an abortion survivor."
     Our Lady of Guadalupe, Queen of the Americas and of the Unborn, please, please intercede for us! Your appearance is the only one, worldwide, of a pregnant Madonna, as shown in your black band around your waist. Protect these Holy Innocents and help Americans know that they have created a soul forever when they have conceived, that even if cut short here, will "dart about like sparks in the sky" in Heaven.
      Here are the walls of the side chapel at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in D.C. where Dorothy Day poured her heart out to our Blessed Mother to help her know the way God had in mind for direct service to the poor and marginalized.  Peter Maurin was on her doorstep on returning to New York.  Intercede for us, please, Our Dear Mother!
     

    

40th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade: The Catholic Peace Fellowship and Dorothy Day's Statement Against Abortion June 28, 1974

 THE LAMB CATHOLIC WORKER, Columbus - The January 22, 1973 Supreme Court decision on abortion deprives all unborn human beings of any protection whatever against incursions upon their right to life and has thus created a situation we find morally intolerable, and one which we feel obliged to protest.

      From the point of view of biological science the fetus is an individual human life. The social sciences may attempt to define "fully human" in a variety of ways, but their findings are inconclusive and, at best, tentative and certainly supply no basis for determining who is or who is not to enjoy the gift of life. No one has the right to choose life or death for another; to assume such power has always been recognized as the ultimate form of oppression.
     A primary obligation of civil society is to protect the innocent. A legal situation such as now exists in the United States, making abortion available upon demand, is an abdication of the state's responsibility to protect the most basic of rights, the right to life.
     We make this statement to protest a policy and a practice, not to condemn any individual for a tragic decision she or he may have felt forced to make, just as in our protest against war and its destruction of human life we pass no judgment upon the individual who acts in good conscience.
      But just as we urge our leaders to institute policies that will put an end to the constant threat of war, so we call upon them, in particular our legislatures and courts, to undertake a prudent and thorough reassessment of the abortion issue in all its ramifications and to develop a policy that will extend the rights and protections afforded by the Constitution, and inherent by nature, to the  unborn, and at the same time to provide every support and assistance to those who might otherwise be driven to consider abortion as a solution to real and demanding personal problems.
      We reject categorically the Supreme Court's argument that abortion is an exclusively private matter to be decided by the prospective mother and her physician. We protest the thoroughly logical and perhaps inevitable extension of a practice which, though first argued in a personal context, has rapidly become a social policy involving publicly funded clinics and supportive agencies.
      This is not a "Catholic issue," and to dismiss it as such is to deny the dedication and the contribution of those of other religions and of none. Nor is this simply a matter of one group of citizens imposing its own morality upon others, any more so than our conscientious resistance to the war in Viet Nam, to conscription, etc. Indeed, we insist that these positions are all of one piece, stemming from what Albert Schweitzer called, "reverence for life," and the consequent obligation to oppose any policy or practice which would give one human being the right to determine whether or not another shall be permitted to live.
      For many years we have urged upon our spiritual leaders the inter-relatedness of the life issues, war, capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia and economic exploitation. We welcome the energetic leadership our bishops are giving in the abortion controversy and we are proud to join our voices with theirs. At the same time we must point out that, ultimately, the sincerity of our words and theirs on any of these issues will be measured by our readiness to recognize and deal with the underlying social problems which turn many people to these deadly alternatives, to condemn all forms of social and economic injustice and to work for their elimination and the establishment of a social order in which all may find it easier to be "fully human." (signed)Dorothy Day, Eileen Egan, Hermene Evans, Joseph Evans, M.D., Thomas C. Cornell, James H. Forest, Gordon C. Zahn
Special thanks for the words of encouragement from Jim Forest and Tom Cornell for the Lamb Catholic Worker here in Columbus!  Gracias!   Thanks also for his support to Robert Ellsberg, author of "The Duty of Delight: the Diaries of Dorothy Day (2008) and All the Way to Heaven is Heaven: The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day (2010). Gracias!  Pray for us.
       See the movie, October Baby on the subject of abortion.  It is the most stirring movie about mercy and forgiveness.  Be sure to keep watching after the credits at the end for an incredible interview!
       Also, you people young and old with a "consistent ethic of human life" from conception to natural death (only God can take a human life), you Franciscans, Jesuits, Jesuit Volunteer Corps people, Peace Corps people and others, please pray for our community!  We get attacked from all sides and need your prayers.