Let him who has not a single speck of migration to blot his family escutcheon cast the first stone. . . . If you didn’t migrate, then your father did, and if your father didn’t need to move from place to place, then it was only because your grandfather before him had no
choice but to go, put his old life behind him in search of the bread that his own land denied him. – José Saramago
For far too long the demonization of the poor, American-born or not, as well as that of migrants and refugees has haunted me, sickened me. We are all strangers on this land, unless we have native blood, and all peoples have moved, shifted, migrated to other places in times of need, war, famine, distress or even when times were good but an itch to try something new or be-reborn struck the restless chord. Brave is what refugees and migrants are, brave, desperate, determined, as well as needy and deserving of our compassion and help, not our fear, hate, and disapprobation.
Those who ask, ‘why do we need a Black history month, or a women’s history month’ seem to have no idea what was stolen, denied, buried or all three because ‘Black’, because ‘woman’ or because gay, lesbian, trans, or any other characteristic/inborn trait different from the dominant culture of straight white men. It’s not pie, you ignoramuses, and we are all migrants, all of us, born or descended from them, and perhaps considering that fact we could show a little gratitude by paying it forward to today’s migrants and refugees. Y’think?
And to today’s poor.
We are all one bad accident or illness or string of bad luck decisions or events away from being poor, from being evicted, from being hard up and out on the street. The years I spent in relative poverty were hard but did they ever enlighten me, opening up my mind and heart to what so many experience due to chance, family history, illness or some other happenstance misfortune. The stress of being poor is overwhelming; the sheer amount of mental energy that goes into how can I stretch this dollar, this paycheck, this pound of spaghetti, get to work today – is exhausting.
When I sat on the Board of Supervisors, a county legislative body, I often heard comments like ‘These people need to get it together’, or ‘Why are we spending so much on these people?’ These people are your neighbors, dude. Could you make it on minimum wage 40 hours a week in a county that has no public transportation to speak of, where one flat tire means it’s impossible to get to work to afford a replacement? Where landlords aren’t required by law to provide any form of heat, or hot water?
Those who have never endured poverty or deprivation can be real pricks, y’know.
“People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God’s will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.” – Maya Angelou