Refugees Again

I wore my vintage bright pink New El Salvador Today (NEST) T-shirt from the 1980s to the Families Belong Together demo at the ICE Detention Center in Richmond on June 30. The shirt still fits me, but T-shirts are made of super-stretchy material so it’s not the same as, say, still fitting into my wedding dress. My NEST shirt would fit an adolescent rhinoceros. However, I did not wear it as a fashion statement (and no species of adolescent creature, rhino or otherwise, would likely deign to wear such outdated attire). I never wear the shirt, and no one knows what it means anymore. NEST folded decades ago. Once, when my fashionista daughter saw me wearing my NEST shirt, she exclaimed in horror, “Mom, you still have that shirt?” Her tone implied that I had broken every rule of wardrobe acceptability in the known universe (or at least in L.A.). Busted by the fashion police.

I wore my NEST shirt to the ICE Detention Center to remind myself of how many years I have been protesting this kind of injustice. I bought the shirt in 1985, when my synagogue collaborated with NEST to aid and harbor Salvadoran refugees fleeing the violence of the Death Squads, a situation to which U.S. interests largely contributed for financial gain. We also helped Guatemalans and other Central Americans whose home communities were destroyed by U.S. imperialistic corporate interests, such as the Dole Food Company. Sidebar. Dole, originally founded as Castle & Cooke in 1851, also took a major role in colonizing Hawaii and enslaving indigenous people on the pineapple plantations. Never underestimate the nefarious hidden agenda of a pineapple, which may sting your mouth depending upon which part of it you eat. No doubt associated with an imperialist plot. Dole and other U.S. ag corporations have destroyed the soil in Central America to such a degree that it no longer supports the cultivation of edible plants, which means the impoverished people trying to live in this region who can’t afford to buy food also can’t grow it. Starvation is a strong incentive for relocation, particularly when combined with being pursued by a gang-member killer. The Central American refugees denied asylum and returned to their home country stand a good chance of being killed, same as those returned in 1985. It’s a no-brainer that people don’t choose to walk away from a beloved community and homeland, leaving their family behind and often enduring separation from their children, unless their lives are in peril and they have no other options. What part of this is so hard to understand? Should I do a Venn Diagram?

At the ICE Detention Center demo, a man stopped in his tracks when he saw my NEST shirt and said, “I have one of those shirts too. I worked for NEST.” I told him that when getting dressed that morning, it had been a toss-up for me between the NEST shirt and my Santa Rita Peace Camp shirt (from when I did nonviolent civil disobedience and got arrested protesting nuclear weapons at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1983). He burst out laughing. “I have a Santa Rita T-shirt too!” he informed me. “You went to Santa Rita Jail with the Livermore 1,000 in 1983?” I asked. Yes, he had. He and I seem to have frequented all the same places.

Santa Rita Peace Camp is another story from my years resisting the forces of destruction. In 1983, I joined approximately 1,000 demonstrators in blockading the entrance to Livermore National Lab, and we were arrested. Since nearby Santa Rita Jail couldn’t house 1,000 protesters, they separated the men from the women and put us into red-and-white striped event tents on the prison property. We refused to go to arraignment until the judge agreed to sentence us to community service instead of a fine (because a lot of the protesters couldn’t afford a fine). Refusing to go to arraignment meant non-cooperation, such as going limp, which would have required guards to drag people to the transport buses. Some of the women protesters went so far as to strip naked as another resistance tactic, because the predominantly male guards were at a loss about how to politely wrangle a naked woman onto a bus (where do you grab her?) while being filmed for the evening news, because TV crews came out in force to document this spectacle. While our lawyers negotiated the terms of our release with the judge, we held workshops, teach-ins, songfests, talent shows, trainings, meditation retreats, yoga classes, cooking shows, caber tosses, spelling bees, health fairs, car washes, Porta Potty decorating contests, and other entertaining and enlightening what-not in our striped tents at Santa Rita. Thus, an inside joke emerged as we referred to our incarceration as Santa Rita Peace Camp. After the authorities released us (with only community service and no fine), Livermore Action Group (the organizer of the demo) made up T-shirts with an image of the striped tents and the words “Santa Rita Peace Camp.” I still have mine. Apparently so does that man I met at the ICE Detention Center demo. From that time to this I have raised three children and become a grandma. Yet here we are again, still standing in opposition to injustice, inequality, planetary destruction, and general stupidity.

I opened up to that man, my kindred spirit, and said, “It’s hard to keep doing this, year after year, generation after generation, as I grow old. In the 1980s, when I was young, my synagogue harbored Central American refugees in our homes. A Salvadoran refugee and a Holocaust survivor gave testimony together in my living room while a group of refugee women made the most delicious eggnog from scratch in my kitchen. Honestly, in the 1960s, my Jewish parents harbored a Palestinian refugee from the Six-Day War in our home in the suburbs in upstate New York. And in the 1920s, my grandfather arrived in this country as a refugee, fleeing the persecution of the Jews in his native Poland. Much of his large family (my family) perished in the Holocaust. We Jews have wandered as refugees for thousands of years, dispersed across the earth in Diaspora going back to the days before the birth of Christ, who, when you get down to it, was also a refugee. This business of migration and fleeing an untenable living situation has been going on for thousands of years. Apparently humans have learned nothing from it. I am outraged and exasperated anew that I must live among such continuously unevolved people. The ranks of our government swell with toxic demon dinosaurs. Our species may as well crawl back into the slime because we still have the intelligence of a one-celled organism.

When will people get it? The planet is one. Boundaries, borders, fences, and walls are artificial dividers. Countries are fabricated geographical subdivisions. When a land becomes uninhabitable because of degradation of nature, resources, culture, and/or humanity, then the inhabitants must move to another location, whether part of their home country or not. That’s how it flows. Well-intentioned folks like to say “do unto others” and “treat others as your own” and “be compassionate and kind to the other, the stranger, for you were once a stranger, and you could be one again at any time.” This is “other” nonsense. I have to ask -- what other? There is no other. We are all us. We are the human family. So I struggle to contain my rage. I struggle to disperse my frustration and focus instead on sources of joy, wonder, and delight. When I feel like I might run screaming into the forest, I tell myself to remain calm. I tell myself (oh thank you dear J.K. Rowling), “The Death Eaters may have control of the Ministry, but we will continue to practice our magic, and one day we will wave our wands, wrest the Ministry from them, and set things to rights.”

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Coda:  Last week Contra Costa County announced that they are severing ties with ICE and will not allow ICE to use the detention center in Richmond to house detainees. All detainees must be released on bail or moved within 120 days. Contra Costa County Sheriff Livingston cited the disruption and stress caused by recent demonstrations at the facility as a significant reason for this action (in particular the demo on June 30 attended by myself and approximately 1,000 other people). Egad, unbelievable, my voice was heard. Once the facility in Richmond is cleared of detainees, there will be no facility housing detainees in the SF Bay Area. Way to go NorCal. Imagine if all counties and all facilities in the country refused to participate in the ICE detention of refugees. Follow this link for an article in the SF Chronicle about Contra Costa County cancelling its contract with ICE.

Three generations of Wachspress women at the June 30 protest. 

My cousin Eric's daughter Megan and her baby girl with me there 

(our fists raised in the resistance sign). Photo by Nathan Naze.