President Trump’s
“Zero Tolerance” immigration policy is as heartless as it is cowardly. It is
also chillingly cruel. When this policy is paired with the president’s
decision, announced on June 19, 2018, to withdraw from the UN Human Rights
Council, we may reasonably conclude that the American creed promising “liberty
and justice for all” is more than tarnished. The torch held aloft by the
Statue of Liberty is being extinguished before our eyes.
Some
commentators compare the detention centers and “tent cities” housing immigrants
and refugees to the Japanese internment camps of World War II. In 1998,
President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which offered an official
apology to the people of Japanese descent who had been incarcerated in the
camps, and paid each survivor $20,000 in compensation. It is possible that
somewhere in the future another president will make a similar apology to
persons incarcerated by President Trump, but there is another precedent that I
think is more likely.
In the late
eighteen hundreds the US established and funded Indian boarding schools to
solve what was then thought of as the “Indian Problem.” In the beginning these
schools were located on Indian reservations and run by Christian missionaries.
It was not long before off-site residential schools were established and private
enterprise began competing with religious denominations for federal dollars.
The motto for the boarding school movement was “Kill the Indian, save the man.”
In addition to receiving a classic Western education, students were beaten,
handcuffed, locked in closets, and suffered multiple cruelties. Unsanitary
conditions contributed to numerous student deaths. All of this was done in the
name of love, and for the purpose of civilizing and Christianizing Indian
children. Thanks to organizations like the Native American National Boarding School Healing Coalition stories about school conditions and
atrocities are being documented today. We should anticipate that today’s
immigrants will form similar healing coalitions in the future.
Indian
boarding schools were established ostensibly for the purposes of breaking down
indigenous tribal communities, undermining tribal authority, dismembering Indian
families, and assimilating Indian children into a white Christian culture. One
of the unintended consequences was that the schools gave rise to a pan-tribal
movement, because children from many different tribes from different regions of
the country were thrown together in one place. The schools also strengthened
Native resolve to achieve sovereignty.
President
Trump’s Zero Tolerance policy is ostensibly for the purposes of solving the
“immigration problem“ and “protecting our borders.” The government assumes that
people crossing the US-Mexican border are criminals, and they are treated
accordingly. Civil Rights advocates are organizing in response to the
government’s actions. Collectively the experiences of the people who are being
incarcerated, the enduring trauma of families torn apart by the Zero Tolerance
policy, families the government now refuses to help reunite, and the work of
Civil Rights advocates may begin a new and more hopeful chapter in US history.
As the government is trampling on individual rights and freedoms, counter
measures are being taken.
The role of
the Protestant church in the midst of this struggle is of particular interest
to me. There are Christians whom I believe are confusing the ways of Christ
with the ways of our dominant culture. These members of the faith community
continue to support President Trump, and to disregard or dismiss the myriad
scandals that cling to him and mounting lawsuits pending against him. But, at
the same time, a broad healing coalition that strongly opposes the
administration’s policies and practices is coming into being.
Broad
coalitions of this sort are welded together over time by the torch of
experience. Some members of this coalition remember the 1960s as a time when
hope for change was ripe. Other members of this coalition have more recent
experiences such as the Occupy Movement, the protest at Standing Rock,
participation in the Me Too movement, or the Black Lives Matter and the GLBTQI
campaigns. Participation in these movements is not mutually exclusive. People
who are active in one movement often have ties to other movements. The common
thread that weaves these diverse and otherwise apparently disparate causes
together is other-regard.
In this hour
of darkness, I remain “a prisoner of hope,” to use a biblical expression, for I
see us coming to a level of theological maturity that is not driven by
ideological theology or un-proveable metaphysical doctrines, but simply by respect
others, respect for the earth, and respect for ourselves. I submit that the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples is the charter document for a future in which such respect is
honored.
Rev. David Hansen
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