Recently, the United States government came to a
standstill for 35 days over an unrealistic campaign promise made by the man who
holds the highest position of power. He tried to strong arm Congress into
passing a budget that would include roughly five billion dollars to build a
wall on the southern border of our nation.
This was something he pledged to do throughout his
campaign, although he also asserted that Mexico would pay for the wall. After
two years of doing nothing more than continuing to spew the rhetoric of fear
regarding our kin to the south, ignoring the fact that illegal border crossings
are at a 30 year low and disregarding the truth that most undocumented citizens
came here legally but overstayed their visas--those details don’t paint as
dramatic a picture as the idea of a wall—he decided it was time to take a
stand.
It was a ridiculous campaign promise to make, and
impossible to keep. Yet for 35 days, federal workers suffered the consequences
of being furloughed without pay or, as in the case of “essential personnel”
such as TSA workers or Air Traffic Controllers, being forced to work without
pay.
Ironically, federal workers are forbidden to go on
strike and the one time when Air Traffic Controllers did so, in 1981, President
Reagan fired 11,000 of them within days and issued a lifetime ban on them ever
being able to work for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) again. What a
travesty of justice that our government can not pay these dedicated workers who
still have to punch the clock every day.
Over a wall. A wall that would not keep our borders
safe and would only serve to shore up racist, uninformed beliefs and fears.
As a Unitarian Universalist, I believe first and
foremost in the inherent worth and dignity of every human; no human is illegal.
In every major world religion hospitality and compassion for the stranger and
refugee are major tenets.
That any person of faith should support a
wall of division is untenable. We should be building bridges of compassion.
Unfortunately, it seems we’ve become a nation of hoarders: folks who hoard
money, folks who hoard the promise of a better life, folks who hoard privilege.
This is dysfunctional at best and dishonors our faith traditions’ most sacred
teachings.
But frankly, it doesn’t matter what the
faith traditions say. As a Unitarian Universalist I am bound to a higher law:
the first of our seven guiding principles that says every human has inherent
worth and dignity.
I am bound by the founding documents of
this nation that says we are a nation of the people, by the people, and for the
people; that holds that all humans are created equal and are endowed with
certain inalienable rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The government has re-opened for now. We
have three weeks to figure out how to stop using our federal workers as pawns
in an overblown, ego-induced chess game; we have three weeks to determine to
see the humanity of our kin from the south; we have three weeks to make America
great again, in the truest sense of the phrase which means inclusion not
exclusion, love not hate, compassion not criminalizing those in need.
