José’s Story Continues (click here to read part 1)

Every day, all over this country, ICE is sweeping up thousands of hard-working men and women – and even children. Over and over again, we are seeing the same scenes of heavily armed men tearing down doors and dragging off scared and sobbing civilians. If you’re thinking this is looking more and more like an old Nazi movie, you’re right. That’s precisely what it’s supposed to be – but, thank God, it is not evoking the silence and fear and distrust aimed at our non-white, immigrant neighbors as it’s intended to do. Schools and businesses and local governments and sometimes even entire towns are stepping into and not away from these confrontations with ICE agents.

The victims targeted are seldom the “criminals” they are cast to be. Nor are they vermin or drug dealers or terrorists. And ICE, for all its brutality and drama, is failing to turn them into that. These are our neighbors. Law-abiding members of our communities. We know them – love and respect them! All over this country, we are rising to claim them!

Courage and integrity still abound, even in the darkest of nights, and so far, they are holding. Millions and millions of Americans are pouring out in the street to protest, showing up at Home Depots and detention centers and in targeted intersections, risking arrest by capturing the viciousness and unprovoked violence on their cell phones. Every day, people are speaking out. Demanding answers. Fighting to get their workers and their friends back.

The politics of resentment are not working as well as they used to. Still, the damage and danger are real. The cost, first to these families and then to all the rest of us, is heartbreaking.

When my new gardener, José, a young husband and father, was detained, everyone in his world was upended: his family, his clients, his colleagues, and friends. But something amazing began happening. His wife, Maria, dazed and heartbroken, almost immediately pulled herself together enough to find a second job. Her first job already allowed her to work from home, so she can care for their health-challenged son. Her second came from a nearby business, where the boss agreed she could take the shift from 6:00 at night ’til midnight. In the brief time in between, she’s able to feed her kids, listen to their reports of the day, and do all the things that good single parents do to try to keep their families intact and healthy. She has been blessed: both sets of employers stepped up and agreed to the hours needed for her to accomplish all the jobs that are suddenly required of her, as the sole parent and breadwinner.

Other people are stepping up, too, and that’s the miracle of this story being played out throughout the country. People, friends, and strangers alike are showing up to help. The first thing that this family needed was a lawyer. Where and how? They had no idea. Why would they?! A friend suggested someone, but they were concerned about it. “Could we look over the contract?” they asked. We called a neighbor who’s a lawyer. He dropped everything to research the attorney they had engaged and to understand the detainees’ legal needs. An hour later, he called back: the lawyer they had chosen looked legitimate. Then he began learning in earnest everything he could about what these families are facing. He decided to get involved.

Looking for additional help, I called a friend, who called a colleague in their area and asked how to get food to the family. Hearing of their distress, “Ellen” called the mother herself and offered to get the needed groceries – including the chips that the littlest one adores. She prayerfully considered her own budget and then committed to help with the groceries. She listened deeply, hoping to learn what else they needed, and then volunteered to take them all to church each week. In that simple act, she became a solid force of balance.

Many of our fellow Americans are doing exactly the same things. Reaching out. Listening. Offering help however they can. As others have learned of this family and many like it, they have stepped up in remarkable ways – some little and some significant. There are organizations that have been around a long, long time, with volunteers who faithfully do much of the technical work. CLUE, “Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice”, is one here in Southern California that is helping with the long wait in line to arrange for bail. Friends have taken off the morning or the whole day to stand in line downtown at the Federal Building to get a bail bond for a stranger. That’s the kind of people we are!

Countless churches and mosques and temples and gurdwaras and a myriad of other faith communities are quietly adding soup kitchens and legal advice and errands and rides. While none of us can do everything, but all of us can do something – and we are! And it is making a difference. Taking a stand for one another.

THAT is the true AMERICA.

His name is José. He is not a murderer or a vicious criminal, not a drug dealer or a trouble-maker,.. heck, as far as I know he doesn’t even have a traffic ticket.

I first encountered him next door, helping my neighbors.

Their yard was an eyesore – so was mine after last year’s storms pushed sea water far inland. All the plants kept dying, and it seemed there was little we could do. But then, day by day, I noticed that the yard next door was beginning to turn green. Flowers bloomed, and suddenly a handsome bamboo fence appeared that shielded the tender new petals from the wind.

One day I heard him raking and I approached to ask if he’d trim a branch that was getting too close to my roof. He smiled and put out his hand. Just then, a young child peeked around the corner shyly. José spoke to the boy gently and then turned to introduce his son and himself. Seeing them together sealed my decision: I had found my new gardener.

He was truly amazing. He worked hard, and things quickly looked better than I had imagined they could. We missed connecting as the days went by, so he called to make sure I was pleased. “Beyond pleased”, I said.

A couple of weeks had flown by when I realized that I hadn’t seen him. I knew he and his wife were busy raising four little ones and working full-time. They had their hands full. Maybe … maybe we’d just missed connecting, I thought, even as I whispered a prayer for his safety.

Three days later, the text appeared. It was from his wife telling me that he had been grabbed off the streets by ICE. They had taken away his phone. It was only now, much later, that she had at last found out where he was and obtained the phone and a way to reach me, finally —and everyone else he worked for or interacted with. But before she could even contact me, she’d had to scramble to get an attorney – and another job!

He was not just “Dad”, he was their major bread-winner. My heart sank as I realized that their rent would soon be due and that there was no way she would have it. It was only two weeks into the month! He hadn’t been paid yet. We all paid him at the end of the month!

Suddenly, it was all on her: Their kids. School. Food. Rent. Doctor’s appointments for the eldest. Getting the bank to release their funds to her so she could pay the bills. Finding and paying an attorney. She apologized: he had asked her to reach out to me right away because I had been so kind, he said, and he didn’t want me to worry, but she had had to get an attorney and the other job first and figure out how to raise the money to pay for all of it!

She had to tell the kids and somehow allay their fears, holding their shattered world together.

My heart broke, for her, for him, for the kids, for the whole cruel, stupid, senseless, man-made catastrophe.

José is not a terrorist. A drug dealer. Or a threat. He is an honorable, hardworking, tax-paying man who, like millions of immigrants before him, including Donald Trump’s grandparents and my own, came to this country seeking a better life for himself and his family.

Now the dream was shattered. The sharp edges slashed through every aspect of their lives. Everyone got hurt. José. His wife. His family. His friends. His community. The bank. The school. His kids’ classmates and teachers. And all of us who counted on his talent and his labor.

All upended- ruined. And for what?

We have to stop this madness, the brutality, the cruelty… innocent lives being utterly destroyed. It has to stop. NOW.

We have been here before as a country, at a time when black bodies were bought and sold and brutalized, used for free labor and counted as less than human.

We were here when healthy young American men – fathers and brothers and uncles and sons – were dumped into a lottery and, when their number came up, sent halfway around the world into a war that ripped their souls as well as their bodies.

We, the people, – you and me – we must stand again against the worst impulses of humanity: greed for money and power in an era of materialism and insatiability, when decency is mocked, truth disregarded, and we, the voters get caught in the bait-and-switch of promises that leave us and too many of our neighbors without health care, or dignity, or food for our children.

So we take to the streets once more in protest, just as we have before. Thousands of us. MILLIONS OF US! We need to be smart. Strategic. Rage won’t get us as far as being cool, smart, humorous, or articulate will. Rage locks both sides into a battle. It feels good, and we certainly need energy to get out there, but hate doesn’t transform; it polarizes.

Martin Luther King, James Lawson, and Bayard Rustin all understood that hate is not nearly as compelling or powerful as love is. “Hey ICE, come on, Brothers, You KNOW better!” is more likely to change hearts than “F_K ICE!” will… still…

As “the People” WE can set the standards: “No Kings” for sure, but also, “Hands off our Neighbors”, “We are ALL in this together!”, “Hate will not make us great!” and all the other wonderful, crazy, creative costumes and slogans that we Americans come up with to laugh down the menace of tyranny – these are what set the standards for how we treat one another.

José is not a terrorist or a drug dealer or a threat.. He’s my friend and my neighbor and, God willing, if I have anything to do with it, may someday soon become an American citizen who serves this country with great love and pride and green yards filled with flowers.