|
Immigration Reform: Calling All Solutionaries
“We can’t smack-talk our way out
of our common problems.”
--Jim Boushay and Rickey Sain, Sr.
PART I: INTRODUCTION:
These days the distasteful attacks and counter-punches in the heated
national public media discourse on Immigration Reform are lamentable,
worse even. But we can do better and be more helpful. Perhaps a way to
start is to criticize less and facilitate more in solving and resolving.
What prevails now in some quarters is deeply troubling: a virtual
laundry list of manifestly unfair forms of political name-calling and
biased categorization. Needed is a higher level of civic discourse to
aid in getting good things done.
As example par excellence of both the
negatives and positives, the
June 17 Washington Post/ABC News poll/article is accompanied by
dozens (more!) of extraordinarily pointed responses. Reporters Jon Cohen
and Tara Bahrampour were writers of the story: "Most Americans back new
Arizona law, Washington Post-ABC News poll finds." The link to the
story:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/17/AR2010061700008.html
In the article’s posted responses, blatant
name-calling and categorizing stand alongside bitter personal attacks,
both nuanced and overtly demeaning. There are numerous instances of what
appears to be willful depersonalization. One among several results is
misdirected, if justified, angers and frustrations, which circumstance
leads to assorted bewildering confusions in search of genuine meaning
and better understandings—ones less tendentious and better focused on
the common good. In these tumultuous times we are transitioning to
so-so-many new things in need of new understandings. To our credit, we
seem to be holding on for dear life.
To hold the attention amid disturbing distractions is challenging. This
is something we learned recently on a yearlong funded
study-and-recreation sabbatical across the nation, conducting interviews
on resilience, on bouncing back from hard times, on ways of struggling
through suffering and adversity to something better socially,
economically, spiritually. We conducted hundreds of interviews with
princes and paupers alike in a mobile office/motorhome named the
Miracles Express.
Throughout the sabbatical of 18,000 miles across 28 states, we were
enabled (and equipped) to interview citizens from varied regions,
contexts, callings, identities. Many of the interviewed were anxious,
eager to hear and learn ways of doing more crossing of boundaries, yes,
while some interview subjects were afraid or reluctant to do such, and
for a range of subtle and not-so-subtle reasons. When articulated, the
reasons sometimes made a compelling claim on our attention at deeper
levels of civic engagement.
Of course the discourse—in both the
Washington Post article
mentioned and during the sabbatical—included supplemental and welcome
expressions of unadulterated filial love. There were
“less-than-always-perfect” stories of civic and nonprofit volunteerism,
describing acts of service, kindness, justice, goodwill, of trying to
make a difference at home and work, and in community. But these
narratives were also frequently accompanied by shocking, to us,
expressions of destructive hate and despairing bitterness, of crazy
suspicion, of fear of neighbor, of deep angry cynicism derived from
perceived (and unverifiable) “facts.” Vague reservations about the
future were tied to agonizing worries over the seemingly intractable
cultural dysfunctions and messes of our day. One interviewee, an
accountant in San Diego, expressed unhappiness that we are fast becoming
part of a “no longer can do” spirit of failure and systemic
corruption—financial, social, political.
A retired museum docent from Birmingham, Alabama, said, “We seem
captured right now in great doubt, and are in need of some certitude.
We’re searching after more faith in each other.” Indications are that we
are afraid: suspicious and thus deficient in trust of colleague and
neighbor and friend. The discourse revealed how some of the nation’s
accepted and robust paradigms of conversation and debate and
argumentation—whether in the media or in personal engagement—were
actually intense pleadings for an improved sense of community
caring-ness, along with a sense of reasoned (non-dogmatic) practicality.
Said one El Paso, Texas, interviewee, a person without a home for two
years: “This ain’t working. We know that. But we don’t know where we’re
headed right now. We pretty much realize we have to go someplace better
than what we’ve got now. We’re in a national crisis of selfishness from
fearing the future.”
PART II: POWER OF NEIGHBORHOODS AND NEIGHBORLINESS
To glean from the interviews a sense of national and local strivings is
useful. There is the wish for improved qualities of friendship and
lend-a-hand neighborliness. This was sometimes communicated ardently,
revealing a passionate yearning for a deeper generosity of spirit in
fast-changing times of insecurity and uncertainty. Some of the spoken
strivings—many remarkably sincere, some delusional, yes, and a few
hideously misdirected—are in service to larger good. The interviews
revealed a non-bureaucratic hunger for a renewed American sense of the
unifying power of neighborhoods and neighborliness.
But then, there quickly erupted odd contradictions and paradoxes,
revealed often spontaneously by scatter-shot dissing and by unnecessary,
sordid, cheap shots of “gotcha” contrarianism—a kind of undisciplined
striking out in all directions at “whomever.” These expressions were in
addition to the all-too-prevalent condemnatory characterizations of
what, generally, are somewhat unknowable human motives. Always there is
guesswork involved in understanding us humans—variously enigmatic,
thorny, and mysterious.
Are we talking here an example of the “infamous” American
rough-and-ready demonstration of rugged individualism? Do we dare (some
dare) to say decisively why someone didn’t—or did—say or do
something questionable? How can we be sure of motives? Where—and
what—is your proof of the complex inner workings of human motivation,
which workings generate unique attitudes and behaviors?
Typically people hold back and feel threatened, sometimes
justifiably, when someone unthinkingly claims special knowledge of
another’s multipart motives. Indeed. “How would
you know?” is one edgy phrase
deployed to counteract the impudent practice.
As well, there is the all-too-normative, more than rare, sometimes
irrational and unrestrained rhetoric of panic and urgency and emergency
in the national discourse on immigration. There also are ever-persisting
worries about the future in general. “How can we possibly fix so much
that has gone so very wrong?” was an earnest response to questions asked
in a small-group conversation, at Bellarmine University in Louisville.
In some instances in both sabbatical interviews and the
Washington Post comments,
there were indirect intimations of (and forthright promptings toward)
violence against presumptive enemies—e.g., “us” good peaceful,
law-abiding citizen against “them” invading evil ones of little or no
account.
At an unplanned, impromptu gathering of a dozen “RVers” in a Topeka
Walmart parking lot, there were decisive yet nonetheless ill-considered
urgings—the spirit of the law be damned— for use of small-minded
unethical and even illegal measures and tactics, including deployment
willy-nilly of martial restraints against the “invaders,” whether
settled here already legally or trying to get here, legally or not, by
hook or by crook. In blunt and unexpected (and humorous) reply, said one
energetic teen traveling on vacation with his family, “Now just stop
this madness.” Out of the mouth of a “child” came timely and needed
provocation.
Some of the more forceful directives clearly discriminate against
(and degrade) the basic rights of human personality. They denigrate the
abiding sense of the sacred dignity of persons, and of the
responsibility of all to choose wisely. The common-good warrants of
human dignity are stipulated not only in the
Bill of Rights of the
U.S. Constitution but also in the
Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
In partial summary, the laundry list of naked, unfiltered sabbatical
responses similarly surface, as well, in responses to the
Washington Post article.
(Astonishingly the 800-word article has generated written responses
totaling an even more astonishing 100,000-plus words, as of June 23.)
There one finds posted online quite disquieting commentary. In the
interest of fair play, we report with more than a smidgen of
satisfaction that some helpful comments lodged there are hopeful,
practical, and blessedly grounded in an even-handed American sense of
compassionate realism and pragmatism.
Sabbatical interviews along with the products of public media
communications—print, electronic, broadcast, podcast—reveal more than a
few hauntingly disconcerting insights into the present state of American
discourse, regarding immigration reform. No surprise in an assertive,
bouncy culture that the matter is infinitely controversial because
usually complicated!
Of note from the interviews, there are obvious parallels to immigration.
When viewed against the socio-cultural failures in dealing with other
difficult issues—e.g., in
economics, politics, religion—the parallels to immigration discussed in
the interviews are indicative of a nation in pursuit always of healthier
alternatives to the heartrending persistence of seven agonizing themes,
randomly chosen:
These concerns are: (1)
war and an ever-increasing militarism; (2) wanton corporate greed and
irresponsibility; (3) environmental and ecological destruction; (4) the
continuing urgent struggles for needed stability in the American family;
(5) a still off-the-charts joblessness (and under-employment) rate, to
say nothing of those who, operating under the radar screen, have
frustratingly stopped looking for productive work; (6) unintended yet
harsh disparities in hospital medical services and in community
healthcare programs; and (7) the still-deteriorated (and further
deteriorating) neighborhoods from a yet-to-be-stabilized mortgage
foreclosure crisis, which crisis further exacerbates what has been over
the last decade an ever-burgeoning increase in the rate of homelessness,
along with continuing deficits in growth of affordable housing.
Thus seven bedeviling realities of social and moral
and political dislocation—a benighted list to be sure. But not the whole
story, hardly. Always is there more to tell and some light to share, as
revealed in sabbatical interview conversations.
Seven bedevilments can also serve as seven “bewitching” opportunities
for growth through new and energetic insight. Any spirit-killing
national problem desperately in need of life-affirming solutions by
solutionaries seems to call forth dedicated workers who care, from
within cities and towns and neighborhoods almost everywhere.
Solutionaries are certainly “out there,” already working hard, always.
Many of us can easily name some we know. Their stories are legion. Most
of the people we interviewed drew out their own compelling (sometimes
weird) stories of helping, of volunteerism. Still to ask in all this:
How—how really—did the awful things we face today happen in the process
of “progressing” from there to here?
Exactly what is the
“something” that has happened? Said sabbatical interviewees variously,
one thing is that we have grown pathologically obsessed with making
too-facile, “trendy,” all-too-clever formulations of human purpose. And
unhappily, this seems to be human purpose increasingly detached from the
everyday routines and tasks at home, work, in community. Ordinarily the
tasks have called us to work hard in partnership on behalf of a common
good. We now seem, the
interviews indicate, more deeply enmeshed than perhaps ever before in
the rough beast of hardly flexible “either/or” limitations. Needed,
interviewees said, are more open constructs of a more educated and
wholistic “both/and” thinking.
We seem stuck. Our capacity for supple, thick compassionate
regard is ebbing, maybe adrift. Expressed in still other figurative
ways, we have shut down, closed up shop, turned unsympathetically inward
and narcissistic. We have become perilously affected by the seductions
in “hip” things of distraction, sometimes in a dangerously extreme way.
In the practice of an excessive enjoyment of diversion, we have become
less humane, self centered, more destructive and hardened, less
constructive. To some degree we have even become anesthetized from our
own sufferings and pain. In turn, this situation morphs into a
detachment from a certain sympathy with the travail of others around us,
including loved ones.
In more than a few intimate stories told of personal boundary-crossing,
we learned that the distractions and diversions are intended to ward
off—to escape—the pain of living existentially without some beneficial
sense of a transcendent good, one beyond the sometimes overwhelming
pressures and stressors of the present. In conversation in Syracuse, New
York, with a small mixed group of senior citizens and their juniors, we
learned that escapism through “me-ism” is seen, notably, as an antidote
to despair against the hard rigors of sustained, unresolved family
conflict and dysfunction.
Some of these life-denying limits are self imposed, we learned. They
disallow by despairingly saying no intentionally to more imaginative and
hopeful possibilities. The disallowance can (and does) work to murder a
spirit of kindness and the civility that energizes temperate critical
inquiry. The “how did this
all happen” state of affairs also has to do with an unwholesome adoption
over time of a less fluid, slavish, near-dogmatic adherence to rigid,
unyielding identity politics. We are awash in extremist political and
religious ideologies—a kind of robust “niche marketing” run amuck, out
of control, making mayhem, producing still more consternation.
The devolution is but one consequence of losing our way along a less
than peaceful path. We have somehow forgotten in a class-driven,
get-the-money-now culture of greed how to empathize with the weaker, the
less fortunate, the disinherited, the poor, and in the process we have
exposed our own frighteningly narcissistic vulnerabilities. They stare
back at us in the mirror. The poor-ers inconveniently remind that they
are here…and that they count. But how dare they make such presumptions
of their own importance? If so convicted in this egregious matter of
compassionate justice, then we can ask this question as possibly one of
several starter questions: Have we conceivably turned from a national
“War on Poverty” (a useful American slogan of boosterism from the
socially-conscious 1960s) to a war against the poor in 2010? If so, then
may a renewed civic spirit of community goodwill lead us, guide us, help
us be more sensitive to doing better on behalf of self and others.
PART III: SOME HOPEFUL SIGNS
Nevertheless, there are still some hopeful signs to report, though
perhaps not as many indications as have been articulated as necessary in
these our neediest of untamed times. “Less stupidity and more stability
and coherence, please,” is one of many mournful cries among poignant
entreaties heard everywhere—in the media, among friends, with
colleagues, from extensive interviewing.
On the decisively positive side, there is also much salutary talk these
days in classrooms and board rooms (and in neighborhoods and at home).
Much of the talk is of a widespread spiritual impoverishment, and of us
having now to confront, more deliberatively, the psychic and emotional
exhaustion that, apparently, comes largely and lately from two
“developments” unwelcome, developments insinuated into the social
systems: (1) Too many citizens caught up in, even imprisoned by, much
too many unrelieved personal and family stresses; and (2) citizens
dispirited by an excess number of negative experiences with seemingly
inert bureaucratic (and political) arbitrariness. One off-putting result
of these kinds of unfeeling, disempowering experiences is more conflict.
Of that, most agree, we need much, much less.
One other dreadful consequence of the travail and the suffering and the
pain, say prominent ethicists and other opinion makers, is that we
citizens seem to be holding desperately, tightly, to extremes of
dogmatic absolutism and reductionism. Who was it that said: “We’re all
reactionaries about what we know.” We’re trying to get a hard grip, of
course. We’re attempting to hold on, while being understandably loath to
give in (capitulate) to a cynical, if ersatz, “truism” which sorrowfully
declares: Life is hard and then you die.
Is there a better alternative?
Can that awful declaration of “nothingness” be real, correct, accurate?
Is there a more gentle and less callous alternative? In the quizzical
lyrics of pop singer Peggy Lee’s 1969 existential song of
disillusionment—a song sung by famed recording artists up the
present—she asks, “Is that all there is?” More than many prefer to think
hopefully that the answer is: “No, there’s more, much more.”
Maybe, say the interviews. Many people of all backgrounds and
lifestyles, of course, know and experience life as more rewarding
socially and economically, and spiritually satisfying. Their unique
stories are particular, manifold in meaning, often absorbing.
Whence come more stories of grace under pressure, of adverse
winds transformed into fresh breezes of new life to help overcome
difficulty?
Can we each do better (and help a few others do a little better) in
order to make for a higher quality of life at home around the dinner
table? And at work and in our neighborhood? A female physician and her
bricklayer husband from Norman, Oklahoma, opined that,
“We can’t smack-talk our way out of our
common problems.”
Smart questions of common purpose are ones that we ought to ask
and answer often. These are questions which each of us can try to ask
and answer, God willing, with a hoped-for sense of new determination. To
continue trying to achieve an improved sense of renewal in American
social enterprise is an always-there national (and international) goal,
the interviews revealed. This task, admittedly writ large, lies before
us searchingly. Can we respond? Overcome the doubts and fears? If yes,
how? If no, why not? Can things of consequence in our neighborhoods be
nudged into a little less brutality and a little more tolerance and
understanding, and humaneness?
PART IV: CONCLUSION: SOLUTIONS FOR SOLUTIONARIES
However you can, if at all, try to read and reflect on and to study,
learn from, and act upon some of the pointed comments—even those
regarded as openly contemptuous—from the
Washington Post article. Some
of the more grandiose comments may funnily feel like airing in public
the nation’s “dirty laundry” on immigration and related
social/political/moral issues. And note in the posted offerings the
vast, often fascinating commentary on the post-ers: Comment-makers
commenting on comment-makers! The compilation is in the attached PDF:
“Impossibilities, Perplexities, and Complexities of Immigration Reform.”
It runs about 120 pages, offering almost every plausible complaint and
solution, whether perceived or real, practical or no, arrogant or kind,
pretentious or simplistic, and anything else in a more haunted and
reassuring middle ground.
The PDF document altogether offers a unique and somewhat
imaginative mix of reasonable actions for Citizen Solutionaries. Pick
and choose we do, inevitably, historically, humanly. The entirety of the
mix, not unusually, crosses a number of boundaries within a context that
speaks to the interdisciplinary dimensions of a generous
decency—decencies economic, social, political, religious, moral,
ethical.
What is the right answer in all this? Is there just one only? Don’t
think so, say many without hesitation. Who decides what’s right and how
to choose from among the ostensibly valid range of options for
solutionaries? How to make your case reasonably, tolerantly, graciously?
How to avoid personal and prejudicial (and debilitating) attacks on “the
other?” How to ask others in observance of the Golden Rule not to attack
you? In these ongoing challenges, how are responsible citizens of a
clearly troubled democracy to help lead the way, step out in front? What
more is there to do? What is a first step among many steps to be taken?
Both the sabbatical interviews and much media commentary on immigrants
and immigration demonstrably avow, here and there, a more civil and
constructive “Dialogue of Differences” regarding efforts to reform a
broken immigration system.
One caveat in all this: No easy task is it to live (and learn to live
better) in the tension of differences. Nevertheless we American
citizens, in awareness of our documented can-do expansionist history,
may yet be able to summon more courage to choose more peaceful, hopeful,
and satisfying solutions. Will it be: No, we can’t. Will it be: Yes, we
can. The sense of new possibility goes along with the idea of us (more
of us) helping to choose the financial means as well as the resources
(the human wherewithal) to achieve some workable, even if typically
imperfect, solutions. We are to do the best we can, however we can, say
some of the “commentators” from both the Washington Post article and the
sabbatical interviews.
Thanks here for listening and for your time. We’re grateful. Let us know
if and how we can help further. Warmest, Jim and Rickey
For reading and reflection, see also Walter Brueggemann’s essay
Counterscript: Living with the elusive God
Link to essay
http://www.resourcesunlimited.org/COUNTERSCRIPT.htm
Boushay and Sain, writing
from New Orleans, are trustees
of Resources Unlimited Foundation, an education institute
in social justice and civic engagement, headquartered in
Oak Park, IL, USA.
|
