-Submitted by Judy Sullivan, USH Social Justice Chair
There is no Checklist this week. I received an email from Jen Hofmann explaining the difficult choice she faced to either attend a leadership conference or publish her Checklist. I invite you to go to her website to learn more of her research and suggested actions. https://americansofconscience.com/checklist/
UUSC
The Unitarian
Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) is a nonprofit, nonsectarian organization
advancing human rights together with an international community of grassroots
partners and advocates. https://www.uusc.org
Reflections On
Resistance, Heroism, and the Spirit of an Undivided Nation
How do the lessons of history inform our present struggle for
human rights?
By Rachel Gore Freed on
February 13, 2019
Like many of us throughout the
country, I braced myself for a late night last Tuesday to watch the President’s
second State of the Union address. What struck me the most was hearing him
misappropriate some of the most inspiring episodes of U.S. history, calling
into question which ideals they actually represent. In all too many ways, the
policies and rhetoric of this White House do not hearken back to the United
States’ admirable role in defeating fascism, but rather to the forces of
isolationism and bigotry that left refugees in danger. These similarities even
extend to Trump’s choice of campaign slogan: “America First”—a 1930s rallying
cry for those U.S. citizens who didn’t believe our moral responsibilities
extended to the rest of our human family.
Trump celebrated memories of U.S.
soldiers who stormed the beach on D-Day to defeat fascism and went on to
liberate the survivors of Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
However, he failed to mention that when looking back at history, there was
information available to Americans about Nazism and Hitler throughout the 1930s
that we still wrestle with today in trying to understand what more could have
been done.
I recently visited a special exhibit at the
Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., Americans
and the Holocaust, which honors UUSC and our founders, Martha and Waitstill
Sharp, for their heroic mission to rescue children from Nazi Germany. The
overall exhibit examines the motives, pressures, and fears that shaped
Americans’ responses to Nazism, war, and the persecution and murder of Jews in
Europe during the 1930s and ’40s. During my visit, I was struck deeply by all
the facts and exhibits demonstrating how much the international community knew
during a time when we might have stopped the rise of Nazism in Germany and its
assault on European Jews.
Interestingly, even as early as
1933, American Jewish leaders hoped to persuade the U.S. public and government
to condemn the Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany, but they were held back by
concern about anti-Semitic backlash in the United States. Does this sound
familiar?
Even more tragic, before the war
began, the U.S. government repeatedly denied entry to Jewish immigrants and
refugees, forcing thousands to remain in occupied Europe. Many were later
murdered in the Holocaust.
As I write, the Trump administration
is pushing back asylum-seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border and forcing them to
remain in Mexican border towns – placing them at
immediate risk of sexual assault, extortion, kidnapping, and other human rights
violations. This is only one of several ways in which the
President has made it harder and more dangerous to seek asylum in the United
States since taking office. The list of egregious tactics is long and
includes separating and detainingfamilies, slashing asylum
protections for survivors of domestic violence and gang persecution, eliminating a
program that saved the lives of many Central American refugee children,
and working to undermine legal
protections for trafficking victims and unaccompanied minors.
At the close of his speech, Trump
called the people of the United States to reflect on “our future—our fate.” I
think we are doing just that. If our minds and hearts are open, and are truly
listening to the beat of our nation right now, you’ll hear outrage at what is
happening at our borders and you’ll see individuals, communities moving
together to create sanctuary—fighting local ordinances to provide protection to
migrants, opening churches to provide physical sanctuary and endless volunteers
welcoming migrants and providing services to families. You’d also see beautiful,
vibrant, bi-partisan, intergenerational protests happening every time the
administration seeks to restrict rights for those crossing borders.
As we shepherd the work of UUSC day
in and day out, we are mindful that we serve as the torchbearers to the UUSC
human rights defenders that have come before us, and eventually to those who
will carry the work forward after. We form an unbroken line of advocates, urged
to action by our shared values of compassion and interconnectedness, longing to
realize justice and dignity for every member of our human family.
Let us not forget that in the best
moments of our history as a people, we have served on the side of human
freedom. UUSC’s history of fighting injustice, our mission to advance human
rights and our values all call us to remember the lessons of our past and to
hold onto these truths as we look to create our future. I am reminded of the
words of an inscription at the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem, where Martha
and Waitstill Sharp are honored as Righteous Among the Nations. The inscription
reads:
To the martyrs of the Holocaust
To the rebels of the Ghettos
To the partisans of the forests
To the insurgents of the camps
To the fighters of the Resistance
To the soldiers of the Allied forces
To the saviors of their siblings in
peril
To the heroes of secret migration
To eternity…