Lunchtime reads: migration, sanctuary & movement building

Photo by Nitish Meena on Unsplash

Thinking Immigration and Movement Work

Around lunchtime each Monday, I will share some writing, videos, or music that I think are important or otherwise interesting. If you want to learn something on your break without doom scrolling through the internet, check your inbox around 12:00 p.m. EST. 

“I wouldn’t let Jesus get deported, so I’m not going to let other people get deported just for the simple fact that they’re here in this country, and they didn’t have the right paperwork.” Rev. Michael Woolf, Senior Minister of Lake Street Church of Evanston, gave these remarks to Sierra Lyons for her Prism News report on religious leaders’ response to the Trump administration removing houses of worship from the list of sensitive sites that immigration officials were discouraged from raiding under most circumstances. I hope this can end the charade that “religious freedom” is anything more than a cover that the political right uses to smuggle in regressive ideas. 

In a beautiful short essay for the National Catholic Reporter, Kat Arnas reminds us that in many ways, the Bible is an anthology of migration stories: “...migration in these sacred stories is not merely survival – it is grace. It is the means by which God moves, reshapes and restores…[B]oth the migrant and the land that receives them are drawn into a sacred exchange of blessing. This grace is not one-directional. It is mutual, a divine reciprocity.” Migration is a sacred act, an expression of the human will to survive and flourish. It requires tremendous acts of courage, sacrifice, and care. 

Finally, this weekend I returned to an important essay by Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes in the  Boston Review, “How Much Discomfort Is the Whole World Worth?” It’s a sober reminder of what is required of us – what has always been required of us – to build resilient movements: “...if we cannot organize beyond the bounds of our comfort zones, we will never build movements large enough to combat the forces that would destroy us.” We don’t always get to organize with people with whom we agree, or even like.  Solidarity is at once a political emotion as well as actions that bring those emotions into the world. Sometimes it’s just realpolitik, a simple recognition that I need you and you need me.

In solidarity,

Dwayne