Lunchtime reads: immigration, civil disobedience & democracy

[A cartoon showing laborers, among whom are Irishmen, an African American, a Civil War veteran, Italian, Frenchman, and a Jew, building a wall against the Chinese. Congressional mortar is used to mount blocks of prejudice, non-reciprocity, law against race, fear, etc. Across the sea, a ship flying the American flag enters China, as the Chinese knock down their own wall and permit trade of such goods as rice, tea, and silk. Graetz, F. , Approximately 1913, Artist. “The anti-Chinese wall--The American wall goes up as the Chinese original goes down” / F. Grätz. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/96500349/>.]

Your Lunchtime Read

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’ve been thinking quite a bit about immigration lately for obvious reasons. For Sojourners, I wrote this essay on the threat of mass deportations for American democracy. In short, there is no such thing as wielding fascistic violence while simultaneously preserving democracy. They are mutually exclusive. Those violent appetites will always turn against us eventually, and consume us. 

Also for Sojourners, professor of Asian American studies and co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, Russell Jeung, asks “What will Christians risk to defy unjust immigration orders?” He grounds this short essay in a reflection on movement work done at another time of racist, xenophobic panic. 

In the late 19th century, the federal government worked to prohibit Chinese immigration and to add Chinese residents to a registry with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act as well as the 1892 Geary Act. Once invited in to work in the rapidly expanding post-war U.S. economy, Chinese workers were now surplus and, therefore, disposable. Like today, criminalization and the threat of deportation would make these already vulnerable workers even more exploitable. 

Chinese American immigrants launched a massive campaign of civil disobedience defying the registration order and supporting litigation to repeal the Geary Act. These domestic efforts were coupled with diplomacy from China itself as these laws violated treaties between the U.S. and China.

In a February 1892 essay in the evangelical journal Our Bethany, “The Geary Act: From the Standpoint of a Chinese Christian,” Rev. Jee Gam makes a powerful blow by blow analysis of how racist, unfair, and shortsighted the law is. Gam, the first ever Chinese American ordained congregationalist minister, had a clear analysis of how the Geary Act would criminalize the Chinese and in so doing, subordinate them socially: “...[the] law makes one a slave, a criminal, or even a dog. For the only class that are required to give photographs are the criminals, and the only animal that must wear a tag is a dog. The Chinese decline to be counted in with either of these classes, so they refuse to register, and I do not blame them.” 

This is a helpful reminder that we don’t wait for the conditions to look optimal before we fight back. Very little in 1892 signaled that this fight would, or even could be victorious. The United States was still industrializing. Even white men, who are typically the first to be absorbed into the labor market, were struggling with the rapid advancement of industrial capitalism. That’s why the image of the wandering so-called “hobo” emerges in this period. (I discussed the hobo panic of the late 19th and early 20th century, as well as the criminalization of these displaced white working men, a bit in this piece for the National Catholic Reporter.) No matter how much forecasting we’re capable of, we don’t always know when conditions that are conducive to victory will arise.

The Trump Administration makes a new headline every hour. It’s a strategy of shock and awe. But fretting isn’t meaningful political activity. That’s not to say we don’t feel our feelings. Of course we do. We must. However, we can’t substitute the activity of our internal lives for the concrete things that need to get done: we still need to organize, we still need to build power, and we still need to shore up the relational infrastructure that can support a better future.

In solidarity,

Dwayne