To sum up the past two weeks in a blog post would be impossible. I felt so many emotions and saw so many things that it is overwhelming to go back and try to summarize. Here are a few things I got to experience:
I got the opportunity to go to Tuscon, AZ and meet young adults taking a year similar to mine from all over the country. I learned about the injustices that surround migrant workers; I visited Nogales and met people that had so little, but had such big hearts. I heard and attempted to understand a language so different from my own. I met a man running for his life from horror to hope and felt the pain when he felt he had nothing left. I met a girl my age who instead of getting the opportunity to go to college, works at a factory making items that I use and don’t appreciate. I watched as seventy people were chained together, belts and shoelaces were removed and they were walked to the front of a room to simultaneously hear their fate and sentence. I watched so many people in the past week ignore the problems that were in front of their faces, yet I also met a small few that were facing them head on. I cried, I laughed, I experienced and I changed. And I am still changing and still struggling.
One thing I have been having a lot of trouble with is trying to find love and compassion for people that honestly, I don’t want to love. People like the public defenders at Operation Streamline who ignored their clients, called them names like, “third to left” and used hand sanitizer after they even brushed by a client. People like the border control who racially profile, make sometimes questionable judgments and often do things that I do not believe I could ever do. People like the politicians that make laws like the Real ID Act that allows any law to be broken as long as it is for the cause of Homeland Security; even if it means making animal populations go extinct, tearing down national parks, and forcing migrants to go through the most horrendous parts of the desert just to make them struggle. I have a lot of trouble find love and respect and compassion for these people who seem so uncompassionate for others.
I am also struggling to ignore a terrible thing called “pity” and focus on a more beautiful thing called “compassion.” I have to stop thinking about the horrors I saw and the terrible things people have to live with and focus instead on fighting the injustices and also remembering the beautiful things others get to have that I don’t. I met a boy a little older than me in Nogales who had crossed the border many years ago and spent the majority of his teenage years in California. His family and friends are all there, yet he is here. I asked him why and he said, “Even though the city is ugly, it is still my home.” He understands the horrible things that go on and many of the difficult conditions that he has to live in, but he embraces it because he sees the beauty in living in a city with so much culture, fearlessness and hope. He sees potential in his city. And that is why he doesn’t need my pity, but he may like some compassion.
I have given you, reading this, a lot of vague details of my trip and not many concrete facts or stories. That is for a purpose. I think you have to see it for yourself and experience it for yourself to understand. I could write of injustices here and you may feel pity, but that’s not what people anywhere want. That’s not what I want for people everywhere. We all want respect. That is what everyone wants. We want change. But I am struggling with finding where exactly this change and respect can come from. I found so many similarities between the undocumented workers and the homeless population I work with every day. The fear (Border Control or LAPD), the lack of a home, the lack of respect, the lack of a voice, the feeling of unworthiness. I am not asking anyone who reads this to go advocate, or donate money, or spend a year serving or feel obligated to do anything. What I ask of each of you is to find a little love and respect in your life to people or a person that you have trouble loving and respecting. If that means undocumented immigrants, fine. If that means someone who is homeless, fine. If that means someone of a different race, religion, sexual orientation, or culture, fine. If that means someone with a mental, substance, physical or emotional disability or illness, fine. Just find a person that is hard to love and love them. That is what I ask. And that is what I learned this week. And am still learning.
