Day: July 17, 2025

“How we look at others is what counts, because it shows what is in our hearts, We can look and walk by, or we can look and be moved with compassion.”  —-Pope Leo

When I was six years old I travelled with my family to Wisconsin. It was quite beautiful there and we were enjoying a drive through stunning scenery when my father spotted a sign in front of a little country store touting the many varieties of cheese that they sold. My one year old brother was sound asleep so my mother insisted that only my father would go inside to select a few varieties to enjoy as we continued our travels. 

Thanks to my first grade teacher I had become a rather advanced reader so I was stunned when I saw a placard above the entryway into the place. It really bothered me to see the announcement that no dogs or Indians were allowed. I registered my shock to my mother who did her best to explain how some people harbor prejudice against native Americans but I wasn’t buying her attempts to console me. Everything that I had learned in my religion class flew in the face of such a grotesque announcement and I felt so sad that my excitement about the cheese devolved into a lack of appetite. 

Of course I had seen the restrictions for Black citizens back in my home town in the south and had drawn the conclusion that such treatment was also wrong. I was only six years old and I had a moral sense of right and wrong, so it bothered me that adults would look at people unlike themselves and have no problem seeing them as inferior and somehow unworthy of the same kind of treatment as white people. I understood even as a child that it was wrong to simply accept the cruelty that seemed to be so rampant in the world. Everything about what I had learned indicated that the adults around me should have felt as outraged as I did but I was a polite child who remained silent without ever forgetting how I felt upon seeing yet more evidence of prejudice.

I suppose that I will never understand how anyone can look at another human who is being mistreated and simply stay silent and walk away. it took me a long time to develop the courage to speak out and I suppose that I am using the talent that my Catholic school teachers helped me to develop to protest with my writing. Still, I feel that there has to be more that I might do. 

I have a long history of protesting and I have continued to use gatherings of like minded individuals to call attention to my frustration and anger in seeing how immigrants to our nation are being treated. What we are doing to them in the name of law is outrageously horrific, so I fail to understand how anyone can find an excuse to condone it. I want badly to take part in the protests that will occur today in cities all across America but my scheduled cataract surgery coincides with the event. All I can do for the moment is express my anger that people whose only so called “crime’ is to want a good life for themselves and their families are being harassed and mistreated with profound evilness.

Most of the people being rounded up have no history of crime. They have jobs, pay taxes and are not eligible for many government services other than schooling for their children. They are doing jobs that are important to our economy that few of us would want to do. There is no reason for masked ICE enforcers with no IDs to be picking them up from schools, workplaces and even hospitals and schools. It reeks of profound ugliness and fascist tactics. 

The places where these individuals are being sent are even worse. They are concentration camps by definition. Those in charge of such installations seem to take great pleasure in flaunting the horrors that the immigrants will face there. The lack of human compassion is stunning and most of us know it to be so and yet we are incredibly frustrated in our efforts to make it stop. It feels just like it did when I was a powerless child. My instincts tell me that we all need to do more. We have to raise our voices and do everything possible to protect these innocent souls. 

The people of Germany looked away when Jews were being packed into trains and sent to camps where most of them would eventually die. We Americans would do well to heed history and not risk one day bearing the stain of our inaction. We have to make it very clear on a daily basis that we will not stand for the inhumane treatment that is unfolding before our eyes. We can look and walk by as Pope Leo says or we can look and be moved with compassion. Stopping with good feelings, however, will not be enough. We must do everything possible to register our contempt for what is happening and for the people who are making it happen. We must do our best to make it stop. There is no excuse for silence or inaction.