Speaking Out Against the Situation at the Border
ATD Fourth World Movement stands firmly against the inhumane policies of family separation being enacted on the southern border of the United States. Separating families and taking children from their parents is a violent tactic of terror and subjugation, a way of overpowering people that is commonly used against families struggling to overcome poverty. The policies implemented at the southern borders are cruel, racist, degrading and unworthy of our country. This violence is never acceptable and can never be tolerated.
The man-made humanitarian crisis on the southern border reached a new level of despair and tragedy this month. The conditions suffered by children in particular have been documented by journalists and activists who have taken this cause to heart. Thanks to their tireless work, these children and families are no longer invisible.
Poverty is one of the main factors that drives many families to seek refuge in the United States. Less well known is how the process of subjugation and economic domination is implemented through United States foreign policy in the countries these migrants leave. Learning over years from the desperate experiences families in poverty endure, we know that as the experience of poverty becomes deeper, the hope for a better life becomes stronger.
The families' response to subjugation is to struggle for a better future for their children. This is why the policies implemented on the southern border will never succeed: they disregard the strength of the hope that drives those families. If history has taught us anything, it should be this: that aggression, terror, fear, and suffering cannot extinguish the hope of a better life. This is the core of the issue at the border, and as long as we continue to ignore the power of this hope, we, as a nation, will be diminished.
Taking from parents what is most precious to them — their children — is a misguided attempt to destroy that hope. But it will fail, because there is nothing these parents will not do to offer their children the chance to have a future as bright as the American dream and, in many cases, the chance to have any future at all.
As part of a global movement founded by Joseph Wresinski, who was born in an internment camp in Europe, we know that “each human being can be a chance for all humanity.” Despite the odds, Wresinski grew to be a man who brought people together and who, with people living in extreme poverty, built a movement of peace that stands for the dignity of all people, particularly those suffering the most because of poverty. He considered every child a promise for the future.
Separating children and parents destroys the possibility of a shared future. We need to plant the seed of a future rooted in a wider sense of global community, in a deeper understanding of what it means to be safe. We need to realize that wealth and self-sufficiency cannot protect us. We need to defend the humanity of our neighbors in order to save our own.
What these children and their families are enduring is putting each of us at a crossroads:either we choose together a future where everyone can live in dignity, or none of us will have a sustainable future to offer any children.