12/11/23

By Josh Rubin

Yesterday, an old friend drew her last breath, after deciding not to fight an end that seemed imminent and certain. Such news comes more often, as I have reached an age when I am unsurprised by death. I am the last in my natal family still here, and though I am rich with friends, each departure feels like a slow wave of loneliness passing through my body, reminding me of what I have lost and what is left still to lose.

I was brought up to think of life as a battle of sorts, a struggle for righteousness and justice, in an unjust world. And though I have spent many years trying to shake the bondage to this struggle, I have not succeeded. As the twig is bent, so has grown the gnarly tree. And adding to this fearsome debt is the brutal confirmation of a hard truth that is brushed aside in youth and is inescapable in age: that the injustice we struggle against will go on after I am gone, long after I, and all those I love, are dust.

And so the old man who writes this will travel to the Workshop for Justice in Ajo AZ to ask the question of my compatriots, what will it take to turn the tide against the world's rising hatred of people who seek the mercy of acceptance. The meeting will last a few days, and we will be near the border that our band of activists is named for. We are Witness at the Border, and over the years our focus on this dividing line has taught us that the line is everywhere once you see it. It divides the haves from the have nots, the housed from the unhoused, the lost from the found. There is no better symbol of injustice than the towering bollards and wire at the southern border. Once seen, it is never unseen.

I am not free of doubt about the efficacy of our activism, so I am hoping that we can find our way to reaching those growing numbers of people inside the gated countries of the north whose fears turn them against a more generous view of the predicament of migrants. It is hurtful to realize that much of our efforts to persuade does just the opposite, by bringing what is perceived as existential threat to a position front and center in the swelling politics of hate that fuels the current rise of fascism. We will ask—I will ask—that question, at the Workshop, and wherever I go. Until my own days are ended, and I cross that gentler border. How do we change minds and hearts?