3/15/20

By Josh Rubin

Suspended: Witness at the Border

These are hard times, and the specter of the Coronavirus hangs over the vulnerable in a way that we can barely allow ourselves to pronounce, much less write it down and make it even more real. Imagine the scenarios, the way this plays out for those trapped at the border, and in prisons that have walls, as well, and I will imagine still another that is haunting me as I write.

We cannot dent the wall that this plague has built for all of us. And all of us, even many of us who have made the cause of refugees ours, are forced to take up our own causes, and remember our own hearts, and lungs, and our families, in the midst of a storm of fate we can barely understand.

We are suspending our vigil, Witness at the Border.

We must live, and love, to fight another day. We are hunkering down in our smaller worlds, shuttering our windows, drawing the blankets to our chins, looking into our loved ones’ eyes.

We believe the storm will pass, and we will crawl from our dens and remember our place in this historic struggle for justice. The landscape will change, and we will find our feet again.

We have taken down our banners on this 64th day of our vigil.

They will fly again.