4/3/23

By Josh Rubin

We tend to engage the world at a point in the discussion where we have already conceded, indeed surrendered to, a number of assumptions. That inequality can only be mitigated. That there is not enough food to feed everyone, nor enough houses to shelter the unhoused. That all we can do is round the sharp edges of injustice.

Our language is incremental. We are afraid to ask for more, because we fear that no one will listen to us if we ask for more. If we say, take down the borders. If we say, we must address suffering anywhere it occurs, not just for those who speak our language. If we ask, why nations?

We are restricted to such a narrow range. We look at the border, where people tumble to death, the numbers mounting, and yet we address ourselves to better tuning an iPhone app that allows very few to make appointments to plead for their lives. We quibble with authorities about tangled webs of regulations that add up to different methods of denying succor to the needy. We often help those policies along by defending the deceptions that pretend to kindness while masking cruelty. Think of how we greeted the new administration with hope, despite its clearly stated goal of secure borders. Don’t we know how to translate “secure borders”yet?

Are we worried that we will lose our small community of support by calling, full-throatedly, for what we believe? Can’t we say, we must share the earth? The food, the money, the bounty? That national borders do not free us from guilt, nor from our responsibility to those who are perishing from poverty, from prison fires, from invisibility, on the other side?

Can’t we at least dream bigger?