Witness at the Border begins 1/12/20

By Josh Rubin

Learning to See

Somos testigos. We are witnesses. Here is what we do.

We see with more than our eyes. We see with our ears. We use all our senses. But we see with our hearts and our minds, too.

When we look across the road from the park where we gather this morning, what we see at first is a fence with tents partly visible behind. Then we notice gates. Then coiled concertina wire.

We are told these are courts. We will learn, from others who see what goes on in those places that there are no judges except on a screen. That most people inside go alone and unrepresented. That the procedures conducted virtually guarantee that no one gets the asylum they need.

So we learn they are not courts as we know them. Courts are places where justice is imperfectly strived for. These are not courts. They are an illusion of justice, smoke and mirrors, to disguise a system of deliberate injustice.

Many of us will go across the river to see. We will see people camped, living in the hope of a release from their plight. People helping them, valiant, heroic people.

Look hard with eyes and ears that hear their stories. We will see diaspora. We will see not just Matamoros, but all the other places pilgrims are forced to huddle, along the borders. We will see fear.

Look harder, we will see torture, and we will see the hands of the torturers, thought they are invisible. We will learn how to see this.

We will see death. We may hear it sometimes called suicide, our eyes, learning their job, will know it is murder.

We will see families break apart under the strain of the fear of death. We will learn the word for this. Genocide.

We will see hope, and it is a terrible burden, one that we will not be able to shrug off.

There is more. We will talk more.