2019.2.3 Can I Get a Witness?

2019.2.3 “Can I Get a Witness?”

What does it mean to be a witness?

Well, you can be on the witness stand, like in a courtroom—being examined and cross-examined.  Giving testimony about what you know, what you saw, what you experienced.

You can also be a witness to faith—giving testimony about how you have been saved, or transformed.  What you know to be true in your own life and experience.  I’d venture a guess that many of us UUs are uncomfortable with this kind of witnessing because it is linked to proselytizing, pressuring others to accept your own faith claims.

Today I want to push us on this a little bit—to broaden our understanding about what it can mean to be a witness as Unitarian Universalists….  In January I was in Arizona, working with groups who provide humanitarian aid on the border, and am fired up to be a witness to what I saw and experienced and learned.

I don’t have to tell you all that we are living in a world of “alternative facts” and fake news.

What is actually true and how do we figure that out?

German Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt has some guidance for us about this – She herself was an exile, a refugee from the Nazis – she got out of Germany in 1933 and settled in the United States.  Even if you don’t know her you probably know her phrase “the banality of evil.”

I am simplifying here, but what I understand from her is that evil happens when human beings are unable to have a moral conversation – either with themselves or the world.  We have to be able to think and be able to put ourselves into different worlds. 

Academic Leslie Stonebridge studies Hannah Arendt’s writings, and has said “What Arendt wanted was actually something a bit more radical than [empathy], is to imagine something that’s not your world, that makes you feel uncomfortable. And that’s where the work has to start. And that’s why she was also very committed to thinking. To the activity of thinking, which is how you do that. …

And what she called “the banality of evil” was the inability to hear another voice, the inability to have a dialogue either with oneself or the imagination to have a dialogue with the world, the moral world.”

Arendt says truth is always something that happens in dialogue, in relationship.  It is not some solid object out there, waiting to be found.  And this is what makes it different from a fact.  She wrote, in her essay, “Lying in Politics”:

“Factual truths are never compellingly true. The historian knows how vulnerable is the whole texture of facts in which we spend our daily life. It is always in danger of being perforated by single lies, or torn to shreds. Facts need testimony to be remembered and trustworthy domain of human affairs. From this it follows that no factual statement can ever be beyond doubt.”

Facts need testimony in order to be a trustworthy domain. 

So, for instance, when we are having a national conversation about a border wall, we need to hear the testimony of the actual people it will effect.  And we need witnesses to their reality. 

Last year in the run up to the mid-term elections, I saw some political ads that made it seem like we as a country are under attack by alien invasion.  Some folks accept that as truth.

Today, I simply want to share with you a little bit about my experience in Arizona.  From my perspective, in a short amount of time, in one particular place – in and around Tucson.  This is just a glimpse into a much longer story.  This is my testimony.

Slide 1:  Mountains

·       As I landed in Arizona—such an alien landscape.  Sonoran desert.  Seemed like every plant had a thorn.  No water anywhere.  Even in January the sun could be intense during the day.  Cold at night.  Physically being there is quite different from watching it on the news.

Slide 2: Nogales

·       One evening we visited the border town of Nogales around sunset.  As we drove down the interstate I could see the hillside covered in colorful houses.  Suddenly the whole picture came into view and I realized I was looking over into Mexico, and the there was a border wall/fence between us and that place.  Topped with razor wire.  It used to be that you could walk freely from one side to the other here. 

·       Later that night we drove through the checkpoint that is about 25 miles north of the border.  These were set up as “temporary” about 8 or 9 years ago.  Still there.  Every car is stopped and questioned by armed Border Patrol and sniffed by working dogs.

Slide 3: Borderlands UU

·       Later that evening we visited the UU congregation north of the Border in the Amado area.  They just changed their name to Borderlands UU.  In this picture you can see Barb who is a member of that congregation.

·       Barb is a retired nurse, 77 years old.  She is part of the Green Valley Samaritans who leave water and other aid for refugees crossing the Sonoran desert.  She also does other things, like helping people get to safe houses.  She is bold and public and often she is breaking the law.  She says as an older person, she has nothing to lose. 

·       That night we also heard from another person connected to the congregation.  A woman with young children, who is also involved in helping refugees but in a quieter way.  She’s only lived in the area about 5 years, and she told the story about the first time a border crosser knocked on her door for help – which happens fairly often in the area.  It was a 13 year old girl travelling by herself, with bloody feet.  There was a language barrier, but she helped her, sat on the porch together and amazingly figured out how to laugh together.  Because she didn’t know what else to do, Shawna called the Border Patrol that time.  Every time someone has knocked on her door since then—and it has happened several times—she has now called the Samaritans.  Sweet interaction between the two women– both their approaches are needed.

Slide 4:  No More Deaths

·       This picture is of the area of the Sonora Desert called the Arivaca corridor.  The red dots represent places where human remains have been found just during the years 2012-2015.  Since 2004 the organization No More Deaths—No Mas Muertes has been tracking the numbers of people who have died in the desert as they try to cross into the United States.    Because no one else is tracking that information.  Some estimates put the number over 2,000 in the last 20 years.

·       No More Deaths is a ministry of the UU church in Tucson.  They also leave water and food and medical aid for people in the desert.  They choose the locations partly based on what they know about where the most people have died.

·       9 of their volunteers were arrested on misdemeanor charges like littering, abandonment of property.  4 of them were just convicted of these charges and face fines and jail time.  4 more are still awaiting trial.  One of their volunteers is facing felony charges, ironically for “human trafficking” again for giving medical care and humanitarian aid.

·       Canvassing – putting out signs that say “Humanitarian Aid is Never a Crime—Drop the Charges.”

Slide 5: Operation Streamline

·       We spent a whole afternoon with this woman, Lois.  She took us to the federal court where we watched Operation Streamline in action. Over the course of a couple of hours, over 70 people were sentenced to prison time (in privately run prisons) for the crime of crossing the border. After serving time in prisons they will be deported. Lois and others show up to witness every day and monitor what is happening.

·       I won’t go into all the details of Operation Streamline here.  I will emphasize this: the only so-called crime these people were charged with was illegally entering the country, or re-entering.  They were handcuffed and their legs were shackled. 

·       The prison sentences I saw handed out that day totaled 2, 775 days.  At a cost of $161/day to be housed in a privately run for-profit prison, that is a total of almost half a million dollars of tax payer money.  In one afternoon in one courthouse. 

·       Lois also volunteers with No More Deaths. She spent last Saturday looking for someone lost in the desert. She is 84.  The bar has been set very high for retirement.

·       The cartoon she holds reads: “This court finds the No More Deaths Border Samaritans guilty as charged on all counts.
4 counts of premeditated compassion
4 counts of first degree humanity
4 counts of involuntary kindness”

Slide 6: Love greater than Fear

·       I had a little hesitancy about this trip. Should I use the resources in a different way?  What could I really do coming in as an outsider and being there for just a couple of days.

·       What was really clear is that these folks are hungry to be seen, for what is happening there to be witnessed, and they one thing they all said was: go back home and tell the stories.  Testify and witness to what is happening here.

·       But one of the truths that I understood in a new and different way:  the border is not just in California and Arizona and Texas.  Invite Sheri Liles and Karen Petrey up to discuss the local Witnessing Wednesdays.

Closing:

It is crucial that we have witnesses – people watching and being in relationship with those who are the most impacted.  People who can then go tell what they saw.  This is not just about gathering facts to put into an argument, but about searching for the truth.  During our trip, some of us asked a lot of questions.  We wanted to get all the facts down, we wanted to learn as much as possible.  But then one of our trip leaders asked us “What is the deeper question underneath all these questions you are asking?”

·       How can this be happening here?

·       One of the No More Deaths volunteers has asked, “If giving water to someone dying of thirst is illegal, what humanity is left in the law of this country?”

·       What separates me from the border patrol agents, from the lawyers and judges?

·       What separates me from the refugees?  From the mothers separated from their children?

·       What is the deeper truth of my faith and what is it calling me do and be?  What risks would I take to live out your values and potentially save lives?

May we all find our own ways to witness to the Truth.