Name the Injustice: CLEAR DFW Press Conference, Livestream, and Weekly Prayer Vigils
Faith Commons Friends,Last Friday (January 23), Faith Commons and CLEAR DFW held a press conference at Kessler Park United Methodist Church in
by Rabbi Nancy Kasten
At the “Jews Against ICE” demonstration outside federal headquarters in Washington, D.C. on February 11, rabbis, cantors, and others in attendance held up signs reading “Don’t Stand by the Blood of Your Neighbor.” As with most commandments in the Torah, there is much interpretation about how to observe this one. The 18th century Sephardic Rabbi Yitzhak Magriso offers some direction in his commentary, Me’am Lo’ez:
Included in the commandment, ‘Do not stand over the blood of your fellow human being’ (Lev. 19:16) is an injunction that if one sees his neighbor in danger and has the ability to do something, he must do everything in his power to help him. For example, if one sees someone drowning or attacked by murderers or wild beasts, if he can help him or bring others to do so, he is obliged to do it. If he hears that others are planning to kill his neighbor or harm him, he has an obligation to inform him …. In all these cases, . . . God is saying “Do not stand still and say, ‘All is well with me’ when you see your fellow human being is in danger. You must make every effort with all your power to save him.
It might be fair to say that we are all in danger right now, as federal officials consolidate their power and act with impunity to override laws and norms that once protected us. But the Torah doesn’t absolve us from the commandment to protect others when we ourselves are vulnerable. In recent weeks we have seen people all over this country taking personal risk to protect immigrants and others targeted by federal agents. Some have lost their lives as a result. Others have forfeited rights to their property, jobs, health, family, and freedom of movement. It is natural to be scared to use our power to protect others right now. We might choose to believe we don’t have any. We might let our attention shift to something that we really aren’t responsible for, like keeping up with the ever more disturbing discoveries in the Epstein files, or the thrill of watching amazing athletes compete in the Olympics.
Two years ago, the film “Zone of Interest” won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film. Based on the story of Rudolf Höss, the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz, and his wife, Hedwig, it depicts the life they lived with their five children in a house and garden just over the wall from the Nazi concentration camp where at least 1.1 million human beings were murdered. The “zone” is a psychological space where ordinary life continues despite being adjacent to evil. The Hösses and their visitors were aware of what was happening next door. They heard the screams and smelled the burning flesh. They inherited valuable possessions confiscated from their owners upon detention. They employed inmates as servants. Yet they continued to live their lives and entertain their guests as if what was happening on the other side of the wall was perfectly normal.
At the ICE Field Office in Dallas, the parking lot is divided in two. Throughout the day, dozens of cars drive into the open parking lot, take an immediate right, and after scanning an ID, enter through an electronic gate into a larger parking area, surrounded by opaque fencing. This lot is for those who work for ICE and the other agencies that operate out of the field office. Down the street there is another gate to the lot that is used for vehicles transporting detainees in and out of the building.
From the ground level what happens inside that side of the parking lot is hidden, but what happens has been described by family, friends, and lawyers of subjects of ICE’s rabid pursuit of anyone they suspect is detainable. They are snatched at work, or driving to school, or leaving the federal courthouse after a routine hearing, often by ICE agents dressed in plainclothes and driving personal, unmarked vehicles. Groups abducted in larger operations are transported in white transit vans or black SUVs, with their hands zip tied behind their backs. Sometimes they are put in full body restraints. ICE officers hold on to them firmly as they walk from the vehicle to the building, sometimes holding their heads down.
When transferred out of the ICE field office to another detention center, they are loaded into vans the same way, hands tied behind their backs, sometimes further restrained. Anywhere from 100-175 people are brought into the facility this way every day, and about the same number are transferred out, including on weekends and holidays.
A high-end apartment building sits next to the field office. The units have balconies that look out over the parking lot. Residents have a bird’s eye view of what happens there, day and night. Maybe they are sharing information with reporters and others who are trying to oppose the way ICE is conducting its business. Maybe they think the people who work for ICE are just doing their jobs. Maybe they close the curtains to the balcony and stay inside. Maybe some of them have moved out to distance themselves from the dehumanization taking place in that location.
But the “zone of interest” is moving far beyond the ICE field office. ICE has plans to spend 38.3 billion dollars on warehouses they will use as detention centers. This plan is just one part of a mass deportation network designed to accommodate close to 100,000 detainees at one time. Many of these warehouses are located close to residential areas, some of them brand new housing developments. If their plan is fulfilled, millions more Americans will be living close to a concentration camp. And we are paying for this with our taxes.
It remains to be seen if we can stop this evil in its tracks and even start to reverse it. But the only way to know is to try. In the Talmud, Tractate Shabbat 54b the rabbis teach, “Whoever can prevent his household from committing a sin but does not, is responsible for the sins of his household; if he can prevent the people of his city, he is responsible for the sins of his city; if the whole world, he is responsible for the whole world.” But no one can do this work alone. It demands organization, cooperation, and determination.
Pirke Avot 2:16 encourages us with this perspective: “It is not your responsibility to complete the work, but neither are you free to absolve yourself from it.”
The law no longer protects people from government
Interview with Höss daughter that illustrates the banality of evil
Ways to find and use your power
Getting engaged in resistance may require us to change some of our previous assumptions/alliances. Discomfort is part of the process.
How communities are fighting warehouse detention centers
More on the meaning of Pirke Avot 2:16
Remember This Day
Is oppression as old as the moss around ponds?
The moss around ponds is not avoidable.
Perhaps everything I see is natural, and I am sick and want to
remove what cannot be removed?
I have read songs of the Egyptians, of their men who built
the pyramids. They complained of their loads and asked when
oppression would cease. That’s four thousand years ago.
Oppression, it would seem, is like the moss and unavoidable.
When a child is about to be run down by a car one pulls
it on to the pavement.
Not the kindly man does that, to whom they put up
monuments.
Anyone pulls the child away from the car.
But here many have been run down, and many pass by and
do nothing of the sort.
Is that because it’s so many who are suffering? Should one not
help them all the more because they are many? One helps
them less. Even the kindly walk past and after that are as
kindly as ever they were before walking past.
The more there are suffering, then, the more natural their
sufferings appear. Who wants to prevent the fishes in the sea
from getting wet?
And the suffering themselves share this callousness towards
themselves and are lacking in kindness towards themselves.
It is terrible that human beings so easily put up with existing
conditions, not only with the sufferings of strangers but also
with their own.
All those who have thought about the bad state of things
refuse to appeal to the compassion of one group of people for
another. But the compassion of the oppressed for the
oppressed is indispensable.
It is the world’s one hope.
Faith Commons Friends,Last Friday (January 23), Faith Commons and CLEAR DFW held a press conference at Kessler Park United Methodist Church in
When the Roman king Numa Pompilius added January and February to the calendar in about 713 BCE, the first month