Kindness begets kindness

I flashed back to sitting in a rubble-strewn home in Afghanistan, listening to a boy who had nearly lost his limbs to a stray U.S. cluster bomblet, dropped in our country’s response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed movement outside, dust rising, and then realized there was someone approaching the house carrying something. Unlike Abraham, I was a bit afraid. Had the Taliban, which had gone underground, noticed our group of unarmed Americans? It turned out to be a woman who had seen us arriving and, knowing that the people in the home we were visiting were destitute, unable to offer us typical Afghan hospitality, she had brewed tea and found some cookies to bring to us. Hospitality for people from a country that had just bombed her community is pretty radical as far as I’m concerned. That’s what the faith leaders in San Francisco were gathering to encourage: radical hospitality, instead of the cruelty facing immigrants in our country today, cruelty people endure in a San Francisco federal building the Rev. Deborah Lee referred to as a “sacred space of suffering.”

Go ahead. Get it out of your system. “They’d be welcome if they came here the right way.” Well, one of the speakers in San Francisco shared how her grandparents could NOT come here “the right way” because of the Chinese Exclusion Act. They came anyway. Many of the people being rounded up, grabbed when they show up for court hearings, DID come here the right way, seeking asylum, or had TPS (Temporary Protected Status), or had student or work visas that the State Department is now revoking, doing all the right paperwork, showing up for their hearings, only to be grabbed, thrown for days and sometimes weeks into horrible detention holding spaces not meant for more than a few hours of processing, whisked away to other states and coerced into signing paperwork for expedited deportation. And yes, many simply crossed the border or stayed beyond their visas.

Despite the Republican administration claiming they are going after the “worst of the worst,” the CATO Institute reported that 93% of those taken by ICE have no violent criminal convictions and 65% no convictions at all. And, in case you haven’t heard, at least 170 American citizens have been snatched from their homes, cars, businesses, streets, and held for hours, days, and longer (bit.ly/3LTrBU3). The conditions in places where people are held “temporarily” are disgusting (bit.ly/4oBart5).

So, we march. We sing “We Shall Overcome.” We pray. We stand outside federal buildings as witnesses, offering our bodies and time. We accompany people into those buildings, walking with them to their hearings, hoping that our presence gives them strength and that, perhaps, the agents waiting to pounce on them might hesitate when they see ministers, rabbis, imams, folks that I like to refer to as “people of collar,” offering the least of these what little we can offer. 

After we marched to the second federal building and gathered in a courtyard across the street, the property manager of the building where we’d congregated came outside and told us we weren’t welcome there. Moments later, in an incredible act of hospitality, the San Francisco police had blocked a portion of the road outside that building so that we could safely gather there instead. At one point during the singing and speeches, I walked over toward the police car at one end of the street. Seeing me approach the officer eyed me with what looked like caution. I understood that feeling. I waved hello, walked closer and said “I really want to thank you for doing this! You’re awesome!” His beaming smile was a wonderful response. 

Violence begets violence. Cruelty begets cruelty. Hospitality begets hospitality. Kindness begets kindness. We can enforce our immigration laws in an hospitable, nonviolent and kind way instead of the cruelty we are witnessing. Check out organizations like Faith In Action and the Institute for Human Integrity if you agree. 

Craig Wiesner is the co-owner of Reach And Teach, a book, toy and cultural gift shop on San Carlos Avenue in San Carlos. Follow Craig: craigwiesner.bsky.social.