Three young women are walking home late at night. The first says “We should split up so that if someone attacks us, one of us is free to get help.” The second says “We should stay together so that if someone attacks us, we can fight him off better.” The third girl says “If I knew you two were planning on getting attacked, I would’ve never agreed to walk home with you!” Is it a joke? Is it also a reality that many people have to plan on the possibility of getting attacked? It is the reality for most women. So too most immigrants and asylees. How is it we live in a world in which people are, with ample reason, afraid of being attacked when all they’re wanting to do is find their way home? Our world is a match to the one in the Sunday readings in which disciples were attacked by “the leading men of the city, (who) stirred up a persecution against” them, yet all the people were wanting to do was find their way home – a home of communion with all people.
If we accept the personal likelihood of being attacked, we might devise never to be alone, to take different routes home, or purchase different weapons to defend ourselves. We likely have accepted Militarism’s lie that the responsibility for surviving an attack is ours. U.S. culture is currently calling victims of Militarism’s attacks on us via assault weapons ‘heroes.’ Even children are called heroes when they sacrifice their lives attempting to stop their attackers. Who has groomed us for such a perverse life of unapologetic persecution made normal? It is attackers who have done so, in so many ways. Even the sentence structure of this reflection has made attackers invisible. Attackers are the cause of it all and yet are generally absent from consideration – unless they are a minority or an immigrant. That is not consideration, that is bigotry. It is not bigotry to consider the facts that the vast majority of attackers are men (able to dominate physically). It is the fact that male attackers groom us to be responsible for the harm they do to us. So groomed, we craft conversations and take actions for safety so that male attackers are made absent from even consideration let alone conversion. For example, we live in a time in which we might be attacked by a man, with a gun, in our home or office or school. Yet such male attackers and their attacks are defended, more truthfully facilitated socially by an attacker ruling system; an attacker Republican Party, an attacker capitalist weapons industry, and an attacker military that proselytizes attacker’s rights. This international perversion is being expanded at the southern border. Militant attackers, mostly male and white, are attacking immigrants who are brown and black and women and children – and yet all these travelers are wanting to do is find their way home. The travelers are seeking their way home because the home they used to have has been plundered or shot up or bombed out by these very same mostly male attackers. Attackers in the U.S. are the cause of that which they now claim is a crisis at the border. Republican and Democratic Party attacks in the form of wars, coups, and corporate pillaging that produce drug cartels and paramilitary alliances are the primary causes of people fleeing their homes in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. Current rhetoric of inclusion is beneficial and can contribute to stopping the U.S.’s militant attacks on Central American democracy and people’s rights. As well, people who are free can stop these persecutions. Free people can stop borders – placed on the truth or on their thinking or on their right to move across land and sea because they are seeking home.
For centuries, persecuting capitalists, especially those controlling trade routes, have been attacking us and our homes and violating borders to do so. The slave trade is an obvious example. So too the fur trading business. U.S. railroad titans crossed every possible border to attack indigenous peoples and destroy their homes. So too those wanting various mineral resources, most recently oil. All willingly waged war for their desired commodity’s financial gain. All of them treated every border as porous and every immigrant as cheap labor. When human rights claims arose, the capitalist trader/traitor class always attacked immigrants and set the dominant mostly white population against them. They are doing so now. They are doing so by claiming the border’s supposed sanctity. They are doing so by hiding the truth that immigrants are fleeing the attacker class in order to find their way home. It is time for capitalist attackers to stay home. It is time for free people to create home – a home of communion among all people.
Prayer: Spirit of Freedom, help us to create a home of communion among all people.
Question: How is the ruling party an attacker party?
May 12, 2019 Gospel John 10:27-30 Fourth Sunday of Easter