More than 100 Jews from around the Bay Area gathered in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in downtown San Francisco today, calling for justice for undocumented immigrants and showing support for renewal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The protest was organized mainly by Jewish entities, such as Reform California (a project of the Religion Action Center of Reform Judaism), Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice and the Jewish Federation of Silicon Valley’s Community Relations Council, along with Faith in Action Bay Area (a multifaith network of congregations and community leaders) and others.
Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller, an East Bay-based rabbi formerly serving Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco, acted as emcee of the event, which was titled “Let My People Stay: Rally in Solidarity with Bay Area Immigrants.”
“My grandmother’s escape from Germany was facilitated by a woman who worked in a German passport office,” Saxe-Taller told the participants. “Without her, I would not be here. I will never know [the worker’s] name, but I stand here in her spirit and in the spirit of my grandmother to say that we are all connected.
“As a community of Jews, so many of whom are descended from immigrants, we say to today’s immigrants: We affirm your humanity … the California we want to live in includes you.”
Another speaker was Nicoll Mischel, a Bend the Arc volunteer who was arrested in Washington, D.C. last week at a similar protest. Bend the Arc is a national Jewish social justice organization with a regional office in San Francisco.
When someone knocks on [my] door too hard, we get scared.
Mischel, 26, of San Francisco, spoke about her Mexican-born mother’s difficulty immigrating to the United States.
“Her whole life has been a back-and-forth struggle in pursuit of the American dream,” Mischel said. “When she became a citizen, it was so beautiful to see her gain access to health care, better job opportunities, a better life, but most importantly, her dignity.”
Violeta Roman, an organizer with San Carlos-based Faith in Action Bay Area, spoke in Spanish, telling the crowd, via a translator, about her father being taken by U.S. immigration officials.
“Immigration came to my house when I was at work, and they came for my father, who is an old man. They came with guns, and my children were there,” Roman said, choking back tears. “From that day, there’s a trauma in all of us. When someone knocks on [my] door too hard, we get scared.”
Protesters held signs with slogans such as “Jews for Dreamers,” “We’ve Seen This Before” and “Never Again Is Now.” Many signs said simply, “Let My People Stay,” a riff on Moses’ famous declaration, “Let my people go.”
At the end of the one-hour event, an organizer brought out a humongous loaf of challah for everyone to share. The crowd sang “Gesher Tzar Me’od,” which quotes Rabbi Nachman of Breslov: “The whole world is a very narrow bridge, but the most important part is not to be afraid.” Rabbi David Cooper of Kehilla Community Synagogue in Piedmont blew a shofar.
In closing, Saxe-Taller called out triumphantly: “We’ll be back next Friday. We’ll be back again!”
dd
With respect, you may be misunderstanding the argument. As I understand it, it’s not talking about gratitude, it’s talking about power. Immigration (for Europeans) was fairly unrestricted until the 1920s, so unless you’re proposing we all take a minute and think warm fuzzies about Presidents Lincoln through Harding (and the respective Congresses that set in session), I don’t see how the “gratitude to those Americans” would work.
I see these folks asking the question, “Now that we are in positions of power and privilege as established Americans, will we use our power to encourage or welcome immigrants, as we were, or will we shut them out?”– just as there was certainly a strong Nativist streak here through the 20th century (and which resulted in shutting many Jews, Asians and Africans out from the mid-1920s through 1960s).
You don’t have to agree with their position, but hopefully this helps explain it a little.
P.S. IMO, the “house” metaphor doesn’t work because we are no longer guests here– we are full citizens with full rights to welcome whoever we want (or not).
“Power”, or more fully, “Let’s exercise our power, now that we’re powerful”, doesn’t sound like any kind of appeal to ethics. Or to reason either, actually.
The argument is that we Jews benefited from being allowed in (despite some very ugly nativism which led, in part, to the 1924 law which barred future immigration and in effect doomed those still in Europe 20 years later), as well as benefited the country through our contributions. Therefore, there are both pragmatic and ethical arguments to continue the trend of relatively open immigration that we saw pre-1924.
Can you explain why you don’t see this as either ethical or rational?
I’m not sure, but you seem to be falling back into the gratitude argument.
Or maybe you’re saying that coming to America was good for us Jews, therefore it’ll be good for others too. Well, sure, there’s no doubt that coming to America is good for the immigrants, especially if they come from a country that’s poor and dangerous. But that can’t be our criterion, can it, unless we’re prepared to take in a billion or more people?
“Jews for Dreamers” that’s arrogance!! you don’t speak for me. It should read “You for Dreamers” If you’re going to demonstrate, do it in front of their parents home. They brought them here illegally after all.
Why are you protesting? Seems like what’s on the table right now is all the dreamers and a million more.
Yep the people already here are on the path to citizenship if dems just realize the lottery system is antiquated and modern immigration policy requires more flexibility due to economic and well terrorist activity around the world.
Flexibility today may be viewed by lefties as bad cause its trump…but flexibility tomorrow might allow a lefty president to respond more effectively to refugee crises.
But the dems will keep these 1.8 million of the neighbors who’ve been here for decades-and are extremely vulnerable- in legal limbo in order to keep up the attempt to label the trump administration racist.
Yep people here need to move to subsaharan Africa or Syria before dems actually get off the dime and help them.
I wonder how this will play if the gop is smart enough to play Latin immigrants against african/ middle eastern immigrants. To play those here- our neighbors- against the lefty pets of the day in the third world.
Trump took like 30% of the Latino vote….could this be a wedge issue that drives that up?