A TRUMP TRAGEDY
Karina was selling Girl Scout cookies in downtown Redwood City last week with her mother. I gave her tips on sales technique. I advised, “Don’t tell me how you get points for selling cookies. I don’t care. Better to tell me the benefits to me of buying cookies. For example, ‘Would you like to help the homeless? Well, when you buy cookies you help them because some of the money we raise goes toward helping the homeless.'” She got what I meant and asked me that question. I bought two boxes.
After I bought the cookies, I made a smart-ass comment to her mother as much as to Karina, “Well, now that Trump is in power, guess the homeless will just be dying out in the cold.”
Without a moment’s hesitation this beautiful, 8-year-old girl looked me right in the eyes and said, “I’m half Mexican.”
I stopped and swallowed hard. I asked, “Why did you say that?” She said, “I don’t think the president likes me or wants me here.” I said, “You are a citizen, right?” Her mother jumped in, “Yes, she was born right here in Kaiser hospital.
I hugged her and said, “Well, I want you here.”
I looked at her mother, “Is this the message we want our children to get?”
Sooo SAD!! And happening all over this tragic country…
I can’t imagine the fear that children let alone vulnerable families feel. The boogey man is for real.
We have a Rabbi friend, a gay women married to black women after a 20 year relationship much of which was in secret. They moved from the East Coast about 5 years ago, and we enjoyed their heart felt wedding celebration last summer.
Over the last few years I had several deeply appreciative conversations with this woman, and grasp some of the wisdom of her faith and training as a Rabbi. The couple moved several miles away late last summer and we had only shared a few short texts since that time.
The night after the election their was a knock on my door and there stood my Rabbi friend, who told she’d driven over because she wanted to talk. She told me that the last few years in the Bay Area had been the best of their life. They’d been able to walk down the street holding hands without fear, and felt an accepted couple in the community. But now they were again fearful. She shared that she was here because her great grand parents knew when to leave Eastern Europe and avoided the pogroms, and her grand parents knew to leave Germany in the early thirties and come to the U.S.
She said she felt it was time for her to think about the couple moving out of the U.S.
It is so important to reach out. Have close friends whose undocumented parents have lived here for over 20 years,..extremely reliable and hard working at jobs most Americans don’t want. They are now very scared. We must all give our support in every way we can.