Your Community Foundation is not the sole institution by which we love one another, but that is the heart of why it exists. Watch updates to this blog for ongoing information on what we can accomplish together to overcome inhumane separations of children from their parents. And let us hold one another close as members of our human family.
Live long enough and you carry around a rucksack of grief. Sometimes, for a few moments, you forget its weight.
So, it brought us up short when my wife Sandra and I were in the supermarket and she began to fight back tears.
When Sandra was 2 years old, her parents ran out of money and placed Sandra and her brother in an orphanage. She only saw her brother once – they touched fingers through a chain link fence. Her parents later reclaimed their children, but Sandra will never forget feeling abandoned, unsafe, alone, and scared.
Why was Sandra, now a mother herself, crying? Along with millions of Americans, Sandra and I have been watching television images of frightened children and distraught parents separated from one another at our country’s border. Over the last six weeks, nearly 2,000 children began memories they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.
Who are we? What have we become? Whatever your opinion about the rule of law, zero-tolerance policies, American ideals, or biblical values, we are part of the family of humanity. We carry our grief together. And our hearts are breaking.
Your Community Foundation is not the sole institution by which we love one another, but that is the heart of why it exists. Watch updates to this blog for ongoing information on what we can accomplish together to overcome inhumane separations of children from their parents. And let us hold one another close as members of our human family.
How you can help:
- Contact your elected members of Congress
- For national advocacy and litigation, American Immigration Council
- For local advocacy, Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network
- For direct services, Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project
- For additional background information, resources, and suggestions for how to help, see Michael Seifert’s Views from Alongside a Border: Keep Families Together
