thanksgiving

On Friday November 21st, at the Episcopal House in Newark, NJ the American Friends Service Committee Immigrant Rights Program in Newark will be hosting a party for families of recently deported immigrants and immigrant detainees.

Detention and deportation creates both an emotional and a financial strain on the families who are left behind. These family members are often legal residents or American citizens. (Up to 15% of US families are of mixed immigration status.) As a result, deportation will effectively permanently separate immediate family members, including parents from their young children.

At the party the families will be given each family a Thanksgiving basket of food stuff to celebrate the holiday. A list of items requested is listed below.

I spent last week with my family in Indiana and Michigan. Spending so much of my time on the East Coast, these trips to my home always give me a new sense of perspective, affirming who I am and from where I come.

As part of my Dad's errands this week, we had to stop by the food pantry and social service agency in which he dedicates a tremendous amount of time. He has poured his heart and soul into that place and the people who utilize its services. On a weekly basis, he does intake for folks needing assistance with their bills, allocating the pittance of money that the organization has for such purposes. He also does the accounting as the Board Treasurer. My stepmother throws two Victorian teas a year to raise money for the organization. My dad also convinces his church to commit substantial funding to this Christian organization.

If I had the talent of Sam Clemens, I'd write a scathing prayer to match the famous Mark Twain prayer for victory in war (http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/mtwain/bl-mtwain-war.htm). Prompted by the jingoism of the Spanish-American War, it went unpublished until after his death.

I'll content myself with giving thanks for the bounty of this great land and for the opportunity our European founders were given to steal it from its original unworthy inhabitants who didn't know how to exploit its resources to the maximum; and for the means of accomplishing that great transfer -- the guns, steel, and germs that made genocide feasible and a continental empire possible. And the Bible that was used to bless it.

Lest in our tales of Pilgrims and Savages we forget the other great member of the trinity that provided the material foundations of our great nation, I also give thanks for the slavery that enriched both North and South -- the one through wise, enriching participation in the great trans-Atlantic Triangle Trade of slaves, molasses, and rum; the other through the clever use of unpaid labor to build the region's wealth.

On a Friday afternoon in Levittown, Long Island my fourth grade best friend, Kat and I took our time getting home on November 22, 1963.

It was eerily quiet and calm in the streets and not until Phil passed us by on his bicycle and yelled, "Kennedy has been shot!"

Did I even have a clue as to why nobody else was outside.

Six days later after that day that changed the world as I had known it, on Thanksgiving Day, LBJ took the oath of office standing next to a very distressed widow and announced that Florida's NASA Launch Operation Center would be renamed the John F. Kennedy Space Center and he asked the public to remain "determined that from this midnight of tragedy we shall move toward a new American greatness."

New Study 
The Meaning of Thanksgiving