By Sandy Johnson
One positive aspect of having a “slow” season on the coast is that our residents and business owners have more time to visit, one on one. I have taken the opportunity in recent weeks to join with a friend and go business to business to actually talk to people in our community to discuss the direction our country is heading with regard to immigrants.
What we found is the people in our community are willing to share their thoughts. A project that we thought might take a few hours ended up taking more than a few days. As we listened to the concerns of our neighbors along the main street, we were overwhelmed to find that we all shared similar concerns and values. At a time when main-stream and social media push the evocative notion that we are a deeply divided country, we found that is far from the case in our community.
The common grounds shared by our community members include the belief that truth matters. Our constitutional rights should be protected. Our laws should be followed and enforced by trained officers and politically neutral courts. People should not be stereotyped based on the color of their skin. Good people come in every color. Everyone, regardless of country of origin, has a right to due process and to be treated respectfully.
Like most Oregon communities, our residents and visitors come from diverse backgrounds and countries. We have first, second and third generation immigrants. Nearly all of us have immigrant heritage. Immigrants belong with us, in our community. As someone more eloquent than I recently wrote, “they belong to us in the sense that proximity, and familiarity, and regular interaction bring us all into a community of principle and mutual care, make us all our brother’s keeper, and calls on us to love our neighbors.” If you see a sign in a business window bearing a monarch butterfly*, the symbol of migration, know that as a sign of support for these values.
In our community, as in the entire United States, people who believe in liberty and justice for all stand up to tyranny. We stand up for our neighbors. We let our voices be heard. Now is the time to let our elected officials know we demand our (and our neighbors’) freedom, the truth, and our rights protected.
*EDITOR’S NOTE: The monarch butterfly has been a symbol for immigration for decades.
- Monarch butterflies have become a strong symbol for advocates of biological diversity and human rights at the U.S./Mexico border.
- Though its population appears to be at the brink of a U.S. endangered species listing, their conservation along the southern border has been controversial since the former presidential administration’s wall building effort bulldozed habitat at the National Butterfly Center without properly notifying the center about the construction.
- Drawing parallels between the plight of the species and that of human migrants trapped at the U.S./Mexico border, immigration rights protests have begun featuring images of monarchs and people making butterfly shapes with their hands.