Living in coronavirusworld 167: A living wage

 

9/14

A bird house on 115th Street 

Our International Sanctuary work group gathers. After an assault by 4 Blackhawk helicopters, an armored personnel carrier and 50-60 agents rushing in, 30 asylum seekers detained and expelled and 7 pacifist medical volunteers taken into custody at the No Mas Muertos emergency  medical facility just north of the US-Mexico border, the volunteers are back at work, the work of saving lives continues.  These days, anyone crossing the border is immediately deported. Returned to Mexico only to cross back again.  A deadly game cat and moue continues. Never allowed to apply for the internationally recognized right to asylum. A “civil initiative” has begun recording testimonies of asylum seekers at the Holocaust Museum and the United Nations Human Rights Commission. The aim is “safe asylum”, an international right , on both sides of the border. 

On our northern border, Canada still has no interest in opening  up to crossing from the US. Attempted border crossings slow to a trickle. 

This is the  month for the US to set its annual immigration caps. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, so valuable for its work in Juarez, and so many other places, has filed suit to open doors.

German protestants  have succeeded in getting four boats onto the Mediterranean but are still blocked on the EU borders like Italy. Our German  colleagues are working to gain welcome for the stranded refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos, but still without success.

Trinidad, a short 40 miles  from Venezuela, has become a new locos of refugee seekers. The Pope has honored the Catholic workers in Trinidad. Rohinga refugees from Myanmar have begun arriving there as well as Myanamar soldiers defect and report orders to kill all, women and children included.

The International Fellowship of Reconciliation has testified in Geneva before the Inernational Human Rights Commission regarding systematic violation of Black Americans’ rights in the US. 

It’s easy to get so caught up in our daily madness in the US and miss what’s going on in the the world around  us, a world in crisis. 

                                                                                                    ****

Tonight we are studying Matthew 20: 1-16, the parable of the  laborers in the field. You know the one where the manager keeps going back and hiring  people all day long and everybody gets paid the same regardless what time they started and some workers who worked all day  are upset at the  perceived unfairness  of it all and the message ends with the  last shall be first. It follows the story of the rich young ruler. (Master, what  must I do…..?) Leila reacts to the unfairness, Marsha hears echoes of “from each according to their ability to each according to their need…” We discover that the denarius paid as a wage was equivalent to what it would take to feed a peasant family for one day, in other words, a living wage. For everyone. None left out one street. There is simply no denying the social policy implications of Jesus’ parable. He is ultimately proclaiming for his  kindom, a relational ethic, not a transactional ethic. 

The parable has a sense of familiarity to me. I saw in Santiago, Chile the  Venezuelans gathering in the plaza early in the morning for day labor jobs. In Tulsa, I  remember the Mexican farm laborers gathering downtown hiring for a day’s work, waiting for the farm trucks to stop by to pick workers. Prior  to the virus, our Micah Faith Table had been  working  in building support for a real living wage, as in $20 an hour instead of $15. It strikes me that we can pay a football player, Patrick Mahomes,  $50 million dollars per year for 10 years and complain that $20 an  hour will somehow wreck the economy. Money has no  meaning and means everything. (Mahomes hourly wage? Approximately $26000.)

It seems we are called on to create community that practice relational ethics within the community, an as if kindom community, while working for public polices that allow people to simply live. And with dignity.

Its the first football game for my hem town Steelers. I go to the grocery store fully prepared. A guy passes, Stops. Says "I like  your hat. And shirt, Oh, and shopping bag. Damn, even socks! Good luck tonight!”

..