June 13
GUEST: Susan Smith, former talk show host for "From Ferguson to Palestine," Director of Operations for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, member of the Muslim Peace Fellowship, and of the Community of Living Traditions, a residential community of Muslims, Jews, and Christians at the Stony Point Center, talks about the importance of the International Sanctuary Declaration.Another Way to Keep Families Together
I was slow to see the value of the sanctuary movement. Strange, because I had worked very hard for the sanctuary of Central American refugees in the 1980's. The difference? I think I was using the movement during the Reagan years to highlight the suffering of Latin America at the hands of the giant military colossus to the north. The U.S. funded and trained the death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala, and refugees were able to tell these stories.
This sanctuary movement is different. It is the beginning of huge waves of desperate people trying to survive global warming and militarization, both caused by of U.S. policies. In fact the industrialized countries of the world will be filled with desperate refugees, all because there is no place else to go.
This sanctuary movement erases boarders and challenges the neoliberal practices that creates such chaos. We are all one people now, trying to survive what savage capitalism has done to our species.
