‘Never again is now’ in refugee persecution

Monica Rhor says protesters sickened by U.S. anti-migrant policy stand tall in fighting a return of family separation, dehumanization.

The day she was arrested, Lisa Seger sat cross-legged in the roadway outside a migrant-detention center on Emancipation Avenue and hoisted a sign with the image of the Statue of Liberty and the demand: Let My People Go.

The Waller County goat farmer with hot pink bangs had been led to this moment by a sickening sense of recognition. Over the last two years, as the Trump administration has cracked down on illegal immigration and slashed the number of refugee arrivals, she heard echoes of the past grow stronger.

Her mother’s family are Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews; the immutable lesson of her childhood had been “Never Again.”

Never again, not just in terms of the Holocaust. But never again to the dehumanization of any group of people. Never again to the persecution of innocents. Never again to the separation of families, to children wrenched from parents’ arms.

Beth Moore, a Houston substitute teacher and house painter, is not Jewish, but she, too, could not forget the “unbearably painful” sight of terrified children at the border or the stories of migrants being “targeted and basically tortured.” It made her wonder “Who’s next?”

The parallels between anti-immigrant rhetoric and the darkest chapters of history also cut close to the heart of retired College of the Mainland and University of Houston-Downtown political science professor David Michael Smith, who wears his graying hair pulled into a ponytail. Smith’s wife is Jewish, of Polish descent, raised to “never forget.”

So, on Aug. 12, there Seger, Moore and Smith were — chanting outside the building where Southwest Key houses migrant children, at one of a wave of nationwide protests staged by Jewish activists against the Trump administration’s immigration policy.

The trio — along with Kelsey GilmoreInnis and Ronald Gaitz — had volunteered to block the driveway. They knew disrupting traffic would mean risking arrest. Still, they sat. They knew ignoring police orders to move could net them several months in jail. Still, they refused to budge.

A similar rally outside the Emancipation Avenue center the month before had ended without any arrests. This time, the five protesters who blocked the entrance were taken away by police and charged with obstructing a roadway. If convicted, they could be sentenced to up to six months in jail.

As protest organizer Elizabeth Haberer put it, they “put their bodies on the line” to speak out against injustice.

How many of us are willing to do the same? Would we stay silent in the face of oppression? Or would we risk our freedom — perhaps even our lives — to save a stranger?

That was the question I asked myself as I saw images of Jewish activists gathered outside detention centers from one coast to another. As I heard the televised chants of “Never again is now.” As I gasped in horror at a video of an ICE guard plowing his truck through a group of demonstrators. We all like to think we would do the right thing, that we would have fought against the rise of Nazi Germany, or not hesitate to protect our neighbors from oppression.

In times of tragedy and upheaval, ordinary people are capable of both heroism and indifference, of helping or going along with the wrong side.

The five Never Again activists, whose next court date is Sept. 24, showed courage the rest of us should admire and emulate. “When I see people persecuted in such horrendous ways, I have to speak up,” said Moore. “I would endure far worse and it would have been worth it.”

Their protests were also, as a Never Again Action tweet described, “what Tikkun Olam looks like.”

Tikkun olam — the Jewish concept of acts of kindness that repair or improve the world — can be as simple as holding a door open for another or as self-sacrificing as going to jail to stop the detention of migrant children.

I’ve been thinking about the notion of “repairing the world,” and our obligation to those whose names we may never know, whose suffering we may never experience.

I think, too, of my conversation with Rabbi Joshua Fixler. At the Never Again rally in July, Fixler held aloft a Jewish prayer book known as the Haggadah that once belonged to his grandfather, who had fled Nazi Germany in 1939. His life was saved only because some countries had not yet closed their doors to Jewish refugees.

As a child, Fixler wondered what he would have done if he had lived in that time. Would he have spoken out? He no longer has to wonder.

Things have not descended so low as to warrant comparison to 1930s. It is time, however, to raise our voices against the dehumanization of immigrants, refugees and other marginalized communities.

It’s not easy being on the side of justice, but as Fixler, Seger, Moore and the other Never Again protesters show, it’s possible.

“Not in our name,” Fixler told the crowd. “Not in our time.”

To that, I say Amen.