We can spend our time lamenting this global nightmare or we can step up to the challenge of making a difference. We can bring light where there is darkness.
We can offer hope where there is despair. We can offer compassion where there is indifference. We can bring love to bear where hate appears to have the ascendency.
This appeal appeared in the concert program.
by Father Frank Alagna, May 14, 2022
For a Bard College Conservatory Orchestra concert in support of UIDN
I want to thank Bard College, the Fisher Center, and Isabela Cruz-Vespa, a Bard intern with the Ulster Immigrant Defense Network, for giving us this opportunity to ask for your help.
The sheer number of men, women, and children who in the present moment identify as refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers is overwhelming. They are Serbs, Haitians, Afghans, Ukrainians, Africans, and our sisters and brothers who have left Mexico and Central and South America. All are fleeing what they once called home because of violence and other threats to life, sex trafficking and abuse, political or religious persecution, economic desperation, the effects of climate change, or a combination of these.
All are searching to find safety and the possibility of a sustainable life for themselves and their families. When they make the treacherous journey to a border in the hope of finding safety and sanctuary, the welcome is uneven and often infected with racism. While some nations respond with great generosity, others, like our own, are severely compromised when it comes to offering a caring and loving welcome.
Choose love over fear
We engage the immigrant from a place of fear rather than the risk that love requires. We choose to prioritize our own needs for security, describing immigrants as a threat, creating pathways that are more accurately described as obstacle courses, and have even descended to committing crimes against humanity by separating children from parents and putting babies in cages. For those fleeing violence a point of possible entry can itself be a place of exploitation and violence.
We can spend our time lamenting this global nightmare or we can step up to the challenge of making a difference. We can bring light where there is darkness. We can offer hope where there is despair. We can offer compassion where there is indifference. We can bring love to bear where hate appears to have the ascendency.
I believe that supporting refugees anywhere is to support refugees everywhere. When we allow ourselves a sustained awareness of the global refugee crisis but do not allow ourselves to follow through with the understandable impulse to tune it out because it is too much to bear, we can participate in what I see as an ever-expanding global human heart that beats with a love that spurs action for the sake of those in great need and peril.
As we think globally on the plight of refugees, it is imperative that we act locally for the plight of refugees. For the last five years UIDN and its many volunteers and supporters have been doing just that. The refugee population is growing in the Hudson Valley. We have provided services and support to large numbers from Mexico and Central and South America, some from Africa, and more recently we have participated in several community-initiated responses to Afghan refugees. I can easily imagine refugees from Ukraine calling our helpline in the not-too distant future.
UIDN wants to sustain and expand our capacity to respond. We have depended on your past support and need your continuing generosity. There are several ways you can contribute this evening. If you take out your phone, take a photo of the QR code that appears on the flyer that is in your program. It will take you to the UIDN website donation page. Or you can visit the UIDN table in the lobby and use your credit card. Thank you.
