Reverence For Life, An Immigrant Mom, and the Nun on the Bus: The Children are Watching by Dr. Linda McNeil

Sister Simone is one of my heroes: she keeps speaking out about poverty when no one (most notably not even one of the presidential candidates in 2008 or 2016) is mentioning this growing crisis. She doesn't tolerate silence when there is injustice.  She speaks candidly about the human costs of war, about fairness and equity.  

And she is eloquent on the matter of the peoples whose perilous lives are bringing them to the US even when they know their dreams of a safe place for their children are now threatened by the policies of an administration hostile to them as people.  (I won’t repeat the words the president and attorney general use to describe these, their fellow human beings – you’ve already heard them and I don’t want a word search to attach them to my name). 

Here is a video of how Sister Simone describes the situation:

What is at stake?

What Sister Simone sees at stake is the values and ethics of a nation complicit with the poor and inhumane treatment of immigrants, specifically immigrants crossing the Mexican border. Here is an article citing her condemnation of the use of the Bible to justify separation of families at the border.

What should we do?

She calls on us to treat migrants in a way that is “humane, just, and fraternal” by improving our detention and deportation practices. “It is a mandate of our faith and our nation. Laws that separate families are unjust and immoral and are no laws at all," she says in regard to the cruel immigration laws enforced by the Trump administration. Here is a Link to the Federal Policies Sister Simone and NETWORK supports as well as some Policy Solutions they have put forward (scroll down to see their ideas for solutions). 

I could not be more grateful for the life, the work, the mission, the example of Sister Simone.  She would  ask us to turn that gratitude into action, that admiration into advocacy.   Her example is powerful to the extent we follow it.

To share your ideas about Sister Simone, babies taken from their moms, and actions you are taking to end the immigration cruelty, please click on the “comments” pencil.