What Goes Around, Comes Around

  The way immigrants, children, — babies! — are being treated in inhumane camps at the border of my country, in the heartland where they are afraid to come out of their homes lest they be snatched from their families — breaks my heart. 

  The Writer and I did not expect to be attending vigils and singing protest songs we sang in our teens again in our old age.

  

  Earlier this month communities across the country announced candlelight vigils to show support for more humane treatment for asylum seekers from Latin America.  

  Georgetown (pop. 9000) is not a diverse community at all and for the most part doesn’t have much enthusiasm for outsiders (including those of us from north of the Mason Dixon Line!).  We wondered if we would be the only ones showing up in the park.  We were pleasantly surprised.  

  There were handmade signs ...

and speakers (including a Native American elder, a worried honor student - DACA recipient, a war refugee from Germany in the 1940s, a passionate and eloquent young Gullah woman (above), descendant of African immigrants who were forced into slavery),

and musicians to lead us in songs for which some of us did not need the song sheets to remember all the words. 

  

When is the last time you sang all the verses of This Land is Your Land, Blowin’ in the Wind or If I Had a Hammer?  For us ... oh, nearly 50 years!  

  

Finally, we lit candles as the darkness fell on the beautiful harbor behind us and stood together to sing a last song of love and compassion for those frightened, tired, hungry, dirty and hopeful human beings in the camps.

Someone's crying Lord, kumbaya

Someone's crying Lord, kumbaya

Someone's crying Lord, kumbaya

Oh Lord, kumbaya*

*  Sung in the Gullah culture of  South Carolina and Georgia, with ties to enslaved West Africans. The song is thought to have spread from the islands to other Southern states and the North, as well as other places in the world.