The Refugee Ban on Holocaust Memorial Day

Today is a sad day in America.

On a day to remember one of the most horrific tragedies in world history, a genocide rooted in religious discrimination, Trump has enacted an immediate ban on immigrants from seven primarily-Muslim countries, including Iraq, Iran, Yemen and Syria.

I'm with the many all over the world who are saying, "Lady Liberty is weeping."

A Somali-American legislator tells her story (MSNBC tonight)  of living in a refugee camp for four years waiting to come to America, believing the narrative engraved on the Statue of Liberty. Somalia is on the list. 

Well, say the people making up the list: this is retribution for September 11th.  Yet Saudi Arabia, homeland of the majority of the perpetrators of the terrorist attack on America, is not on the list.  Not one of the attackers is from a country on the list!  

Refugees from war-torn Syria are on the list.  Turn them away. 

I didn't know this until today: In 1939, the United States turned away a ship containing 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi attacks.  Turn them back to the Nazis, let them die in concentration camps. (Which they did.) 

Partly in national shame for turning those people away, America has redoubled its efforts to open its doors to refugees, immigrants who have contributed so much to this country--until today.   

Lady Liberty weeps.

And yet: mayors of Sanctuary Cities all over this beautiful country are standing up for their people and saying, "We're willing to risk loss of federal funds to do the right thing."

Martin Walsh, mayor of Boston, is promising protection of immigrants in City Hall and his own office, never mind withholding of money.  (One of his constituents, a seven-year-old boy, said to him, "Thank you for protecting our city from a madman.") Stephanie Miner, mayor of Syracuse, New York, and other mayors of sanctuary cites are saying the same thing.  People are marching and writing letters and knocking on the doors of Congress.

Maybe some of the "tears running down the cheeks of the Statue of Liberty" are tears of pride--that so many people are saying "No" to walls and "Yes" to bridges.