Dear Young People, We Need You!

Reflections from the Edwards Family Migrant Summer Camp Experience

Earlier this summer, my kids and I were blessed with the opportunity to participate in our church’s annual youth mission trip.  Every summer our church hosts a youth mission trip that gives our teenagers the chance to serve as leaders and to do community service.  This year, the trip was to a farming community in rural Washington.  Our church partnered with two other Episcopal churches to host a week-long vacation bible school for the children of migrant farm workers.  Our youth served as camp counselors while the parent volunteers helped with the logistics, food preparation, transportation, and setup and clean-up each day.

I have been reluctant to write about our experience due to my own fear that my desire to inspire others by sharing how profoundly impactful this experience was on me and my kids might result in some unnecessary attention to a community that is quite vulnerable and struggling with the current issues of immigration reform, ICE raids, and xenophobia.  But I woke up this morning to the news of another shooting targeting Mexicans in America and decided I could not continue to be silent.  The thoughts and feelings I have wanted to share over the past few weeks had nothing to do with hate or violence, but everything to do with love and hope.

My children and I spent one week with children ages 3 to 10 whose parents wake up every single day to harvest the fruit and vegetables that garnish our dinner table week after week.  These young children, some born in the United States of Mexican and Central American parents and others born outside of the country, were probably the most inspirational human beings I have ever encountered in life!  They were full of love, hope, and joy.  They were eager to learn and to share.  They cherished the gifts of food, time, and compassion and they showered us with gratitude for the smallest things, like reading a book or helping an older sibling get their younger sibling to the bathroom on time! 

My son, William telling stories to kids.

Typically, the kids would be in the field working alongside their parents or they would be hunkered down in a home or shed waiting for their family to finish work with the older children (as young as 9 or 10 years old) taking care of the younger siblings.  This summer camp offered the children an opportunity to spend time learning, playing, and eating healthy meals with foods that their parents harvest, but can’t afford to buy and serve to their families. They take their earnings and buy as much processed, non-perishable food as they can from places like, Walmart.  One of the moms took time to thank us for hosting the camp. In her remarks she shared that for each strawberry they pick, they receive one cent or penny, and that penny represents hope that one day her kids will be buying strawberries instead of picking them.  As she was thanking us for taking the time to read and play with her kids, the tears were rolling down my face, as I thought about how many strawberries we have eaten, thrown away because they spoiled before we ate them, and how much we pay for them compared to how much she gets paid to pick them.

 

There is no way the current U.S. capitalist economy could sustain paying every human being a living wage.  We all know this.  The cost of strawberries and other foods grown in the United States would be cost prohibitive given the wages paid to the majority of working Americans and the huge gap between the rich, middle class and the poor. It is basic economics.  It is inhumane and diabolical that the US economy’s dependence on no wage labor has resulted in the enslavement of Africans in the 1600s, scapegoating of Chinese and other Asian immigrants in the 1800s, and now the migration of Central Americans of Hispanic origin incented to come north to escape their own dysfunctional economies, war-torn countries, and hopeless situations.  For some strange reason, our country symbolizes hope, prosperity, and justice, but that is not what we, people of color, have experienced on a macro-level. 

Whether you and your ancestors arrived here by choice, coercion, or the indignation of slavery, we are here; and on a micro or individual level, we wake up each day hopeful that the fruits of our labor will materialize into a better life for our children and the many generations to follow.  However, it is irresponsible of us, especially our political leaders not to recognize the abhorrent nature of indentured servitude and the physical, psychological and financial distress it has caused.  Yes, it is human nature to be hopeful and resilient, but it is impossible for the oppressed to turn the tables of oppression when all of our current livelihoods depend on it AND the politically persuasive in our country, use racism as a means of creating divisiveness that incents massacres which destabilize any hope of solidarity among us.

Watching my children serve the migrant families who wake up every day with a glimmer of hope that the work they are doing to put food on our tables and food in their children’s mouths, filled me with emotion each day we were at the camp.  I was filled with joy each time I witnessed the compassion our youth leaders showed to kids who in some cases didn’t understand any English, exhibited some anti-social behavior, or who cried insensibly when they lost sight of one of their siblings or cousins out of fear they had been taken away forever.  I felt so hopeful that if we could inspire an entire generation of young people to give a week of their summer vacation to leave their comfort zone and commit to serving the most vulnerable in our communities that we as a nation could create solutions to the complex challenges that our current economic system presents.  We could also tackle racism and xenophobia and begin to build a society that embraces diversity, equity of opportunity, and love

for your neighbor.

Exhausted youth waiting for dinner after first day of camp.

Each of the youth were required to write their own reflection post this mission experience and what struck me about my kids reflections was their focus on how much the migrant children loved their brothers and sisters and how they were so eager to learn “American” ways and fit in.  My daughter was particularly struck by the dire poverty the children lived in and how unfair it was that they worked so hard and made so little money.  My son said to me during the drive back to our campsite one evening “Mom, I know you have a hard job, but aren’t you glad you have air conditioning and a nice office to work in, instead of outside? It is hot out here!”

I share this with you today, the morning after another mass shooting in this country of hope and prosperity because my heart is aching for all people who have lost a family member to violence and racial hatred, including my own and the rhetoric surrounding this issue is focused on controlling guns, the dysfunction of our political system, and white people with mental illness for God’s sake.  What we are not talking about is that there is an entire generation of children who have the opportunity to become part of the solution or who can exacerbate our current problems.  

Dear young people, our country needs you to lean into our values of economic freedom, innovation, and brotherly love and focus on solving the true crisis of economic despair and deprivation which is breeding unsustainable racial violence, bigotry, elitism and classism.  This must stop! We are better than this as individuals and as a nation!  I am worried that those of us who are benefiting from the dysfunction are too far gone to fix it. We need you!