Make a Pledge Against Hate

Nazis have directly impacted my life. Maybe some of you reading this have a similar story.

I come from a family of refugees. At every family gathering that I can remember, my grandfather talks about being in the Dachau concentration camp. Liberated when he was 19, he's never been back to Germany.

When I was 16, I was the first in my family to make the trip. My grandfather's dream was that I would be able to find any living family members, but there was no one left. I walked through the Dachau concentration camp, the same road that he walked, the railroad tracks that stopped just inside the gate with the horrible lie written over the arch "Arbeit Macht Frei". I went through the bunks they lived in, where the Nazis forced absolute order and cleanliness, hunger and despair. I looked for my grandfather's face in the photos there--of starved and torture people. And I saw the photos of their liberation when those who had not been killed became refugees.

I come from a family of refugees. When I was four, my parents took in 4 Vietnamese refugees. This was how I first learned about war, through the experiences of my new siblings, ages 5 to 9. My little four year old mind knew something was different about them, and it wasn't that they hadn't seen a doorknob before or a flushing toilet; it wasn't that they hadn't slept with a pillow before and didn't speak my language. All of those things I noticed but there was something deeper about them that was different. I had no language as a child to describe it. As an adult, I realize now that it was that up to that point, they had lived their entire lives in the horror of the Vietnam war. They had been robbed of innocence, had seen things grown men killed themselves over from guilt.

I read that Refugee Services in Lansing was in need of funds and volunteers, and had only about 3 months of funding left. When I think of the journey that refugees make to finally reach Lansing--the terror, the suffering, the exhaustion--leaving behind everything, hoping to be chosen to be the one to leave the refugee camps, the strangeness of life in the United States, the longing for a home that is not safe to return to, I want to support agencies like Refugee Services.

If you want to do something about the neo-Nazis coming to Lansing on April 22, please consider taking action that will have long lasting results to better our community. We're suggesting that you make a pledge to Refugee Services so that all people who have fled violence, hunger, and poverty can start a new life here with us.

Sayrah Namaste