6 Places Resisting Fear With Compassionate Defiance
May 11, 2017
Sanctuary city policies can only go so far. The real job of creating welcome and safety falls to ordinary people.
1. Going door to door for Muslims
On the day President Trump’s first travel ban took effect in January, dozens of volunteers, many of them Jewish, went door to door in neighborhoods around Oakland, California, soliciting support for Muslims. Canvass organizers with Jewish Voice for Peace had armed them with a script to engage people and advice not to argue. They were to ask homeowners and storekeepers to post signs in their windows: “We stand with our Muslim, Arab, and immigrant neighbors.”
It was the first of what would become monthly canvassing events across the Bay Area, and given the political climate of that first day, everyone was flying blind: “We had no idea what the reaction would be,” said Penny Rosenwasser, a Jewish Voice member and an organizer.
What they got was this: Storeowners hugged them. People on the street and clerics in mosques thanked them. One immigrant openly wept.
And while not everyone agreed to display the signs, Rosenwasser said, not a single volunteer—who ranged in age from 9 months to 90 years and represented many faiths—reported a hostile experience.
“How wonderful it is to walk through the neighborhoods and see the signs in these windows and know I’m connected to people who want to extend the same feelings of solidarity and care,” Rosenwasser said.
