Time to get out our pots and pans... Let's Make Some NOISE!!
by Elder Peter Laarman courtesy of Faith and Reason.org
On Friday of last week, I learned that ICE had snatched someone off the street directly in front of a state courthouse complex that stands very near to me and near to my church here in Providence, RI. Details about this incident remain sketchy as I write, but we know from reports from around the country that masked ICE agents in unmarked cars like to hang around courthouses, where people who are here legally are often required to make appearances.
Reinforced by more than $45 billion in new funding through the Big Beautiful Bill (that bill’s grand total for new Homeland Security spending is $170 billion: more than the entire military budget of almost every country but ours), ICE agents are also now lurking around schools and churches and cultural festivals where languages other than English might be spoken. Easy pickings for the brownshirtsof this era.
Not long ago, ICE agents in Massachusetts used a confused five-year-old girl with autism to lure her father into the street so that they could arrest him. Nice people doing nice things, don’t you think?
On the same day I learned about ICE infiltrating my neighborhood, I happened to stumble across a marvelous outdoor art installation on the grounds of the Rhode Island School of Design.
Titled Caserolazo i, this piece by visiting artist Tsohil Bhatia takes its name from the worldwide protest practice of bringing out masses of people to bang pots and pans in the face of bad actors. I was thrilled to see it. I took a picture. And it occurred to me that these pots shouldn’t just be museum pieces.
Some of us remember the brave women–many of them mothers, grandmothers, sisters, wives, and daughters of the abducted–who stood with the victims of Argentina’s “dirty war” during the late 1970s and early 1980s. They came out banging their pots and pans in solidarity with the “disappeared.” They stood with all of those who were targeted by a repressive right-wing regime and snatched away: up to 30,000 people who were tortured, killed, and sometimes dropped into the sea from helicopters and airplanes.
These women, faithful witnesses, showed up with their pots and pans, day after day and night after night, never letting the world forget that something terrible and morally reprehensible was happening in their midst. They would not tolerate it. They were there all night, every night, making as much noise as they could.
And just how much that is morally reprehensible will WE tolerate?
This is no longer a rhetorical question. Not when Stephen Miller is still determined to get up to 3,000 deportations per day. Not when the nation’s top court has given its seal of approval to detaining people without trial, purely on the basis of language, culture, and occupation.
The gospels tell us how Jesus stood with the “illegals” of his time, embracing and defending the most despised and persecuted, the untouchables. The gospels also show us the legal and religious establishment harshly condemning Jesus for making the wrong choices and associating with the wrong people.
We have our very own desaparecidos–our very own “disappeared ones”–being abducted from our midst today throughout this country. Those who are abducted and detained are sent to God knows where, often to hideous gulags overseas. But we know that many are being sent to what certainly look like enormous concentration camps being built right here in this country. They leave behind devastated and desperate family members.
Who will stand with these people, each one of them made in God’s image just as we are?
Are we ready to make some noise?
Peter Laarman, an activist United Church of Christ minister, now retired, who continues vigorously to be an activist and public author. Rev. Laarman intends to regularly respond to the ongoing assaults to the hard right’s campaign to eradicate each and every government funded program that provides health care, education and training programs, immigration opportunities, LGBTQ freedoms, and equal opportunities for all Americans.