"Recently, a friend and I drove a young woman and her six-month old baby to a Southern state because there is no work here. She joined her husband, who had not yet seen their daughter. The couple will likely be picking tomatoes and then on to the next crop. The couple faces deportation, but they cannot leave the country because they have no way of feeding themselves and their families. I have never been so aware of the privileges of citizenship as I have since I started waiting in detentions, posting bonds, driving a car, all things many of my neighbors cannot do. We wait in hopeful anticipation of immigration reform for an end to this madness.
Still, thousands of U.S.-born children face the same fate as our families did in the 1930s — deportation. The big difference is this: We are here, and we will not stand by while innocent people are detained, incarcerated, hunted down and separated from their children, parents and loved ones. Children witness this every day. What are we to tell them? If I have learned anything as an oral historian, it is that small acts of cruelty and small acts of kindness are remembered as historical events. What we do will be remembered."
