He’s an innocent child, separated from his parents and held in a detention center.
These dolls are needle felted from wool; they are 3-D political illustrations. I feel that the words of Elie Wiesel can best explain my thoughts on speaking out on the immigration problems that the world (not only the United States) has today:
“And then I explained to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remain silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.” Elie Wiesel
I ask myself a lot of questions that I think have a lot to do with people who view immigrants as law breakers, criminals and rapists:
Have you ever met an immigrant and their family?
Can you imagine yourself in an immigrants situation?
If you were an immigrant one day, what would your plan be, where would you go, how would you get there, would you take your family?
Two of my favorite comments from a Facebook thread: “Laura, gaddammit. Look what you did. You used your art to stir emotions and get people to talk. What a shit show you are for making people think and feel something uncomfortable. Fuck.”
“Art used this way helps us get past the verbal sparing and goes to the emotional heart of the issue. Thank you, Laura Burch.”
Mama!
Solutions: Since the world is dealing with immigration more and more because of political unrest, war and a changing climate, why don’t we set up more think-tanks to deal with immigration issues? Young people are often very insightful and have recently brought new energy and ideas to today’s problems; let’s introduce these issues to students and let them try to solve the issue. Maybe we should start taxing religious institutions and use that money to help immigrants AND others. Perhaps we should teach people the art of debate so we can better discuss these issues in a more productive way. I’m sure we should have better leaders, people with compassion who want to help people and solve problems humanely.