IT'S THE LITTLE ONES WHO MATTER

 

   I just read that ICE has rounded up 10,000 detainees in 5 days. That is 2,000 little people scooped up in DT's cruel net, or we should say, Stephen Miller's cruel net.

 I suspect that there was a rage-fueled revenge after Scotus denied his bid to erase birth-right citizenship, even though Article 14 of the Constitution enshrined this right. Sigh. As Anne Lamott once said, "I feel like I've been bitch-slapped by ET."

    Jay Kuo, a political commentator, lawyer,

supporter of the Queer Community, and composer pointed out, (I THINK it was Jay!) that Scotus saves its hardest rulings for the end of the year, and they wrap a few good rulings around several bad ones so we can say, "See! It's not that corrupt after all." Hardy-har-har, as my Mom used to say.

   But I want to get back to the little people--the overlooked ones, immigrants, LGBTQIA+ , the folks left behind, and communities erased by this government.  As a faithful Christian broad, I have to look to the Gospels to see what Jesus had to say and do about the little ones the "anaweim," the vulnerable ones.

 

   The 4 Gospels always rest on the slumped and weary shoulders of such people. Jesus is constantly going about and healing folks: restoring a paralytic to health, giving sight to the blind, making the mute to talk, stopping a flow of blood that woman had for 12 years, giving life to a dead girl and a dead son, and on and on. He goes to the region of the Gadarenes where two savage demoniacs have terrorized people and exorcises the demons, only to put them into a herd of swine (as the demons had requested), and the pigs swarm down the hill into the water and are drowned. Needless to say, the townspeople were not happy with Jesus that day.

 

   I think of the everyday people I come into contact with--each one bearing the Imago Dei--and how connecting gives us hope and sanity. Recently, I was having another crown put in, and I started talking and joking with the dental hygenist.  We discovered we were both cancer survivors, we shared recipes, talked about our families, and cracked each other up. It reminded me of darning socks and mending a hole in one as I spread it over a darning globe. You do several straight stitches from bottom to top, then weave several more from side to side until the hole is gone. Talking to this lovely woman, sharing our lives, was like darning some of the holes in my life during this terrible government. It didn't make my grief go away, but it did assuage it and poor oil of annointing over it. (See, being Catholic is cool.)

   One of the things I adore about Mamdani--among others--is how he works for working class people, for the little folks. 

He shows us how government should work: filling potholes, shoveling snow, setting up grocery stores in food deserts, going after corrupt landlords, sending out cooling vans during heat waves, investing in the buses in NYC,  and making sure parks and libraries are funded.

   I am hopeful that with more Democratic Socialist candidates, we might swing this ship of state around. It won't be easy, I probably won't see it in my lifetime, but a government that works for and lifts up the little ones is the only way to go. You might even say it is the Christian thing to do!