Webinar hosted by a PC(USA) partner explores reimagining Independence Day

Panelist: ‘This nation aspires to be a nation where all people are valued, and that’s what we are trying to do’

by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service

Photo by Alondra Olivas via Unsplash

LOUISVILLE — The Philadelphia-based American Friends Service Committee, which partners with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) on issues including immigration, invited those attending a webinar last week to reimagine Independence Day with help from four panelists, many of them immigrants.

Panelists were:

• Maka Black Elk, a teacher and administrator and a member of Oglala Lakota Nation.
• Ronnate Asirwatham, government relations director for the Network Lobby for Catholic Social Justice
• Haddy Gassama, a lawyer and writer who’s also the national director of policy and advocacy for the UndocuBlack Network
• Merwyn De Mello, advocacy associate for the Franciscan Action Network.

Alison Kahn, a policy fellow at AFSC, moderated the hour-long discussion.

“I’ve never felt I didn’t belong, especially since I got my citizenship,” said Asirwatham, who’s originally from Sri Lanka. “That’s not everyone’s experience.”

Ronnate Asirwatham

“My reflection,” as July 4 approaches, Asirwatham said, “is, ‘how can we be a better nation and a better union?’”

Indigenous people weren’t eligible for citizenship until 1924, Black Elk noted, and then only because so many served in the armed forces during World War I, “when there was a desire to bring justice to them by ensuring they became citizens.” Many Indigenous people “are quite proud of that [military service] part of their identity,” Black Elk said. For many, Independence Day “is a reminder that so many Native people have served this country regardless of the tenuous history they have had with this country.”

Gassama, who sought asylum in the United States from Gambia, noted that country like the United States gained its independence from Great Britain. “Within the celebration of U.S. independence, which was won through a war, there is a correlation between war and independence, celebrating a military victory,” Gassama said. “Coming from a part of the world where people still suffer from colonialism and imperialism, that celebration of U.S. military victory brings up feelings of discomfort.”

Heddy Gassama

“Gaining independence from a colonizing body is something to celebrate,” Gassama said, “but I have complicated feelings about U.S. independence. I don’t really celebrate it much.”

De Mello is originally from India, but “I can sing you 10 national anthems of the countries I’ve lived in.”

Merwyn De Mello

“I love Independence Day, but over the years it has become more and more militarized, a show of force and power,” De Mello said. “It’s on people like us to talk about that.”

Kahn asked the panel: How can we reconcile a pervasive view of the United States as a nation of immigrants with the fact that the land was already occupied and enslaved people were brought to this continent as forced migrants?

“For many Indigenous people, it’s complicated,” Black Elk said. “The experience of so many Indigenous people has been one of immigration … they are trying to find a bridge between the impact of history while recognizing lots of people have come here recently and that this history is not theirs. Reconciling those things is almost certainly an individual journey.”

Maka Black Elk

“I wouldn’t say nationalism is inherently wrong. Feeling like they belong is something everyone wants to enjoy,” Black Elk said. “The problem comes when it creates an exclusionary or militaristic way of thinking about nationhood and nationalism — who belongs and who doesn’t.”

“Maka hit it on the head: All of us, immigrants or people with colonial ancestors — we all hold multiple identities. We aren’t a monolith,” Asirwatham said. “In those identities, how do we become more equal and how do we support the most vulnerable? Immigrants are the most vulnerable.”

Before coming to the United States, “it was always seen as the shining light. In the U.S., things will be fair. There will be due process,” Asirwatham said. Then, sitting for her own asylum hearing, “I was afraid if I couldn’t convince this person I needed asylum, my life and my husband’s life would be in danger.”

“Asylum seekers think, if we can just tell our story, we will get a fair hearing. That’s the expectation. But that’s clearly not where the U.S. is,” Asirwatham said. “Due process is being gutted. Getting a fair justice policy is something we can work on.”

“This idea that the U.S. is a nation of immigrants — that’s a tool of erasure for the existence of Indigenous people,” Gassama said. “In some ways this is a nation of immigrants, but that’s usually meant for a particular type of people. We have rightfully welcomed Ukrainian immigrants,” but Gassama works with Black immigrants who are often not afforded the same welcome.

“We need to not see immigrants as commodities who are adding to the economic production of the country,” De Mello said. He recalled that while growing up in Kenya, Julius Nyerere, the first president of bordering Tanzania, “looked to it as a country of welcome. The borders were never closed.”

“We had one million refugees, and all were treated as Tanzanians,” De Mello said.

Alison Kahn

Kahn then asked: What is your vision for a just immigration system?

“Part of my job is to work for things I’ll never witness in my lifetime,” Gassama said, outlining a vision that includes “doing away with borders” and “decoupling this concept of immigration from criminalization.”

“In the system today, some immigrants are deemed more worthy than others,” especially those who are highly skilled, Black Elk said. “Ranking who receives dignity and who doesn’t is something that needs to be deeply thought about.”

For people of faith, people’s dignity “is something we can all understand. So often, immigration is used as a wedge to drive African American and Indigenous people against more recent immigrants. Solidarity among those who have been denied dignity is an important part of this.”

“People migrate for very different reasons,” Asirwatham said. “Even if you’re going for a visit, people ask, ‘Why are you here?’ … We are much blessed when we have this cross-culture of people and cultures.”

When he works with Franciscan Action Network peace teams, “we consider ourselves to be violence interrupters,” De Mello said. When a Venezuelan family is welcomed, “we give them as much of a say in our community as anyone else.”

Gassama noted that in her dissent last week of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made the point that “you cannot drive out inequity and inequality by not acknowledging it.”

“Celebrating with your loved ones [on Independence Day], you can still have the same kind of conversations we had today,” Gassama said. “Name U.S. independence for what it is.”

People may wonder “if they should walk away with a sense of anger and stop celebrating. No! No one is saying you can’t celebrate and be proud of this country and take the opportunity to be with family and enjoy the fireworks,” Black Elk said. But “we have to be conscientious and recognize when dignity is denied, it will impact people differently. This nation aspires to be a nation where all people are valued, and that’s what we are trying to do.”