Death and the desert
June 11 is the five year anniversary of the founding of Humane Borders. For five years, they've been working to 'take death out of the migration equation.' Now just about anybody from a Mexican to a Minuteman can agree that our immigration laws and border policies are a tangled up mess, and that's using polite language. Who's to blame, and what to do about it, is where the wheels come off the wagon.
Robin Hoover, a salty, sharp-tongued veteran of the 1980s Sanctuary Movement and pastor of First Christian Church in Tucson, Arizona, is the president of Humane Borders and one of it's founders. Hoover and the group of 85 people met 5 years ago tomorrow at the Pima Friends Meeting House and decided 2 things: immigration laws needed to be changed, but in the meantime, somebody needed to go out to the human beings risking their lives for a few American bucks (often enticed by American corporate recruiters) and give them water so they don't die there, or end up in hospitals in Tucson and Phoenix at taxpayer expense before being deported back and trying again.
Hoover and co. are folks who read Matthew 25:35-40 as marching orders, not allegory or metaphor.
Hoover's also one of my favorite people in the world to interview, because he tells it like it is (and unlike some church leaders, he returns phone calls promptly). You either like the guy or you don't, but you are never unsure where he stands.
I've been working on a Special Report for DisciplesWorld on Humane Borders and hope to have it done and posted this weekend. Meanwhile, here's a link to an op-ed piece Hoover wrote in the Tucson Citizen a year ago.
Robin Hoover, a salty, sharp-tongued veteran of the 1980s Sanctuary Movement and pastor of First Christian Church in Tucson, Arizona, is the president of Humane Borders and one of it's founders. Hoover and the group of 85 people met 5 years ago tomorrow at the Pima Friends Meeting House and decided 2 things: immigration laws needed to be changed, but in the meantime, somebody needed to go out to the human beings risking their lives for a few American bucks (often enticed by American corporate recruiters) and give them water so they don't die there, or end up in hospitals in Tucson and Phoenix at taxpayer expense before being deported back and trying again.
Hoover and co. are folks who read Matthew 25:35-40 as marching orders, not allegory or metaphor.
Hoover's also one of my favorite people in the world to interview, because he tells it like it is (and unlike some church leaders, he returns phone calls promptly). You either like the guy or you don't, but you are never unsure where he stands.
I've been working on a Special Report for DisciplesWorld on Humane Borders and hope to have it done and posted this weekend. Meanwhile, here's a link to an op-ed piece Hoover wrote in the Tucson Citizen a year ago.
posted by Rebecca Bowman Woods @ 9:02 PM
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