It’s the day before Thanksgiving, and I’m just outside the Cumberland County Jail, standing shoulder to shoulder with colleagues and comrades. We’re keeping vigil on a street corner in solidarity with immigrants who are being held in cinderblock cells just beyond our view, having been detained by masked ICE agents and, quite likely, transported hundreds of miles from their homes, their families, their communities, to this detention center in Maine.

We sing our prayers — songs of faith, songs of peace, freedom songs. Some of us wear clergy stoles, yarmulkes, or prayer shawls. One person holds an imposing image of Our Lady of Guadalupe — Mother Mary, who weeps for her children who suffer. 

 

 

Whether we’re making a tangible difference in transforming unjust systems or not — we release this expectation, because the act of showing up in love and prayer has meaning.

We hold signs: 

We pray for all who pass this way.

Love is the spirit of this gathering.

Asylum is a human right.

All are worthy of safety and love.

We pray for all caught up in this system of evil.

You are not forgotten.

 

This is now a weekly ritual, a spiritual practice: every Wednesday afternoon, people of faith from many traditions show up — show up in our bodies, show up in solidarity, show up with our voices and our prayers and our hearts full of love and compassion. Whether we’re making a tangible difference in transforming unjust systems or not — we release this expectation, because the act of showing up in love and prayer has meaning, has intrinsic value as an act of public witness, solidarity, kindness, and care. We are saying with our bodies what we know to be true: that every human being is a person of sacred worth, deserving of dignity and justice and liberation.

 

Youth are showing us the way

 

Now it’s a cold December afternoon, and more than 500 young people — high school and middle school students — are marching from Monument Square to City Hall in downtown Portland, Maine. They are outraged and heartbroken because their beloved friends and classmates, 16-year-old Joel and 14-year-old Estefania, have been abducted by ICE, along with their mother and their 19-year-old sister, a college student, and shipped 2,000 miles away to a detention center in Texas.

These young people march and they chant, “Whose streets? Our streets!” They are claiming their fundamental right to protest, but it is clear: this is a protest grounded in love, arising from friendship, an outpouring of sorrow. This is pro-test in its truest form. These students are testifying for something — for love, for freedom, for equity, for human rights.

 

They, too, carry signs:

Protect our students!

Estefania should be in school!

ICE is tearing this country apart!

Seeking safety is not a crime!

Education, not deportation!

Respect our existence or expect our resistance!

 

all photos by Brianna Soukup, staff photographer at the Portland Press Herald

 

Like the people of faith across town, these students show up with their bodies and their voices, and their hearts are full of compassion and determination. Some of these teenagers have donated their babysitting wages and allowance to help secure legal assistance for a beloved family behind bars. These young people know right from wrong. They are acting in love and solidarity. They will not be complacent. They are showing us the way.

As a parent of one of these teens raising her own voice in support of her peers, my heart breaks. I am outraged. Our children grieve as their friends are being disappeared by violent, masked thugs. Our communities are being terrorized. Our neighbors live in fear that they or their parents will be next.

 

Immigrant justice and climate justice go hand-in-hand

 

At The BTS Center, we’re deeply committed to the work of cultivating and nurturing spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world. And so, I want to make this claim: Anytime we welcome the immigrants among us, anytime we stand in solidarity with our immigrant neighbors, anytime we advocate for the rights and the protection and the well-being of the refugee or the asylum seeker or the undocumented in our communities, we are doing the work of climate justice.

 

That’s because impacts of the climate crisis are major drivers of human migration. 

 

• When sea levels rise and wildfires scorch, when flooding destroys homes and communities, and when drought causes crops to fail, people will pull up stakes and leave their homelands in search of safety and security.
• When ecological conditions change and crops that have sustained communities for generations no longer grow, people will experience hunger and deprivation, and economies will suffer and fail.
• When people are hungry and deprived, and when economies suffer and fail, desperation will cause violent conflict to erupt. When desperation surges and violent conflict erupts, people will flee. 

 

 

Migrants only sometimes cite climate concerns as a primary reason for their emigration, but in a time of accelerating global climate devastation, one only needs to peel back the onion a layer or two to find that a climate-related cause will surface — sometimes never stated explicitly, but almost always a part of the root cause for displacement.

And here’s the truth: those of us who live in the wealthiest country on Earth, who have access to abundant resources and who consume the most, have contributed the most to the very conditions that cause others to seek refuge. We must reckon with the tragic truth that those who have contributed the least to human-caused climate change almost always experience the worst impacts and bear the biggest burden. 

 

…climate-fueled disasters force about 20 million people to leave their homes each year — that is, about one every two seconds.

 

•••

 

That day before Thanksgiving, I stood beside my colleague Rev. Jane Field, Executive Director of the Maine Council of Churches. She says this:

 

Because climate change hits marginalized communities much harder than it does the over-privileged, it’s not “just” an environmental issue — it’s also a social justice issue.  And it’s a spiritual issue. Hebrew and Christian scriptures (the sacred texts of my spiritual tradition) are crystal clear: God calls us to prioritize the well-being of those on the margins. 

And there’s another equally important reason climate justice is a spiritual issue: people of faith — most especially Christians — need to take responsibility for repairing the damage caused by the toxic and wrong-headed theology of “dominion over” creation that has led to exploitation, extraction, and a disregard of the need for compassionate care for the Earth and for vulnerable people. 

When we act justly, love fiercely, and walk humbly (Micah 6:8) instead, we begin to recognize that the suffering of those on the margins and the suffering of the Earth are inextricably linked, and we come to see that taking faith-based action on climate change is a way to serve and honor God, our neighbor, and creation.

 

According to the leaders of the humanitarian organization Oxfam, climate-fueled disasters force about 20 million people to leave their homes each year — that is, about one every two seconds. We can expect the numbers of climate refugees to increase as global temperatures continue to soar, natural disasters become more frequent and more devastating, and portions of the planet become essentially uninhabitable. 

If we want to build strong communities that are prepared for the crisis now unfolding, if we want to nurture climate resilience, if we want to heed the Biblical mandate to love our neighbor and care for the foreigner in our midst, then we’d better practice welcoming, supporting, and advocating for our immigrant neighbors now. And we’d better claim this as an essential function of living and embodying our faith in a climate-changed world.

 

• Those faith leaders showing up every Wednesday afternoon outside Cumberland County Jail with their signs and their songs and their prayers? They’re doing climate work.
  
• The roiling crowd of teenagers marching on Congress Street, calling for freedom for the detained, advocating for an end to the violence of deportation? They’re climate activists, too.
• The congregation that’s organizing an ICE Watch hotline, hosting an active bystander training, or offering a nonviolent civil resistance workshop? They’re also contributing to the cause of climate justice.

 

Justice is intersectional — always. That is to say, every incident of injustice intersects with every other incident of injustice. To state it affirmatively, every action in pursuit of justice intersects with, uplifts, bolsters every other action in pursuit of justice. 

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously observed, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He might likewise affirm this positive footnote: and the work of justice anywhere elevates the cause of justice everywhere.