There is something about the picture that just makes me take pause. We are all surrounded by images of devastation every day: practically constant reports of robberies, murders, missing persons, bodies found, car accidents, forest fires, environmental havoc, etc. etc. We need not look far for images of bad news. All we have to do is turn on the television, glance at the headlines of a newspaper, or click on one of our news apps. However, there are some things that just carve into our hearts a bit more and edge into our psyches further. For me, this is one of those images.
I understand that the topic of immigration, especially illegal immigration, is a HUGE, multifaceted, extremely complex, and emotional topic where the stakes are very very high. It is a topic that I am not remotely suited to give any political commentary on. So I am going to jump around a little in this blog post and go back in time a bit to tell a story.
It was 2010. I had just turned 22 and was working as an AmeriCorps volunteer right in the heart of San Francisco (truly, a banner experience for me, but that’s another story for another time). When I lived in San Francisco it was bursting at the seams with art, culture, experience, flavor and magic of every kind. It was a paradise for me. Just walking down the street was stimulating for me. Keep in mind, up to that point I was a small-town Montana girl. I always had traveled a great deal, but most of my time was spent in an extremely rural town of about 4,000 people. So walking down 24th street of the Mission District on San Francisco was a delight. Hundreds of murals shouted out at me, many of them colorful displays of Hispanic culture or burning sociopolitical commentary. The sugar skulls staring out at me from the Mexican bakeries that lined the street and the stall of colorful Mexican wrestling masks were lovely. So that was the neighborhood I lived in. What I especially loved about San Francisco was that you could easily get your fill of art of any kind just by walking down the street. There were art exhibits, theater/performances, and live music galore.
I happened to have a weekend off and boy did I have plans. I was going to go to a drag show. Not just any drag show though, folks. A really amazing one! Sort of a once in a lifetime performance, or at least that’s how it felt to me, though I do get a little excited about theater and stage performances. It was a Trannyshack Lady Gaga themed drag show being held at the DNA Lounge 😍. It was truly amazing. Think RuPaul x10,000 + the best Lady Gaga dance/techno/disco remixes + amazingly choreographed performances + hundreds of gay men. I posted a couple screenshots below. It was epic. And I don’t use that word too often.
After the show, which got over very late, I went to wait at a bus stop nearby. Did I mention it was late? Oh, say 2ish/3ish a.m. Did I mention I was by myself? I was. All my friends were working or out of town that weekend. Did I mention it was dark? It was very dark with hardly a street light to be seen. Did I mention the bus stop was isolated? It was under a bridge. In the outskirts of the Tenderloin nonetheless, an extremely impoverished neighborhood that was not exactly safe. Just to give you a visual of the neighborhood at that time: I walked over two pairs of legs that were stretched across the sidewalk to get to my show. The owners of the legs were injecting themselves with drugs as I walked by. I couldn’t walk around them into the street as traffic was oncoming. Once I passed over them, I did turn around and asked if they were okay, mostly to make sure they were awake enough to be breathing. They were fine. This was nearly ten years ago so I do not know how the neighborhood has changed, but of course I grant that it probably has.
So here I find myself in this most dangerous and stupid of situations. A 22-year old, small town girl. Young, dumb, not quite street savvy (though don’t worry, I’m pretty good these days ;). I could have taken a taxi, but I was waiting for the bus because it was SO MUCH cheaper than taking a taxi (keep in mind, I was working as an AmeriCorps member and my stipend/paycheck was very small). That’s when I run into a Hispanic man, early 50’s? He was not waiting for the bus and I honestly do not know what he was doing out and about. Maybe he was going for a cigarette run? Maybe coming out of a different bar or club? Maybe getting off a night shift somewhere? I don’t know. I will never know. I must have caught his eye somehow and he walked over to me. I did not speak Spanish and he did not speak much English. He smiled at me, sort of timid and put his hands up in what I imagine to be a “wtf are you doing out here lady?” gesture. I pointed to the bus stop sign. He did manage to say a few broken words to me, something to the effect of, “me, I wait with you.” And wait with me he did. He must have known things were very unsafe there. He must have known things were dangerous. He must have known that I needed help in some basic way. We did not speak the same language, yet we understood each other in that moment.
The bus took forever, it felt like I waited an hour or more before it finally showed up. The man waited with me the entire time. Once I tried to tell him it was okay, that he didn’t have to stay with me but he shook his head and said, “no no senora, I wait”. I made it onto the bus and thanked him. The bus pulled away as he walked off into the darkness. I made it home safely. Forever will I be grateful to this complete stranger.
Why I shared the story above is because it proves something I have always believed on a very base level: you don’t necessarily have to understand things to know. In other words, you don’t necessarily have to speak the same language to know what someone is trying to say. You don’t have to understand people to know they need help and you don’t necessarily have to know them or understand every detail of their situation in order to help them in some small way.
Though I do follow the news, I don’t usually watch a lot of it for various reasons, but I did happen to catch a snippet of a CNN interview between two news anchors (Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo) discussing the picture of the drowned father and daughter above. I rewatched their interview clip and wrote it down, so it’s possible I didn’t catch every word but below is the jist of it. You can also watch it online and I could have copied and pasted the clip, but I felt it was a bit more powerful to read the words themselves.
Don Lemon: “Sorry. That picture. I can’t. I can’t even look at it.”
Chris Cuomo: “you must”.
Lemon: “I can’t even look at it at Chris. Every time it comes up, I just have to look away. I can’t. I’m not being dramatic.”
Cuomo: “Dramatic? Of course it kills you. It kills every part of you. Every part of us that makes us human.”
But can we do more than just look at this image of the dead father and baby girl? And can we perhaps look within ourselves? Can we walk beside each other, even though we are confused, hurt, scared and unsure of what comes next? Can we truly walk with each other on this journey?
And if we can’t be the types of humans who can do so, then it as Don Lemon asks, “who are we?”
That is what I have been asking myself ever since I saw that picture.
Little Big Life 