Remember This Day
A Word of Hope On a Good Day For My City
“Remember this day, for there will be many more bad days to come.”
That is the primary word I spoke to a crowd gathered in Hutchins tonight, following today’s stunning reversal that Majestic Reality will not sell or lease its Hutchins’ warehouse to ICE.
This was supposed to be a rally to push the city to pass a resolution in opposition to the sale. But since the morning’s news, plans switched, and the rally became a momentary victory celebration in this long struggle we are now in.
“Remember this day, for there will be many more bad days to come.”
Since this story first broke on Christmas Eve —thats ICE’s largest planned “human warehouse” was to be in our own backyard— we CLEAR clergy have worked relentlessly to makes sure the public’s voice could and would be heard by the Powers that Be.1
Remarkably tonight, as apparently is happening in other parts of our country too, it was this very public pressure applied by perhaps thousands of ordinary North Texans that has made a difference.
“Remember this day, for there will be many more bad days to come.”
Here’s our truth. Every community organizer, Hutchins resident, clergy member, elected official I spoke with today were all DELIGHTEDLY disbelieving.
To say it again, we can only surmise that it was the voice of the people that made this happen.
YOU, dear friends and beautiful strangers, it was your expression of righteous outrage at housing human beings like packages.
YOU saw it for the moral horror that it is. And you spoke up. And, at least on this day, that made a difference.
“Remember this day, for there will be many more bad days to come.”
Even today, those of us in this fight wanted to start thinking of the next thing.
Don’t.
Stop.
Savor this.
You need to do that.
You need to be reminded that there really is still a world of hope beyond the world of traumatic and triggering stress responses we are becoming far too acclimated to.
Put this day away in a dusty drawer filled with you most cherished memories.
In my office desk, I have a drawer filled with every positive letter anyone has ever written me. On my lowest days, I open up that drawer, take one at random, and read it. It lifts me out of myself, and reminds me that I really have had good days in the past, and that I will one day again.
Treat this day like that kind of hopeful letter.
Put it in a drawer to yourself. Let it be a future encouragement on some dark future day, still to come. Because, dear friends, the days are still likely to get darker.
“Remember this day,” because it is all but certain ICE is already planning their next move, almost certainly for some other warehouse in North Texas.
“Remember this day,” because tomorrow Hutchins will still need that grocery store.
“Remember this day,” because ICE continues to detain thousands more innocent migrants, guilty of no crime, whatsoever.
“Remember this day,” because somewhere our nation, some of those innocent migrants will soon be stored like packages inside some warehouse that did not get stopped.
“Remember this day,” because as early as tomorrow morning, I assure you, there will another crying family member at the respite center at the Dallas ICE Field Office. Their confused tears will fall because they WERE “following the rules,” and their loved one will be detained, anyway.
“Remember this day,” because tomorrow somebody will be tackled in the hallways of immigration court, and dragged behind some door, never to be seen again.
“Remember this day,” because no one can promise you there will not be another Rene Good or Alex Pretti.
“Remember this day,” because tomorrow our nation’s highest leaders will again drive cultural wedges into the hearts of American neighborhoods, and between all of us who seek to live together in peace.
“Remember this day,” because you will personally have some dark day when it feels all is lost…and you will need to remember this day.
EF
Good morning,thank you