Enough is Enough

Enough is enough! I do not believe we have the power to measure pain and judge whose is worse. I believe that all that is possible is for us to be awake enough that we are able to see events that are happening today in light of the past and take action. The point is not to compare the depth and amount of living hell between these two boys and decide which is worse. The point is to note all signs of indignity and cruelty as they are occurring as they occur.

If we can do that then perhaps the horrors of the past will lessen as we move into the future. It is absolutely imperative to do what we can to stop atrocities as they repeat themselves. That includes not spending our energy on bickering among ourselves about the details of the wrenching comparison between these two children. Just stop it! It’s too late for us to help the child on the left, to cease his pain which was tragically assuaged by death. However, it is absolutely essential that we remember him and all the thousands of other children like him and that his and their memory continue to haunt us. It must hound us and must continue to take us up short and in doing so hold us responsible in our knowledge. To evoke us to respond right now, for the child on the right and all the children alive and suffering today that he represents

Wake up please! Pain among the innocents is amassing right now in the present moment, in front of our eyes, all over the world. It is right here in our own backyard. The signs of atrocities like the treatment of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany and the enslavement of the Africans during the American Antebellum era are everywhere in the present moment. Look closely, the hispanic child is young and innocent. Like all children he has absolutely no power over his own circumstances. He was removed from his parents through no fault of his own. No matter what side of the political fence you stand on you must be able to see that. He does not know where his loved ones are and in fact, we know as adults who have seen history play itself out time and time again, he may never see them again.

He and his camp mates futures are in limbo while he dons the outward signs not only by his internment environment, his color ethnicity and his clear body language, but also by the number pinned to him. There it is for all of us to see, for all of us to recognize. Where else have we seen this?This child’s angst and humiliation are happening in real time and what is happening to him will, with great certainty, scar him for life. He is Mental and emotional as he is separated from and denied the kind of compassionate treatment all children have always needed and deserve. Seeing this should now be intolerable for us to stand by and simply watch. This type of realism afforded by the invention of the portable camera has been in use since 1880.

Take note, as this photo of this Hispanic child reveals aa alarming step we have allowed to advance toward dehumanization that we have seen before. Anyone who has taught large group of children can tell you a number is not necessary. We are able to tell them apart, we are able to know their names. A name tag is viable until they become known to those caring for him and responsible for him. Please open your eyes and take note to all such demeaning infractions against children living in the world today. The number tagged to this youth is a blatant sign for us to respond to in order to change the brutal course of history in real time. His number, along with his isolating, inhumane experience and his predicament spawned by social disadvantage are red flags. If we connect the dots and see the all too familiar steps to disassociate him from us, perhaps we can change his future and in doing so change our collective futures through our heritage known as “humanity”. It is not an over statement to say that the future of all of our children are in our hands as we are powerful and they are not. When joined together in love, compassion, resistance and protest his plight and all the plights of the disenfranchised and disadvantaged in our country can cease to marr our souls.

Please hold your knee jerk offense to these pictures being shown side by side. Take a deep breath. The point of this meme is not to say which boy’s situation is worse. The message is to tear our attention away from our introversion, from the sufferings of our own identities, of our own cultures/tribes/nationalities and from ourselves. The past is gone. Yesterday has played out. Today is playing out. Every new day is our future. Please friends, look sharply around you and question what is happening everywhere in plain sight. The atrocities we as human kind have inflicted upon ourselves in the past and upon the lives of those who suffered and died as a result of them must be our school. The lessons learned from them, must be our cues and our motivation for change, to clarify re-directives, to pen our new directives and to inspire our present action.

All of the injustices and suffering we are witnessing have happened for far too long. What came before this time is enough! Stop weeping for all past infractions and turn to the present. Re-imagine the future, re-imagine equality. Do it now, so that the second child in these two photos does not turn out like the first and so that our future societies, global society, may turn toward a better day. Heal the future of all our children by calling out to others not to retreat in fear and confusion but to head with conviction, determination and above all the unity of our commonality into the fray. Join together and do what ever you are able to do so that we can at last, at the very least, as a people, as a conscious species, confront and bring a cease to all of these way too familiar steps to annihilation. It is time to confront the 1%’s heartless greed and their twisted excuses. It’s time to ignore what they disseminate among us. Their arguments and messages are meant to confuse us, separate us, bicker and fight among ourselves and even more insidiously to cause us to disassociate the plight of others from our own. Alison Barrows-Young.