Journey for Justice Day 4: December 4th Laredo to Ulvade

Laredo to Uvalde

We met early at the base of the bridge over the Rio Grande where refugees attempt to swim across to u.s. ground. Because it was heavy misting, the organizers canceled the morning action and we headed out to Uvalde.

When I first read the itinerary for this caravan several weeks before it started, I was more concerned about finding free or low-cost places to spend the night than the actual places we were going to. So I didn’t make the connection between Uvalde and the murders of the young children at their school.

The organizers want us to drive in caravan formation from one destination to another but I was having great serious turmoil about going to Uvalde, once I realized it was our intention to go there.

I began expressing my horror and misgivings to other members of the caravan and still wavered between going or skipping. I felt it was exploitive and how can we invade these people’s privacy and pain.

Most people thought it was important to show the families our support in their healing process after such a huge violent loss. Other people thought it was important because most of the children, families, town are first, second, third – or more – generation immigrants and we are on this caravan to witness the status and conditions of immigrants, to stand against border killings, border wall, border police; and spread the information about the trials and challenges still facing this community.

Others thought we need to be sharing their grief, not that their grief is in any way comparable to ours or fathomable in any real way, but it’s important to let families know they are not alone and we will not forget them.

But lastly, one of the men who had organized and hosted this part of the caravan had himself lost a relative to the murder. He told me several families had asked us to come as part of our journey for justice.

So I’m going with immense apprehension and intense sadness. How to face a family, a child, a mother or grandmother, a community who has suffered from such horrific violence. How to offer comfort without expecting comfort to be offered. What words to say, what meanings to impart, which ways are conducive to offering support, and which only exacerbate this gaping wound.

And my tears. I HATE crying in public and go to great extremes to keep my tears for the solitude of the night. I am crying now, gasping with the pain, sending a child to school to have them murdered before they can return home. How is that even a scuttling thought in anyone’s mind, let alone an experience?