Migration and Border Crossings Conference @Migration_BCCon

LIVE NOW: The #NWHLAllStar Skills Challenge from Ford Ice Center in Nashville, TN!

"The thing about a lament is you have to tell the truth. It's the only way to get out the suffering. If you continue to perpetuate the lie which has caused the problem then you perpetuate the problem." -@emtownes #BorderCrossings19

"Lament can be a gateway into hope. And hope in this case is another way to say faith." -@emtownes #bordercrossings19

"Migrant" and "asylum seeker" are temporary names that do not reflect the person behind the label. -@emtownes #BorderCrossings19

"We demand restored humanity." -@emtownes #BorderCrossings19

"Hope is one more piece of the fabric of the universe. One more way to signal this journey that we are on. It is the sign that Emmaus is not the end of the journey, but a stop along the way." -@emtownes #BorderCrossings19

"We are far too human to try and do this life all by ourselves. We cannot always be in control." -@emtownes #BorderCrossings19

"Engaging hope is to seek to live our faith in the face of the difficult reality that far too many of us live in whirlpools of catastrophe and it is up to us to help folk who live in this and seek to flee from it every day." @emtownes #BorderCrossings19

"The reality is that all forms of ethical reflections tend to forget that all human actions are incomplete. We are historical and ahistorical, ethical and unethical."-@emtownes #BorderCrossings19

"We must tell the truth about what is going on. Back in the old days, an "alternative fact" was called a lie!" -@emtownes #BorderCrossings19

"We need divine help to confess that which we have done and that which we have not done." -@emtownes #BorderCrossings19

"What must we do to move into our faith? We must look to Ezekiel and turn lament. In the Hebrew Bible, lament is the beginning of the healing process." -@emtownes #BorderCrossings19

"Prophets have a nasty habit of reminding us what we already know. They remind us that we are not to be the poster children of the status quo. We must instead return to a bone-deep faith." -@emtownes #BorderCrossings19

"Too often we are ill-equipped to take up the challenge of understanding what it is we have helped create and what we have a vested interest in maintaining." @emtownes #bordercrossings19

"We should never forget the power of stories. They locate us in time- past, present, and future. They clarify accountability." -Emilie Townes #BorderCrossings19

"Dealing with displacement and trauma is not a linear process." -Emilie Townes #BorderCrossings19

"As we speak about the effects of displacement and trauma, we must turn to communal lament that will help guide our way. -Emilie Townes #BorderCrossings19

"If we demonize immigrants then we do not have to acknowledge that migrants from the south have witnessed the destruction of their homes or victims of life-threatening violence." -Emilie Townes #BorderCrossings19

"We must see our southern border as a refugee crisis rather than casting Brown bodies as a threat to National Security or the reasons why we refuse to offer a living wage to millions of farm workers." -Emilie Townes #BorderCrossings19

"While immigration at the southern border has changed in the last decade, the demographics of immigrants has changed in ways that border control is not designed or trained for. Instead of single men from Mexico, it is asylum-seeking families." -Emilie Townes #BorderCrossings19