To the Editor:

Along with my wife Xochitl and three other women from Statesville, I had the privilege on Wednesday, November 19, to act as scouts in Charlotte for Siembra NC. Siembra NC is a grassroots organization that, among many other endeavors, serves as an ICE watch program. As a scout, you are asked to patrol routes that are frequented by ICE. In this case, we were monitoring Border Patrol agents who were active in Charlotte. If we encountered them, we were asked to alert others of their whereabouts. If the Border Patrol personnel were actively detaining someone, we were to record their actions and try to gather the name of the individual being detained and contact information so their loved ones could be contacted.

We encountered eight Border Patrol vehicles, which had created a barrier around an active detainment of a Hispanic woman. She had been walking from a grocery store when they spotted her. After she attempted to flee, they had her detained behind a small store. Our small group, which grew to a much larger group including neighbors, shop owners, and customers, confronted them and started recording their actions. The agents actively detaining the woman and the woman were out of view behind the building. When they emerged from behind the building the woman’s face was an image of terror that I had never seen before. We spoke to the woman, asking her to tell us her name. She turned to us and collapsed to the ground. She was quickly picked up by the Border Patrol agents and put into a truck and driven away.

After we got back into our vehicle, I began to weep.

We’ve been told that “illegal aliens” are criminals and need to be removed from our country. What I saw was a terrified woman who had been walking back from a grocery store. Her life had changed in an instant. She looked far from a criminal to me.

My friend, Steve Shoemaker, recently wrote an article in the Baptism News entitled “Forgiving the church.” This got me thinking a lot about the idea of forgiveness and how I can forgive our country for the culture of fear that has been created for brown people today. In understanding history, I forgave our country for the displacement of Native Americans, including the Trail of Tears, the forced walk that started in Western N.C. and left thousands dead. I forgave our country for the institution of slavery that plagued our country for more than two centuries. I forgave our country for the Jim Crow era that created a second-class system with limited rights and opportunities for Black people through intimidation and violence. I forgave our country when America citizens of Japanese heritage were rounded up during World War II and placed in internment camps and treated like prisoners.

It’s often said we should learn from history so we don’t repeat it. It appears, as a nation, that we have difficulty learning from our past.

How do I forgive a country that is creating such a culture of fear right now for our brown neighbors and friends but given me so much, a country that has blessed me with a life filled with freedom, education, access to its natural beauty and opportunity to generate wealth to allow me to live comfortably and share? 

Our nation is a human institution. As my friend Steve wrote, to begin to forgive does not mean hiding from past misdeeds, but embracing them and confessing our brokenness and the ways we’ve wounded the lives of others.

Leaders will emerge and a time of healing and growth in how we care for and love each other will come. After each of those misdeeds I shared, a period came afterwards of confession and growth of empowerment and opportunity for those our country had hurt. Perhaps not always to the degree wished or not without setbacks, but our nation did heal and grow.

Maya Angelou has a wonderful quote: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better do better.”

I know many are doing the best we can until our nation knows better. And when our nation knows better, I know as a nation we will do better.

John Koppelmeyer
Statesville