“Them”

“Never again,” we cry. We wish.
We remember the six million,
we think the Nazis were cruel and crazy,
we think all that was so strange and faraway.
We look at the past, we look far off,
we look away.

That’s all it takes
for it to happen again.

We think “them,”
not “us” not “my people.”
We never think.  “I’m part of that.”

You see, it happens all the time.

Jews, Gays, immigrants,
Palestinians, Indians, prisoners,
the infirm, the mentally ill,
victims of trafficking,
migrant workers, kid laborers,
the anonymous poor in Africa,
it doesn’t matter.  If we can’t
think of them and say “us,”
we are doomed.
all it takes is the word “them”

to light the furnaces.
(~Steve Garnaas-Holmes)

 

What might it be like for you to think “us” instead of “them” today?