• No One is Illegal

    “You who are so-called illegal aliens must know that no human being is ‘illegal’. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?”  Elie Wiesel, holocaust survivor, nobel peace prize recipient. If you search for the phrase “No One is Illegal” – you’ll see that its an idea that’s catching on.  People are finding the idea relevant in places such as Vancouver, the UK, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Melbourne, Tubingen, Poland and Sweden.  Organisations such as change.org and colorlines are speaking out against use of…

  • Only Water in a Stranger’s Tears

    ‘It’s only water in a stranger’s tears.’  I start with this line partly because I’ll always get in a musical reference if I can (it’s a lyric from the song Not One of Us, by Peter Gabriel), but also because it sums up to me what defining ‘the other’ (the foreigner) seems to be all about: denying the humanity of a particular group of people.  And perhaps nothing defines our humanity as much as our tears, whether from grief, distress, fear, or even happiness.  We shed tears when emotion, that quintessentially human experience, overwhelms us.  We cry with sympathy, too, and not just for people we know.  You’d be forgiven…