JAZZMAN CHRONICLES IN THE AGE OF TRUMP: JANUARY 2018.
IMMIGRATION: A
RADICAL PROPOSAL
BY JACK RANDOM
You came to this country without invitation. We did not ask you to come. We did not want you to stay. It was against our wishes that you
invaded our lands and invited more of your kind to come until a trickle became
a creek and a creek became a river that swallowed a continent.
Whatever good will greeted you
in the beginning you have worn it out.
We did not need the fruits of your labor. This great and fertile land served its people well before
you arrived and it will do so long after you’ve departed. We have heard more than enough of your
self-proclaimed contributions to our society and little concerning the harm you
have done. Before your
arrival crime was a fraction of what it is today. Murder, drug use and thievery have increased a hundred fold
since your people decided to make your homes here.
Since you came to this land
without consent and remained here without authorization we must consider you
outlaws. The law is the law. You either abide by the law or you defy
it. If you came to this country without
the authorization and consent of its citizens, by the laws of man, nature and
God, you committed a crime. You
are therefore criminals. Your
children and your children’s children are the products of a criminal act. To sanctify them in perpetuity is to
reward criminality and to sanction lawlessness.
The color of your skin is of no concern. Your values are of no interest. Since your seminal act was one of
defiance and criminality, we may presume that your values are deficient and
that you passed some measure of your deficiencies onto your offspring. Since you left the country of your
birth and heritage – a nation that by all rights deserved your loyalty – we may
presume that your patriotism is as thin as a sheath of plastic. It is malleable and bends to the will
of whoever currently holds power over you.
You came to our land and refused
to honor our ways. You built your
own communities separate from our own.
You built towns and cities with walls to protect you from us when in
fact it we required protection from you.
You cut down our forests, stole our resources, poisoned our water,
destroyed our homes and told us we must learn and honor your ways, your words
and your laws. You ordered us to
leave our homes and forced us to live on lands that no one wanted. But when your precious metals and black
rocks and burning liquids were discovered there, you forced us onto new lands
that no one wanted.
You called this the law because
it was written on paper and you forced us to comply. When we fought back you showed us how powerful your weapons
of destruction were. You showed us
at Sand Creek, the Washita River, the Greasy Grassy and dozens of other sites
made sacred by the blood of the fallen.
We recognize your laws for what
they are and what they are not.
They do not honor justice or fairness or right against wrong. They are the laws of greed and power. You take what you want and destroy what
you will. You go to war without
reason in lands far away. You want
to bend people everywhere to your will as you have tried to bend us but we will
bend no further.
We have tried to teach you to
live with the land but your hearts are closed. We have tried to show you where your recklessness leads but
you close your eyes. We can close
our eyes no longer. You are
destroying the land the Great Spirit entrusted to us. It is time for the great experiment to end.
We have allowed you to live
among us for hundreds of years and we have come to the conclusion that you will
not change. You will continue to
take more than you need. You will
continue to destroy the land. You
will continue to poison the air and water. You will preserve nothing for future generations.
So we have come to this
conclusion: You must go. You must return to where you came
from. Maybe they will welcome you. Maybe they will not. But you are no long wanted here. We ask you to take your money, your
machines and your weapons and go.
We are not uncaring. We know that all of your people are not
the same. There are those who
argue that some of you should be allowed to stay. But the elders say:
If we let only a few remain, soon there will be many and they will
reclaim the land. The cycle that
leads only to destruction will begin again.
This we cannot allow. So go. We wish you well.
Mitakuye Oyasin.
Jazz.
JACK
RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES, VOLUMES I-X (CROW DOG PRESS
2015), WASICHU – THE KILLING SPIRIT, HARD TIMES – THE WRATH OF AN ANGRY GOD AND
PAWNS TO PLAYERS – THE STAIRWAY SCANDAL, A MATCH FOR THE WHITE HOUSE AND THE
PUTIN GAMBIT (CROW DOG PRESS). HIS
FIRST NOVEL, GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION, WAS PUBLISHED BY DRY BONES PRESS (2000)
AND RE-ISSUED BY CROW DOG PRESS (2017).
