For Portlanders familiar with the trauma and “extreme vetting” that refugees have already endured, Donald Trump’s executive order suspending refugee resettlement is dark, petty and unnecessary.
“I’ve never seen an administration or a president act like this,” says Mike McDonald, a founding board member of the Refugee Care Collective and a guy who works in five of the seven Muslim-majority countries on the White House banned list.
“It’s ‘Ready, Fire, Aim,’ and I have no idea what they’re aiming at.”
“For a lot of folks, it feels very personal,” notes Josh Butler, the pastor of local and global outreach at Imago Dei Community. “All the churches I know are on the same page. We’re reeling. We’ve built so many relationships with vulnerable families who come from trauma and violence.
“Fear is galvanizing the rhetoric Trump is using to leverage his platform. As Christians, we’re not to be driven by fear, but by love. Perfect love casts out fear. But I don’t know how many people are letting it be cast out.”
They are enthralled by a narcissist. It doesn’t bode well for what’s to come.
“The fact that we’re operating under misconceptions that make us afraid has implications far greater than we realize,” says Megan Tragethon, the Refugee Care Collective’s executive director.
But before we despair, a Jan. 27 gathering at Marion County’s child welfare office, of all places, provides a vision for how we can support the most vulnerable among us.
In that crowded room, the Portland Leadership Foundation unveiled Every Child, an initiative that dramatically expands its support for Oregon’s foster children and families.
Leading the cheers in Salem? Oregon’s Department of Human Services.
The implications of this evolving partnership are profound.
The state’s foster-care system has long been overwhelmed. Armed with a $2.7 billion general-fund budget, DHS still can’t find homes for the neediest children, or properly monitor the kids under its care. Witness the Give Us This Day debacle.
“Case loads have skyrocketed,” says Rep. Duane Stark, R-Grants Pass, a long-time foster parent. “When you apply that much pressure to an organization that’s already stretched thin, it’s going to break.”
In 2012, you may recall, Jillana and Luke Goble helped refurbish the child-welfare office at Southeast 122nd and Powell.
Suitably inspired, the Portland Leadership Foundation and three dozen area churches rallied behind the Gobles, recruiting new foster families and enlisting hundreds of volunteers to assist beleaguered agency employees.
The “Every Child” initiative hopes to expand that effort to all 36 Oregon counties, connecting the agency to a local non-profit in each corner of the state.
This is cool in a number of ways. It allows Oregonians to get involved in foster care without going full Navy Seal and becoming foster parents.
You can assemble welcome baskets. Drive foster kids to family visits. Volunteer to baby-sit so foster parents can find refuge in dinner and a movie.
Better yet, the initiative finds common ground for the public agencies and good Samaritans who must work together to solve this country’s most intractable problems.
“If you knew there was a two-year-old in your neighborhood who needed a place to sleep, we think you’d step up,” says Ben Sand, chief exec at the Portland Leadership Foundation.
“You thought it was the government’s job. And the government is saying, ‘We can’t do it without you.'”
Trump isn’t saying that, of course. But his election and executive orders may inspire the outrage and unrest that will change our culture.
Every Child, Sand argues, is just one way to harness that energy and put it to glorious use.
For foster children. For all those who may soon be stripped of affordable health care. For Syrian refugees.
“We should show up at the airport to protest,” Sand notes. “But we need to have the same energy to show up at the airport when the refugees arrive.”
If and when they ever do again with a fear monger in the White House.
“It’s the depth of love we show our neighbors that determines who we are,” Megan Tragethon says.
And for the best of things to happen in this strange new world, we better dive deep.
— Steve Duin
stephen.b.duin@gmail.com
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