All institutions have a purpose. Their reason for being is to succeed at something: making money, doing good for others, or enjoying our chosen life style.
Caring for the vulnerable is an often overlooked calling.
Some organizations do serve society’s neglected and forgotten. At points in our cooperative past, credit unions responded to those left behind by creating communities of self-help.
Who speaks for those without a voice? Sometimes that role falls to a folk songwriter.
In 1948 Woody Guthrie wrote what became the folk song Deportee. While the specifics that prompted his lyrics are different from today’s, those persons taken away are still treated the same.
In the poem, Guthrie assigned symbolic identities to those rounded up and put on a plane, only to die: “Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita; adiós, mis amigos, Jesús y María…”[6]
Here is the song using Guthries’ words by the Kingston Trio in the late 1950’s.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2tUJZWfAO8)
The Message Returns in 2013
Credit unions are founded on nurturing relationships. Often these individuals and groups were viewed as unimportant people by those in authority.
Immigrants don’t just perform essential tasks that others shun. Their presence has helped present the United States as a unique destination to the vulnerable across the globe. Today however, these recent arrivals have become targets of cacophonous cruelty by leaders in our federal government.
How will self-help communities founded on the value of each person’s dignity react? Can credit unions be seen as pillars of their communities when they stay silent as they are torn apart? Aren’t co-op pillars more than balance sheets of assets?
Here is the same music from 2013 during another deportation crackdown:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR_AC0E0rgA)
This administration’s inhuman deportation blitz is captured in Guthrie’s prophetic words: “You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane, all they will call you is deportees.”
No names. Denying the identity of others is the opposite of cooperative and human values. It strikes at the soul of America. If you can’t raise your voice, at least play the music so others might hear the cry.
100%. Will credit unions be brave and bold enough to stand up for the cooperative principles and basic human decency, or will they play politics with human life and wither under the blatant cruelty and lack of basic decency that leaders in this Administration display.