Several things this week make me immensely proud to live in the Worcester area. Today's Big Dipper ice cream fest at Elm Park was run by Children's Friend Inc. and included a rainbow of teen-age volunteers and a rainbow of families who originated in all parts of the world and now live in Worcester. It was the perfect anecdote to the harsh albino visions of TrumpWorld: People of all colors helping children regardless of color, religion or national origin.
At our gig at a local school for Make Music Day on Thursday we were also surrounded by the smiling children of immigrants. Congressman Jim McGovern sent out a great letter this week on the subject of family separation.
“I've traveled to Central America many times over the past 30 years. Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are among the most violent countries in the world, with some of the highest rates of murdered women,” McGovern wrote. “Their daily lives are often filled with great trauma and terror.”
“Many of the families we see being separated today have fled this extreme violence and abuse to seek asylum in the United States. Their right to do so has long been recognized by international and federal law.“
Worcester Mayor Joe Petty was serving ice cream today. State Sen. Harriet Chandler, now president of the Massachusetts senate, sponsored a booth.
Worcester is more than a melting pot. It is a place where people of all races and creeds can live together in harmony. A place where the unfortunate are not ignored or dehumanized. A place that tries to give everyone a chance.
In the run up to the Civil War, lots of people from Massachusetts moved to Kansas so they could vote to make it a free state. That's why the main street in my birthplace, Lawrence, Kansas, is named Massachusetts Street. And that's why the name Washburn is as visible there as it is here in Worcester.
Today -- while parts of the country seem to be morphing into an appalling mix of apartheid, the confederacy and the Third Reich -- Worcester still shows us what America is supposed to be.