On Repeat: Love Trumps Hate.
{Photo credit: Amy Blanaru}
Sunday, in Boston, I had the honor and privilege as a proud American to stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with all colors, genders, and creeds to protest Donald Trump’s anti-immigration and Muslim ban.
On my way to Copley Square, I saw people from both low income housing and multi-million-dollar brownstones exiting their respective dwellings with protest signs. I was filled with a flood of emotions and thoughts about my country and my personal history.
Donning a sign, “Proud Daughter of Refugee Immigrant and United States Veteran”, I thought of my father’s and our family’s plight to come to the US. My paternal grandmother, of Armenian descent, was born in Romania in 1924 after her family left Armenia due to the Armenian genocide. I vividly remember her saying that they chose Romania because it was a “Christian country”.
My grandmother described Romania as “the Paris of Eastern Europe before the war” and would revel when telling stories about the Black Sea. “The Paris of Eastern Europe” was destroyed by Communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu. In 1949, my father was born in Bucharest, Romania to an Armenian mother and a Romanian father.
By the time they left for Beirut, Lebanon in the early 1960s as refugees, they had nothing due to Communism. My grandmother told me that when they came to the US in 1965, they only had $100 and knew three words my grandfather had seen in a movie: boy, girl, and love.
They were among the lucky ones; as refugees, they were sponsored by my sister’s godparents and received zero assistance from the US government. They got two, sometimes three, jobs, paid taxes, and learned English. If they did not work, their sponsors would be responsible, not the government.
My father enrolled in high school in Salem, MA in the mid-1960s and spent two tours in Vietnam upon completing high school. At the time, he believed he was fighting a war against communism. He met my blond-haired, blue-eyed, Irish-Catholic American mother after the service, who, much to my grandmother’s dismay, was not Armenian or, at the very least, Romanian.
She did say, however, “At least she is white, Christian, and pretty.” They married and had my sister and me. My father wouldn’t talk about Vietnam, but my mother told me that upon his return from Vietnam, someone spat in his face in an airport and called him a “baby-killer”.
My father died at 53 years old, 30 years after being honorably discharged from the military, the day after my 20th birthday, 12/26/02. It would be another 10 years before the Veterans Affairs would add his cause of death to the list of conditions caused by Agent Orange exposure.
I never heard a racial slur in my house growing up, and I know that if I am ever blessed with children, they will never hear any slurs. I hope they show their children pictures of this protest, because as my mother always said, “We are all God’s children.” I am so incredibly lucky to have been born in the US and have first amendment rights.
I felt compelled to protest, steps away from the site of the Boston Marathon bombing, as the proud daughter of a refugee immigrant and United States Veteran, to chant “No wall, no ban, no hate, no fear, no hate, immigrants are welcome here,” “Stand up fight back,” and “This is what democracy looks like.”
{Photo credit: Amy Blanaru}
I don’t condone grandma’s slurs, but if I had to guess, I would say they were due to fear based on her family’s history of oppression and persecution. When a cousin married a Jewish man, my grandmother made her dismay known, stating, “Oh no, we mix the Jews and the Gentiles, what is next, Muslims?” And yes, grandma, the probability of a Muslin next is high, as I have dated several.
If she were alive, I would remind her of the incredible power of one of the three words my refugee immigrant grandfather taught her after seeing a movie: Love.
{Photo credit: Amy Blanaru}
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Amy Blanaru is a left-leaning Celtic Gypsy based in Boston. She works in addiction treatment and likes her pasta al dente. You can find her on Facebook.
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