Once again into the streets...

outside Saint Casimir Cleveland

praying a decade

Once again we find ourselves outside on the street before the church of Saint Casimir Cleveland petitioning an appeal. People did not have approval to stand outside the closed church for 139 Sundays after the parishioners were evicted, yet they persisted. Saint Casimir is now opened, many believing with the intervention of Mary the Mother of God. The same Mary of Guadalupe, Czestochowa, and Fatima. Families of northeastern Ohio who came from Meso-America, have made pilgrimage to Saint Casimir Church and have asked for Mother Mary's intercession to keep their families together in this moment of travail. Mary wants families to remain together, but we are having political troubles, which some use as a reason to separate families.

This has been a problem for years. The deportation of people is a political industry in the United States. And now matters have gotten worse. The United States is now subject to a regime commanded by a fascist buffoon. His first campaign speech was a ridiculously vicious attack on Mexicans, one so patterned that it sounded like a hoax; but no, the man was believed. And now he has given a cruel enforcement policy impetus to be more onerous and harsh. People who fall under scrutiny, without proper papers, enter a world of what exists written in dystopian fiction. One minister, who spoke to-day, likened it to only being comparable to things that happened under Nazi Germany.

To-day there came together HOLA, a local Latino rights group, led by Veronica Dahlberg and supporters from American born northeastern Ohio residents, a few from the parish of St. Casimir, and a few religious people of other communities, and legal activists, and friends. They listened to a few speakers, and prayed a decade of the rosary. Some of this was covered by local press, and a national film documentarian, David Sutherland, who is working on a project for PBS.