![Image: \"Migrant Mother,\" by Dorothea Lange, Public Domain.](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1668\/2023\/04\/Grapes-of-Wrath-300x225.jpg\")
1936.<\/em><\/p>\n The lusty strains of Benny Goodman\u2019s orchestra fill a Santa Barbara caf\u00e9, nourished by the variegated aroma of coffee, bacon and citrus bloom. A man pushes aside a plate of half-eaten special, lights up a smoke and grabs the morning paper. Inside, he discovers a black and white photo.<\/p>\n Greasy Dust Bowl farmer, shirtless with worn overalls.<\/em><\/p>\n Exhausted wife with baby in tow. <\/em><\/p>\n A passel of kids.<\/em><\/p>\n The sagging porch of a derelict shack. <\/em><\/p>\n A wasteland of dead trees and sterile dirt.<\/em><\/p>\n The Californian grimaces. In his mind, he hears Dust Bowl Pa saying, \u201cCain\u2019t wreck this land no worse than we already done. I hear they got free money out west, falling from trees. Pack up, kin folk. Time to freeload off them rich Californians.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJust look at them,\u201d says the Californian with a sneer. \u201cEating stolen watermelons, sitting there scratching their lice and scabs.\u201d<\/p>\n He feels the bile rising in his throat.<\/p>\n \u201cDamn Okies<\/em>,\u201d he jeers.<\/p>\n The slur oozes up from his gut and spills out his face, burning with caustic overtones of greed, sloth, dirt, disease, depravity and fear.<\/p>\n Damn Okies.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cLazy sons-a-bitches comin\u2019 to wreck our land.\u201d<\/p>\n The article explains how Arizonans are mad as adders that Californians are turning back hundreds of dirty hoboes at the California-Arizona border. Nobody wants the Okies, but nobody bothers asking them why they\u2019re here. If they did, they\u2019d get an earful of truth about corrupt politicians, greedy banks, scandalous farm bureaus and catastrophic soil management policies. When hot winds swept the farms out to sea, folks didn\u2019t know who to blame.<\/p>\n So they blamed the Okies.<\/em><\/p>\n That\u2019s when folk who could<\/em> took Route 66 west. Those who couldn\u2019t<\/em> stayed behind to fertilize the barren soil with their wasted carcasses. Unfortunately, the optimistic Okies who made it to California got their second kick to the crotch.<\/p>\n \u201cGo home,\u201d they were told.<\/p>\n Ha.<\/em><\/p>\n As if an Okie had anywhere to call home.<\/em><\/p>\n Just goes to show you how some things don\u2019t change.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ===================================================<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Fast forward.<\/em><\/p>\n The peppy vibes of a jazz quartet fill a suburban caf\u00e9. You push aside your half-eaten breakfast, grab your smartphone and read the latest headline.<\/p>\n \u201cHundreds Arrested in ICE Raids.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a photo of the usual suspects and the racial slurs flood your mind as if from a broken levee.<\/p>\n Illegal aliens.<\/em><\/p>\n Lazy bastards.<\/em><\/p>\n Wetbacks come to steal our jobs.<\/em><\/p>\n Don\u2019t even bother learning the language.<\/em><\/p>\n The words reek of greed, sloth, dirt, disease, depravity and fear.<\/p>\n Some things will never change, no matter how \u201ccivilized\u201d we become.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ===================================================<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Close your eyes and imagine Dust Bowls in far-off places like Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia. See the dust stirred up by war and climate change. See good families trying to raise goats, dates or grain. See them run off not<\/em> by corrupt banks and farm policies, but by greedy international politics.<\/p>\n See a fleet of monsters pushing these people off their land \u2014 not Depression-era dust storms and tractors, but tanks, armies, corrupt politicians, draught and oppressive heat. Watch their homes, gardens and neighborhoods turn to toxic rubble. See survivors lose their families and start walking.<\/p>\n Watch these \u201cfaceless\u201d dynamics destabilize communities in rainforests, savannahs, islands, mountains, deserts and plains. See the common theme of loss and despair. As it was in 1930s Oklahoma, so it is in 1900s Central America, 1960s Africa, 2010s Middle East and many points in between. See climate change and greed-based deforestation add to the misery, robbing people of pastures and plantings. There are so many similarities that you can\u2019t help but connect the dots.<\/p>\n Soon, an unprecedented one percent of the world\u2019s population will be counted as refugees.<\/em><\/p>\n Try as you may to shut it out, a small voice in your heart shouts, These \u201cstatistics\u201d have faces and feelings. They abandon homes with blisters on their feet, pain in their heart and horror in their heads. Red and yellow, black and white, they are all precious in God\u2019s sight.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ===================================================<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Today\u2019s Okies wear burkas, turbans, sarongs and saris.<\/p>\n It\u2019s The Grapes of Wrath \u2014 Revisited<\/em>, as Okies take their own Route 66s to places like California, New York, Berlin and Oslo. Some drown in overturned rafts. Others starve at border crossings. Many sell their bodies to sweat shops and brothels, to drug cartels and human traffickers.<\/p>\n It\u2019s amazing what a human being will do to survive.<\/em><\/p>\n These displaced persons have seen the billboards that read, \u201cGive me the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n So they come. <\/em><\/p>\n Then \u2026 when these huddled masses squeeze up against the penumbra of the blessed wings, they discover that their troubles have only begun.<\/p>\n Greedy bastards. Slam the golden door in their goddamn faces. Send the illegals back home.<\/em><\/p>\n Ha, ha.<\/em><\/p>\n As if they have a home.<\/em><\/p>\n We\u2019d like to believe that all this heartache is caused by impersonal, faceless dynamics, like those that supposedly drove the Okies out of the Dust Bowl.<\/p>\n But we know better now.<\/p>\n The problem is not faceless.<\/em><\/p>\n We have seen the faces that cause this suffering \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u2026 and the faces are we.<\/em><\/p>\n ~~~~~~<\/p>\n I\u2019ve done my damndest to rip a reader\u2019s nerves to rags. I don\u2019t want him satisfied \u2026 \u00a0I tried to write this the way lives are being lived, not the way books are written. \u2014 John Steinbeck [Introduction to The Grapes of Wrath]<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n[This excerpt happens late in The Grapes of Wrath<\/em>. The Joads are squatting in a windowless boxcar, surrounded by a flooded stream, when all their dreams perish as Rose of Sharon (\u201cRosasharn\u201d) has a miscarriage. With the little corpse in a box, Uncle John ventures out into the gray, rainy dawn. Standing beside the muddy waters, he speaks fiercely to the child:\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGo down an\u2019 tell \u2018em. Go down in the street an\u2019 rot an\u2019 tell \u2018em that way. That\u2019s the way you can talk. Don\u2019 even know if you was a boy or a girl. Ain\u2019t gonna find out. Go on down now, an\u2019 lay in the street. Maybe they\u2019ll know then.\u201d He guided the box gently out into the current and let it go.<\/em>[1]<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Image: \u201cMigrant Mother,\u201d by Dorothea Lange, Public Domain.<\/p>\n