Douglas
Turner Ward (1930-2021) wrote a searing
play, Days
of Absence that
depicted the way life might be like in a small
southern town where all of the Black folks
disappeared.
Predictably,
white folks could not walk and chew gum,
neither at one time nor at the same time. They
could not boil water, feed their children, nor
manage their own feeding. The fictional town
just about falls apart in the absence of the
Black labor backbone. The play ends when, the
next day, one of the missing Black folks
reappears and feigns ignorance about the
disappearance.
Days
of Absence won
both a Drama Desk Award in 1965 and a Tony
Award in 1966. It captured the notice of
the Ford Foundation; they awarded Douglas
Turner Ward a grant that he used to establish
the Negro Ensemble Company. The sardonic
play, with no definitive conclusion, is a
metaphor for those who are invisible, the
people who serve our food, clean our homes,
run the buses and trains, and facilitate lives
of people who are seemingly too important to
notice them.
Where
is the 21st century Douglas
Turner Ward, the playwright or author who will
write about the days of absence that immigrant
workers might stage to underline their
essential importance in our economy. In
agriculture and hospitality, and in science
and medicine, as well as in other fields, we
will be the net losers if the 47th President’s
diabolical scheme to deport 3000 people a day
is successful. If ICE gets to its quota
and works every day, it means that we will
lose more than a million people a year.
They are housekeepers and construction
workers, childcare and health care workers.
About one in five workers is foreign born, and
about a quarter of those are likely
undocumented. Some of these undocumented
people have been here for years, making lives
for themselves and their families.
Others have comerecently.
Relatively few are receiving government
service or assistance. Most live under
the radar, paying taxes and receiving no
benefits.
What
would we do without immigrants, documented or
undocumented? Which construction
projects would slow? Which hotels would
experience labor shortages because
housekeepers and landscapers are unavailable?
Which elders would lose support
services? Which young people would be
left without parents and perhaps be forced
into the foster care system? How will massive
deportations affect the ways we live, and does
it matter?
To
be sure, the rule of law is to be respected,
and those who are here illegally have been
delinquent in handling their business.
But most of these people are not the
“dangerous criminals” that our very dangerous
president rails about. He has been using
them as a prop since he announced his
candidacy for our nation’s highest office in
2015. Then, he disparaged Mexican
immigrants as rapists and criminals.
During his campaign he trashed Haitian
immigrants as people who eat your pets. He
asked for President Biden’s acuity to be
checked. Who is checking his?
Deporting
immigrants is an inflationary act from a man
who said he could manage inflation. Who
will replace the immigrants we deport, and
will they work for the same wages?
Responding to his base, the 47th
president
said that workers in agriculture and
hospitality would not be deported. A few days
later (as usual) he reversed himself, as he
often does, texting, “Our Federal Government
will continue to be focused on the REMIGRATION
of ‘aliens’ (quotes mine) to the places from
where they came, and preventing the admission
of ANYONE who undermines the domestic
tranquility of the United States.”
Who,
really, is disturbing domestic tranquility
with harsh and inhumane rhetoric, absurd raids
to schools, churches and graduations.
Who is attacking the economy with inflationary
tactics that will increase wages for those in
industries not heavily supported by
immigrants? Who has incited
violence by targeting even legal immigrants,
those who once had protected status, with
hateful vitriol. And who is diverting us
from the economic issues he promised to
address by creating a sideshow every time he
opens his mouth? And then there is the
matter of his low-turnout parade that
contrasts with the five million or so who
turned out for the No King protest.
Imagine
a world without immigrants. What will it
mean to you. To be sure, everyone needs
to have legal status, but twice bipartisan
committees have offered legislation that
provides pathways to legal citizenship.
Our legislators, led by BIPARTISAN groups of
Senators, have declined to move forward. Now,
denied a path to legal citizenship, millions
live in limbo and in fear. What would we
do without immigrants?
