Cambridge

Now that you’ve been accepted

To the Kennedy School of Government

Where you’ll have access

To current and future movers and shakers

Where there’ll be balanced discussions

About “America’s humanitarian role in the world”

Where professors are civil, assured

Savvy, and so very smart

Once a month (or, if need be, once a day)

Return to some touchstones

Like one of Mev’s photos from Haiti

Or one of your photos from Gaza

Meditate on these images of people

Whom Chomsky and Herman described

As the “unworthy victims”

Of the United States

They are worthy to you

Their suffering is real to you

Their dignity radiated out to you

And vibrates in you to this day

Remember that not so ancient history

Of when Jimmy Carter

(The human rights president)

Ignored Oscar Romero’s plea

To stop sending U.S. arms to his country

Whose government was using them

To massacre the people

Who was awakening to their human rights

“I commend these words to you

Engrave them on your hearts

When you are in your house

When you walk on your way” [1]:

“The church in Latin America

Has much to say about humanity

It looks at the sad picture

Portrayed by the Puebla conference:

Faces of landless peasants

Mistreated and killed by the forces of power

Faces of laborers arbitrarily dismissed

And without a living wage for their families

Faces of the elderly

Faces of outcasts

Faces of slum dwellers

Faces of poor children who from infancy

Begin to feel the cruel sting of social injustice

For them, it seems, there is no future—

No school, no high school, no university

By what right have we cataloged persons

As first-class persons or second-class persons?

In the theology of human nature

There is only one class:

Children of God” [2]

               

[1] Primo Levi, “Shema”

[2] Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love