Tacoma Detention Center Vigil
What do we do?
by Bryan Johns, CSJP-A
We unload. We pull up in our trusty 1999 Honda Odyssey van, in the redlined no-parking zone, curbside and we unload. First the tables and chairs. The coffee and water. Next is the canopy that never seems to get any easier to setup, no matter how many times we do it. Out come the homemade cookies, the fresh fruit, the chips, the cheese sticks, the hot chocolate, the “gratis” signs, and the cups. On a separate table in front we stack the knitted hats, the stuffed animals, the coloring books, and the crayons. The final touch: the CSJP sign Sister Jo-Anne gave us years ago. We unload. They come. The visitors drive by, eyeing us, searching for a parking space, slowly emerging from their cars, gathering themselves and their loved ones. They come from everywhere: an all morning drive from Portland or Yakima, flying in from California or Alaska, coming from
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right next door. They walk by us in all different manners; serious, smiling, sad, apprehensive. Yet they all have two things in common: they wish they weren’t there, and they love the ones they came to visit. We tell them to come back and get something to eat, to have a good visit, to tell those inside that they are not forgotten. They come. They wait. They check in, load up the lockers, sit in a crowded room with a TV showing some inappropriate violent programming. The kids, crying or silent, first-timers in shock and others squeamish in their mother’s arms. Old people who don’t understand how this country they came to has changed so much. Lawyers preparing bad news for their clients, the limited options in this optionless world. Friends and lovers who are bracing themselves for their last goodbyes to the deported. On some days, they line up outside in the cold, next to a
LIVING PEACE
