Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow

This week Enrico and I were talking about the immigrant marches, and he said that while he's all for the underlying goals - recognizing the economic contribution of immigrants, legalizing their employment in a marketplace that clearly needs them, the right of families not to be torn apart by differing citizenship status, etc. etc. - he was a little unclear about what the marches themselves were supposed to accomplish.

I had been all happy about the marches in a generic, power-to-the-people kind of way, but I hadn't given it much thought beyond that. I liked the flags of many nations, the big sombreros, the people doing traditional Samoan dances, because if there's one thing my life choices demonstrate (well, besides the addictive properties of Cocoa Crispies and Saturdays in your pajamas with a murder mystery), it's that I absolutely believe in the life-enriching benefits of more languages, more cross-cultural experience, and strange cuisines. The more, the merrier. So I really don't get the whole English-first, assimilate-or-else mindset.

But when pushed to think about it, what really made me happy about the marches this week was the sight of so many people choosing not to be in fear. I heard some butthead on NPR saying menacingly "I'm making lists of all the businesses that are closed today, and reporting them to Homeland Security, so they can raid those places." Many of the people who marched this week live in shadows, invisible to us as they pick our food, build our buildings, clean our hotel rooms. They don't take their kids to doctors, or go to parent-teacher conferences, because the kids are citizens but the parents aren't. And yet on Monday, they made a choice to refuse fear.

We live with so very much fear. It's been said that fear is a choice, but our government cultivates it these days. Fear of terrorists, avian flu, unfamiliar people destroying our way of life, gas shortages, sex offenders, cancer, a vengeful god, identity theft - fear that we're on a government list of some sort and we're being watched. But this week, we got a great gift, a big fat dose of Not-Fear.