New York Times (Taking Note Blog)
By Lawrence Downes
September 23, 2015
An
amazing image from the papal motorcade in Washington today: A little
Latina girl in pigtails and sneakers braves the barricades and the black
suits to deliver a hug,
a T-shirt and a letter to Pope Francis.
Her
name is Sophie Cruz. She is from Los Angeles, her parents are from
Tuxtepec, Oaxaca, in Mexico, and her plea to the pope was to protect
undocumented immigrants like
her mother and father from deportation. Her shirt carried a message
defending President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, which have
been blocked in federal court. The Guardian has more on her story.
When
Pope Francis stopped the motorcade to embrace Sophie, who was dressed
in traditional costume, it was a touching moment of unrehearsed
graciousness. Sophie’s letter,
and earlier videos, and TV interviews, suggest that she is a very
self-possessed child, and that her message, in Spanish, was exquisitely
well-rehearsed, down to the list of vegetables — oranges, onions, melons
— that immigrant farmworkers like her father
pick to keep this country fed.
According
to local TV news in Los Angeles, Sophie is part of a group of about 25
pilgrims who traveled to Washington hoping, against all odds, to deliver
their plea to
Francis himself.
Sophie told reporters what she hoped to tell him:
“Pope
Francis, I want to tell you that my heart is sad and I would like to
ask you to speak with the president and the Congress and legalizing my
parents because every
day I am scared that one day they will take them away from me.”
Sophie’s
words will surely find a receptive ear in the pope, who mentioned
immigration in the first sentences of his first speech on American soil.
How they will play
to the rest of the United States, currently in the grips of a nativist
fever brought on by an ugly Republican presidential campaign, is
unclear.
But
even if today’s video was a carefully plotted, media-aware moment
pulled off by canny activists, it was moving nonetheless, vivid evidence
that this is a debate about
people, about families, about hardworking immigrants who are a boon to
his country, not a threat. It’s a simple but true message, shared by
millions, carried today past the barricades, directly to the heart of
power and influence, by a harmless, lovely little
girl.
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