This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated September 29, 2022
Little Amal visited Bay Ridge on the evening of Friday, September 23, flanked by large crowds of onlookers as she made her way down busy Fifth Avenue, shortly after hundreds strolled with her through serene, bucolic Green-Wood Cemetery in Sunset Park. Four days earlier, locals flocked to the Coney Island Boardwalk to catch a glimpse of her as she visited in the early morning hours.
A twelve-foot-tall puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee girl, Little Amal symbolizes all child refugees fleeing oppression, climate change, violence, persecution, and war. The name Amal means hope in Arabic, which is what the giant puppet, who appears fully life-like to those that see her, is meant to represent.
The performance art project called The Walk, began last year with Little Amal traveling from the Syria-Turkey border to England during a five-month journey that crossed the European continent. Dignitaries such as Pope Francis greeted Little Amal as she brought people together and raised awareness for child refugees everywhere.
The Walk came to New York City September 14 and will continue making appearances here through October 2, including events in Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. On Friday, September 30, Little Amal was scheduled to have a quiet and meditative meeting with families of victims of 9/11 near the September 11 Memorial and conclude her time in New York City on October 2 with appearances at the Atlantic Antic on Atlantic Avenue, and in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Though her backstory is that she is a Syrian refugee, displaced children everywhere – from Afghanistan to Ukraine to Central America to Venezuela – identify with Little Amal. According to the United Nations, 37 million children worldwide are currently displaced due to conflict and violence, which is about one in every fifty children in the world.
Since the Afghanistan refugee crisis began just over one year ago, more than 90,000 Afghan refugees have been accepted into the United States, nearly half of which are children. Of those, a recent report revealed that 230 Afghan refugee children are currently alone in the U.S without their families, as the process to admit additional family members, some of which assisted the U.S military and are now in grave danger of retribution, has slowed to a crawl.
“Whenever and wherever there are refugees, there are child refugees. Turning a blind eye, turning them away, or turning their plight into a game, furthers their trauma and is almost as inhuman as the violence or conflict that created the predicament they unwillingly find themselves in.”
Last winter, after spending three months in a shelter in Arizona, a family that was forced to flee Afghanistan, which includes multiple children, settled into free housing from a local Bay Ridge family who agreed to host them. At the time, Bay Ridge Cares, which celebrated their tenth anniversary last weekend with a community picnic in Shore Road Park, assisted with ensuring they had groceries for their first month in their new Brooklyn home.
That spirit of giving has been on display in New York City throughout this year, first with the outpouring of support for Ukrainian refugees, and more recently to assist asylum-seekers shuttled here from Texas and Florida as part of stunts by Republican governors Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis.
Brighton Beach, known as Little Odessa, has the largest Ukrainian population in New York City, which is home to more people of Ukrainian descent than any city or town in America. The Shorefront Y of Brighton Beach immediately mobilized to support Ukrainian refugees in Europe and in the States, as did the Guardian Angel Roman Catholic Church and other community organizations.
As Abbott and DeSantis have used vulnerable refugees, including children, as pawns, New Yorkers have responded to support them as they have arrived in our city. Leading the way has been the New York Immigration Coalition, organizing efforts to provide basic necessities for refugees who are being sent to New York without advance notice or warning, in a cruel attempt to make it difficult to care for them.
Whenever and wherever there are refugees, there are child refugees. Turning a blind eye, turning them away, or turning their plight into a game, furthers their trauma and is almost as inhuman as the violence or conflict that created the predicament they unwillingly find themselves in.
America’s dark refugee history – from creating refugees out of Native Americans and Japanese Americans, to denying sanctuary to refugees trying to flee the Holocaust – can not and must not be something we perpetuate.
