Refugee Realities, American Realizations

By Carissa DiGiovanni

It was March 2001. I sat at my computer in my Chicago apartment, chewing my lip intently, trying to think of how to make myself sound qualified for this position. I was applying for a job as a substitute English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teacher at a refugee center, and I didn’t have anything in the way of experience. However, I needed to work for the six months or so before I started graduate school in women’s studies, so necessity was going to have to be the mother of invention here. Suddenly, I was hit with inspiration. I wrote, “I have interacted a great deal with my grandparents, who were immigrants to this country. Also, I had friends from many different countries when I was growing up. Additionally, I have traveled abroad.” I sent this “creative” letter off to the refugee organization and never expected to hear about the job again. I was surprised, then, when I got a call a few weeks later. I went to the interview, where my future supervisor explained that they were pretty desperate, so could I just come in and do a teaching audition, and then they would probably give me a job?

I did as they asked, and found out later that I was hired—with one condition. The catch was that I would have to learn more about all the countries that the refugees were from. Apparently, my supervisor was clued into the fact that I could potentially be worldlier when I expressed great surprise during my audition that my female Bosnian students had routinely operated bulldozers in their home country! (Not a good reaction from a budding feminist scholar either, for that matter.)

With students from countries ranging from Iran, Cuba, Bosnia, Serbia, and Russia, to Togo and Ghana, this appeared to be quite a challenge. Having access to the Internet, however, made finding information on these places easy. I surfed to my heart’s content and learned quite a bit: about different countries’ religious and ethnic make-ups, about their economic standings, about their various customs and traditions.

I also began reading about the causes of the turmoil that triggered my students’ refugee status. In almost every case: in Iran, Cuba, Serbia, and other countries—the U.S. was directly or indirectly responsible: installing dictators, training militants to overthrow the government, etc. I became appalled at the amount of torture, rape, and genocide that had taken place, much of which was funded by my tax dollars. Armed with this disturbing knowledge, I returned to the refugee center with a new view on my students’ situations.

With this new information in mind, I wasn’t too surprised, then, when I learned that my students were having different psychological issues. In order to maintain their privacy, I don’t want to be too specific about what went on in the classroom. Suffice to say that it was clear that many of my students suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, that they were often unable to concentrate fully on the lessons, complete assignments, or remember to bring their textbooks. As a result, I often resorted to playing word games, dividing them into teams and bringing in candy for the winners, in an attempt to teach them at least a little English, and to cheer them up.

Several weeks into the semester, I began to get very angry. Here were these people, who had been successful in their own countries, as students, bulldozer operators, teachers, who were ripped out of their culture, livelihoods, and even families, to come here, a strange and often hostile land—just because the U.S. decided to impose its hegemonic, Western notions of government upon their countries for “our” own economic gain.

I continued to teach my students, and found myself enjoying my work with them. Despite all of their issues (and cultural shock to boot), they managed to be friendly and warm to me, bringing me candy, warmly greeting me outside on the street, and asking me about my life growing up in Italy. (Because of my name, they insisted—despite my protests—that I must be an Italian citizen!)
After the term ended, I was sad to leave my students, but excited to start my new graduate program. My excitement soon dissipated, though, when, within days of beginning my studies, the terrible events of September 11th occurred. I was just as horrified as everyone else in America, and remained in close contact with family and friends through the days that followed. However, my feelings of fear and shock turned to anger as I observed how the U.S. government was handling the situation—unlawfully detaining hundreds of people, greatly restricting refugee movement to the U.S., and invading Afghanistan, a country that supposedly harbored Bin Laden (someone who the U.S. still has yet to find). I decided that, as an American—especially as an American who now understood a little about refugee realities—that I had to take a stand against these atrocities.

I began talking with knowledgeable professors and students, reading articles and books from alternative presses, carefully analyzing information that I received from the mainstream corporate media. I spoke out against the war on Afghanistan to anyone and everyone I could get to listen. The next school year (2002-2003), while the U.S. planned to invade Iraq on the pretense of extremely shaky evidence, I threw myself fully into the anti-war movement. I attended rallies in San Francisco, San Diego, and Chicago, helped to organize events on our campus, staged a weeklong sit-in when the bombs began to fall, and compiled information on a daily basis from international and alternative news presses and sent it out to an email list of individuals and group organizations.

I encountered a lot of resistance to my stance; many people—especially in conservative San Diego—asked me why I didn’t support my country in times of war. My answer was that I was choosing instead to support the refugees of the world, past, present, and future. I explained that, a citizen of the world, I could not stand by and let my government commit atrocities in the name of “safety” and “democracy,” especially when I had the experience of meeting some of the people who have suffered from such horrors.

It’s now December 2003. These days, I am applying for graduate school, again—I hope eventually be a professor. Between my applications, and my attempts to finish my thesis, I am busier now than I was last year, and don’t have as much time to devote to the anti-war movement as I would like. However, I still subscribe to many political lists, such as Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), attend the occasional protest, and continue to argue with anyone who wants to “democratize” yet another Middle Eastern country (democratize them out of their oil, that is). I know I will always be involved in the U.S. anti-war movement (though more actively at some times than at others). Since learning firsthand about refugee realities, my conscience won’t allow me to ignore the crimes America enacts upon the rest of the world.