Our Towns
Appreciating the pioneering sacrifices that built the town I live in and the systems and institutions that so enrich my life today, makes me even more eager to help modern refugees—on this World Refugee Day as well as every day—be successful and safe and loved too.
I went for a bike ride this morning to a smaller town called Boring. The name comes from Joseph Boring who owned a farm in the area in the 1800’s and not for the lack of night life. It’s actually a rather charming community with a small central business area and is still surrounded by a lot of lovely faming operations in the vicinity.
As I looked at the town’s welcome sign, I could help but think of the temerity of leaving the well-established cities from the Eastern United States to strike out on the frontier with a wagon and hopes for new opportunities. It seems like most of the towns in Oregon were founded or homesteaded by what we would term today as radical visionaries. Certainly there were a lot of organizing that needed to be done to setup the Western part of the United States, and there is a lot less need of that today thanks to the work that we get to take advantage of today.
It’s appropriate to think about their folks today particularly because it’s World Refugee Day. The situation under which modern refugees are under might be different than the pioneering wagon trains that made their way to Oregon, but I still see some common threads. Some groups were seeking to establish an area where they could be free from persecution. Others were willing to make the risk so that their families could have greater opportunities. These hearty groups made immense sacrifices to make it to Oregon and the various other destinations where they setup their new homes, and for any of us living in the Western United States in towns or suburbs of towns, your infrastructure—your public school systems, your public libraries and police forces and public parks—have largely came about because those founding families and fledgling villages made those kinds of services a priority.
And certainly we can’t celebrate the successes and benefits we enjoy today without contemplating upon the tragic outcomes to indigenous populations who were often forced off their native lands or cheated out of their ancestral properties or even violently irradiated. History is always so more complicated than the hero’s journeys we might have learned about in middle school history classes. I like to look at history with a “Yes, AND,” approach. We often use “Yes, BUT,” which is essentially a way of discrediting other thoughts. I prefer the “Yes AND” approach because two things can be true at the same time. We can juxtapose our admiration for the fortitude and ingenuity of those pioneering wagon groups, many of whom died along the way, and for all who did arrive at their desired destinations, life was certainly still very hard. And we can also recognize the horrendous injustices that indigenous people experienced as a part of the western migration of largely people from European descent.
Despite this complex reality, I feel like we can still celebrate the remarkable visions that these founding communities that have now grown into well-established towns and cities. The first mayors or council people of those early towns had vibrant hopes and dreams to make their towns into prosperous, thriving places where people wanted to live and where families felt save and proud to call their home towns. As I reflect on those aspirations today, I find it so humbling because I know I’m not prioritizing the success of my local community nearly as much as they did in towns like Boring from a century ago.
I know I focus a lot more day to day on what my city can provide me than I focus on what I can do to help my city. And yes, I serve on a couple of city committees and I’ve chaired my neighborhood associated for a few years, but when I think about founding the town in the first place, there’s no comparison. Remembering that those were real people who had so many other obligations and disappointments, and challenges and pains, helps me appreciate those pioneering efforts of domestic refugees.
And appreciating those sacrifices that I most of the time take for granted today that built the town I live in and the systems and institutions that so enrich my life today, makes me even more eager to help modern refugees—on this World Refugee Day as well as every day—be successful and safe and loved too.