Dear Editor,
My name is Donley Johnson. I am a resident of St. Johnsbury. I am a high school student and a member of the Jewish community.
I write this letter during Passover, the Jewish holiday celebrating the biblical Exodus. Ironically this time for celebrating freedom comes as that very same freedom has been taken away from a member of our own Vermont community.
The recent detainment, and in some cases, deportation, of university students under the guise of fighting antisemitism has done nothing to improve the lives of anybody, Jewish or otherwise. It has done precisely the opposite: undermined the sanctity of freedom of speech, the right to a fair trial, and the dreams and lives of Rümeysa Öztürk, Alirezah Doroudi, Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi and others.
I say this as a Jewish person and as a citizen of Vermont, the state where Mahdawi was detained. His arrest by ICE has not made Vermont safer. Instead it has shown that immigrants living here can have their legal rights violated if the government says they can.
It has not made the Jewish community safer. Instead it has perpetuated the kind of injustice that I am very lucky not to have to face: the injustice of being forcibly removed from home, friends, work, and being denied comfort, aid, certainty of what tomorrow will bring.
More than 80 years ago, my great-grandfather left his home in Germany to escape the rising danger of the Nazi party. He was denied entry into the United States, and only through the kindness and generosity of strangers was he able to escape being sent back to Germany.
Maybe you do not personally know the students who are now facing this reality. Maybe you feel that they are strangers. That is no less reason to offer them the same kindness that was offered to my great-grandfather. Let us together work for the immediate release of the students who are held in detention and ensure that nobody else is falsely accused of being a danger to America and subsequently arrested.
The detainment of these students has shown us that the rights all of us enjoy and hold sacred are under attack.
Don’t let your rights, or those of your friends, family, coworkers, acquaintances, fellow humans, be the next ones to be vanquished.
Sincerely,
Donley Johnson
St. Johnsbury
