When some of the Venezuelans being housed at the West Cook YMCA came out onto the balcony to see the pool below, all of us in open swim shouted greetings and “Welcome!”
It made me proud of where I lived. I felt hope for a country now dragged down to a shriveled version of itself from one that once absorbed people from all over the world and gave them a future they only imagined.
As a second-generation Greek American, I can look back to my grandparents, peasants from small villages, who lived to see their sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters become doctors, professors, teacher, and writers.
That’s the promise of America.
Legal or illegal, these immigrants have chosen this country because it is safe, there is no war, and they can earn a decent living.
My grandparents, ethnic Greeks in Turkey, fled from the convulsive death rattle of the Ottoman Empire. All my YiaYia Fofo ever said of that time was that she was walking to school and heard the screams of people buried underground. She was safe here.
One afternoon, I watched as a Venezuelan family got on the Lake Street bus with their daughter who just finished school for the day. The wattage of their pride just lit up the bus.
Dimitra Lavrakas
Oak Park