Rev. Deborah Duguid-May interviews Linda Ketchum and Paul Pompili about “Save New York’s Rural Economy: A Journey of Empathy Caravan.”
This interview, presented in its entirity, was recorded in September 2025 about an event that took place in August 2025. The discussion continues to be relevant today.
Transcript
DDM: Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.
MET: And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.
DDM: This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action.
CRT: This interview took place in September 2025 to describe a journey taken in August 2025. The discussion is still very timely today, in June 2026.
DDM: Welcome. So today I want to, especially welcome Linda Ketchum and Paul Pompili. They are both members of Trinity Episcopal Church here in Greece, New York, which is a suburb just outside of the city of Rochester. You’ll recall that Elizabeth and myself have in past episodes discussed the issue of immigration, agriculture, work, poverty.
DDM: Well, today we will be having a discussion and conversation with Linda and Paul, who recently participated in what was called the Journey of Empathy Caravan in early August, which really touches on all of those above issues and podcasts. So welcome to you both.
P P: Thank you.
DDM: Can you begin by telling us just a little bit about what the journey of Empathy Caravan actually was?
L K: Sure the journey of Empathy Caravan. It was a series of events to raise awareness of the value that immigrant workers bring to our economy in New York State. So from August 2nd to August 9th, starting in Eastern Long Island, a caravan of cars and trucks and vans traveled westward to the Hudson River Valley, then up to Albany, and then the north country up to the St. Lawrence River near the thousand Islands, and then down through the middle of the state through the finger lakes region, then to Rochester and we ended in Buffalo. So we traveled a thousand miles had 50 stops. So the stops included visits at churches and synagogues. We had meetings with farmers and workers support groups. We had prayer vigils outside of two ice detention centers. So it was all organized by the Rural and Migrant Ministry. So, and then one thing to know here, in addition to, you know, expanding the empathy for immigrant workers, the event was also called Save Our Rural Economy, to raise awareness that we need immigrant workers for the health and survival of our economy. So the farms and the vineyards need them, the restaurants need them.
L K: The landscapers and gardeners that made the Hamptons so beautiful, and our healthcare system . They all need the immigrant workers. The list goes on.
DDM: Right, and I think for people who are outside of this geographic area, when they hear New York, they probably think of New York City. I remember before I moved here, I just thought New York was a big city. And then I moved here and I was like, oh my gosh, most of the state is actually rural, which I think many people who may be listening in on this podcast are not aware of how rural the vast majority of our state actually is, you mentioned , rural migrant Ministry. Can you share for our listeners briefly what the Rural Migrant Ministry really is and what it does?
P P: Yeah, it’s, an organization that started in 1981 by a group of churches.
P P: There was a point where the migrants around that day, they would go to work in the farms and their children would sit alongside the farm because there was nowhere to bring their children. So what a lot of the local people did is they got together and they built , a childcare center, a daycare center, and that was 1981.
P P: That’s basically how it got started because the farm workers needed childcare. So it’s evolved today into an organization that is in support of not only the migrant workers, but immigrants in general, especially with the climate, that we have today
DDM: Right. now, that’s fascinating, Paul, because, I’ve worked with rural migrant ministries for a number of years, but I’d actually never heard that story. And isn’t that beautiful? Just to hear how local communities see a need, respond to the humans, you know, around them.
P P: What was surprising for me personally was that story was one of the very first ones we heard on the caravan and it was in the East Hamptons. So when most people hear the Hamptons and the East Hamptons, you think of all this wealth and. That’s all it is out there. But we started there and learned very early on for a reason.
P P: It was very enlightening. Very enlightening.
DDM: Fascinating. And what inspired the two of you to join the caravan? I mean, that’s quite a commitment to make.
P P: I didn’t wanna go. No, I really, because I am not an activist at heart. Never have been.
DDM: I know you Paul,
P P: And it just never was my way. Linda and I have been kind of really polar opposites in that, over the years together we’ve come much closer, to the middle of whatever that is each.
P P: So I went in support of her ’cause she said, I’ll go without you and that’s fine. I’m okay going alone. I wouldn’t let her wanna that. So I went with her in support to her I did, and I received a lot of benefits from it.
DDM: I’m sure I’m sure.
L K: And so for me, you know, civil rights and law enforcement and the criminal justice system, that’s been a focus of mine for some time, and I’ve been very upset. Seeing what’s happening with ice, just really kidnapping people off the street and out of their homes and, that’s the Immigration and Customs of Enforcement Agency.
L K: I thought when I heard about the caravan, you know, this was a way to get involved with a group that was taking some action to support the immigrant workers because they’re, they’re all targets for ice detention and deportation.
DDM: right. And I think what we are all witnessing now by federal ice agents has been very disturbing. But while many of us are not comfortable with what is happening, I think for a lot of people that doesn’t lead. To action, whereas you both actually decided to do something in response to what you were seeing.
DDM: I’m just interested, do you feel that your faith played a role in your motivation to join the caravan?
P P: I believe so. Right, because I mean, our faith tells us we should love everybody and there’s a, a portion of our society, some religious, some not that don’t believe that. And this was a way to really act on that and put myself through the test, do I really believe this? You know, do I really want to love everybody?
P P: And so I think that was. For me, regarding the faith, that was probably the biggest thing is that we are all human beings. We’re all people. We have our own beliefs, we have our own faiths we have our own everything, of everything, so to speak. And it’s not up to me to decide I’m gonna go with this one, but I’m not gonna love this one.
P P: You know, it’s up to me to just be as loving or understanding or, there’s so many words you can probably describe it as I possibly can and just be the best at it that I
DDM: And I think somewhere that narrative is being lost in our culture at the moment in the USA, but also in other parts of the world where we are seeing just the rise of almost the legitimation of hate speech. You know, the capacity to be able to say, I hate my enemies as, as legitimate. You know?
DDM: And I think for many years we worked under the assumption that to love. Everybody is actually the way we’re called to be, and I think that’s really being eroded in our civil discourse now in a way that maybe it hasn’t in the past as much.
L K: Yes. I think even the word empathy is being mocked by some people.
DDM: I noticed that in the beginning, Linda, because with the Caravan of Empathy and I thought, wow, nowadays even the word empathy is often being seen as a negative thing, you know?
L K: Yes. It’s just so, I don’t know. It’s so perverted destructive.
DDM: It’s a distortion. Such a distortion of common…
P P: during the caravan with the signs on our cars, you put yourself out there. I mean, you’re out there and, there’s all kinds of people. Most of them really were welcoming, beeping their horns. And one town we rolled into actually had a band out on sidewalk. but then there were the other side of it that harassed us and heckled us.
P P: And there was one stop where guys driving the car around the gas station yelling out the window, just being as bad as you can be, you know, and but that was the only one of that type during the whole week. So you have to kind of expect that.
DDM: Yeah, for sure. For sure. And Linda, I’m interested in your faith, how that may have woven into this experience.
L K: Well, being a member here of the Episcopal Church, we have been supportive of the rural and migrant ministry in Western New York. And so this was a way for me to see, oh, how does it operate in the rest of the state?
L K: And I am also very drawn to interdenominational and interfaith activities.
L K: So the idea that we could be with people from many different churches, that we were going to go to some synagogues, you know, that was an appeal for me also. And…
DDM: And would you say that’s partially what was behind your decision to do the entirety of the caravan? Because if I’m right, you could choose to just do a portion when it came through your community, whereas you both chose to do the route in its entirety.
P P: I tried to talk her into just doing Rochester.
L K: Yes, most people, I mean, I think that’s how it was promoted. When the caravan comes through your area, please join us for few stops. And when I saw the schedule, I just thought, you know, this would be an interesting way to take a road trip through all of New York State.
DDM: I love that.
L K: You know, let’s see it and I’m glad we did it this way because, you know, Paul mentioned the signs on the cars.
L K: So, you know, that’s the first thing we learned. We started at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton. And when we got to the parking lot people came up to us and they said, we’ll help you decorate your car. And we said, what? And, ’cause we didn’t know what to expect, so. All the cars had big signs.
L K: They said, “who will milk the cows?” “Who will pick the apples?” “Save our rural economy,” “have courage, have empathy,” so the experience of actually traveling from place to place, from city to city, town to town with the core group was very special to us.
DDM: Yeah.
L K: Sometimes when we left at the beginning there were, I think about 20 cars and trucks. We were in some places out in the country where it would be five or six cars, you know, and we went together, we had our lights blinking so people knew we were in a procession. And then when we got to Rochester we we were up to 34 cars at one point.
DDM: Wow, that’s incredible. That really is, I’m interested. Was there something that you experienced or learned or heard during this entire caravan that really stands out for you?
P P: One thing I learned that still will hold, stay with me probably for the rest of my life is how well I, I should have known this, but it brought it to the surface how scared the immigrants are to even come out into public. They don’t go to the grocery store. There was one woman at one of the detention centers.
P P: She waited until our next stop, which was several miles away, to tell her story of people she knew that was inside that detention center, that when they went in, they were able to work and they were physically able to do work. And when they came out, they were basically in a wheelchair.
DDM: From their experience of being
P P: inside, inside the detention center.
DDM: So that the abuse that took place
P P: that’s the, yeah, I think that’s the assumption you take out of her story, but she was so afraid to say it while we were to tell that story while we were there at the vigil and at that detention center, they’re very scared. I mean, there’s volunteers that go to the grocery stores and get food for them and bring them to ’em.
P P: Those people are. Go through training on how to deal with law enforcement if they get stopped because law enforcement is aware that this is going on. It’s a horrible thing and it really makes you stop and really think how fortunate in my case how I am to be white skinned.
DDM: Right,
P P: Very much so.
DDM: Because we know that this isn’t happening to
P P: They’re not taking the immigrant, Italians
DDM: Or from Ireland, exactly.
P P: They’re taking, everyone that’s a black and brown skin and it’s a terrible thing.
DDM: Right, right, right. You know, just to add into this, I recently had a family stay with me who actually were documented. They have legal status here in terms of asylum, but. They were so petrified because people are being taken up whether they’ve got legal paperwork or not, and they were so petrified their children were gonna be taken from them because they had a newborn baby and a little 4-year-old.
DDM: And they’ve subsequently just left the country. But again those are agricultural workers who’ve left again, even though they were documented because it’s just become too frightening to stay. Yeah. Wow.
L K: And those workers are highly skilled workers as well. You know, that’s one thing that we learned, we stopped at an agricultural center. It was called the Chester Agricultural Center in, in Orange County. A farmer spoke with us and he made a point of telling us, you know, we were looking out on the farmland and he said, there’s about 270 acres here.
L K: And he said, the immigrants who have farmed this land years ago, they were British, Dutch, German, Italian, Polish, and Irish. And now. More recently, they are Jamaican, they’re Mexican, and they’re Egyptian. And he said they are highly skilled. Nobody should think of this as unskilled labor that you could just send, you know anybody in.
L K: And then, and they, they can do what they do in a day.
DDM: Oh, absolutely. I mean, we forget how much of the agricultural industry is highly skilled, you know? Yeah, no, absolutely fascinating.
L K: And one thing he told us is that people think when you have crop losses, it’s because of the weather or it’s because of, you know, the economy. But he said often their crop losses are because of lack of availability of the workers. The immigrant workers that they need.
DDM: Yeah. And a lot of these are my right are not large, big agro businesses. They’re family farms.
P P: Small family farms.
DDM: Yeah. You see, and, and I think that’s the problem. You wonder how much of this is an assault actually on small agricultural family businesses. That indirectly ends up benefiting agrobusiness because I know from myself living in the rural areas, you know, the agro businesses are so big and have such a large basis that they can afford to go through these H 1 B programs where they bring in workers from, you know, Haiti or the Dominican Republic.
DDM: Whereas your average family farm, I mean, you’re not employing necessarily 150. Workers and you can’t afford the legal fees to set up all these programs for yourself necessarily. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
L K: Yes. And speaking of money there is a whole economy with this. I mean, another thing that we learned, we were at the orange County Jail, which is actually serving also as a federal detention center. And, a local man met us there. He’s not the county executive yet, but he is running for office.
L K: But he told us that the jail was built, it was originally planned for 300 people, but they built it for 800 for the express purpose of getting a contract with the federal government for immigration detention.
DDM: Wow.
L K: He says that their county has a yearly budget surplus of $200 million because of this. So this is the money that is there, and his intention if he is elected as the county executive is to end that contract.
L K: But that’s the kind of money in these small places that, you know, I think some towns will not want to lose.
DDM: Wow. So people are literally becoming wealthier on the backs of imprisonment and fear.
DDM: It’s really frightening. I know I learned a similar thing when we once went up to Buffalo with a group for education to go and see some of the buffalo. Facilities around there for processing and around that area, there’s all these hotels like the Holiday Inn and those kind of sort of things. And you assume that these are fully functioning, operating for the tourist economy. And somebody was telling us that no, they keep one floor.
DDM: For the tourist economy, but the rest have actually been converted into detention centers. And I was stunned because you’re looking at all this. Commercial tourist infrastructure thinking it’s there to serve, you know, happy holiday makers coming to Buffalo, when in fact behind those walls and curtains are just floors of detention holding centers, which I think your average person has absolutely no idea of. Was there something on this caravan that really connected with you from perhaps a faith perspective?
L K: Yes.
DDM: I’m interested,
L K: So, the rural and migrant ministry, they have a couple of slogans and one is, it’s we, not they, and it’s actually a hashtag that they use in their social media and their promotion. So hashtag it’s, we not they.
DDM: Lovely.
L K: And I think it’s a very important message because it’s not okay.
L K: They’re the immigrants. We’re the citizens, you know, they’re the workers. We’re not. It’s all of us together in community. And for me, what it also brings up is in the Episcopal church, in our service, we have a prayer called the general confession. And in one version of that prayer, there is a part that goes
L K: we repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done and the evil done on our behalf.
L K: And I always think of that phrase, the evil done on our behalf because I, I think we need to look at this as we’re part of the evil that’s being done here. We benefit from it. We need to, try to do more to reduce it and to minimize it.
L K: But I think it’s not right, and it’s not healthy just to look at it as, oh, other people are doing bad things and we’re not, we’re trying to stop them. You know, we’re part of this system of injustice and exploitation and I, I think it’s it’s a responsibility.
DDM: Absolutely. And I think that’s one of the advantage of churches like the Episcopal Church or some of your more traditional churches, is there was that real understanding that sin is not individual, it’s collective. Sometimes we’re benefiting and there’s a complicity in a system, even if we’re not active proponents of that system.
DDM: We’re complicit in it, and even if it’s simply our silence. What is enabling this to happen? Because I think we are living increasingly in a culture where freedom of speech we’re seeing is under attack. Uh, people are afraid to speak out. My own father phoned me this week and was really saying to me, Debs, please don’t say anything.
DDM: Maybe you should reconsider doing your podcast because of the consequences of speaking out against these things, but. If we don’t speak and use our voices our privilege, our complicity is just escalated. You know? I love that saying in our tradition, all that’s needed for evil to triumph us, for good people to do nothing, to say nothing.
P P: Yeah. For me, it’s probably a lot more simplified. to simplify things in my head in my life, but that I learned that it’s okay to care, it’s okay. It shouldn’t be an issue that’s divided by political party.
DDM: it’s such a human issue.
P P: All of us are human beings, whether it’s immigrants or whatever the topic is. That played a lot to me with my faith because,
P P: You know the old saying if you’re gonna talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk. like that. So am I just going to, you know, speak my faith once a week in church, or am I gonna practice it every day?
P P: And this was an opportunity to really look for myself, look in the mirror and say, Hey, are you doing as you believe. are you doing. As you speak. And so that was big for me. In that way and in a lot of ways during this whole week on the caravan, it changed me all the way down to allowing somebody to tape signs on my car. I mean, I’ve always looked at my car as it’s a tool to go from point A to point B. Whether it’s a small car, medium car, but it doesn’t matter. And I never put anything on the car. Even like during the last election, Linda wanted to put bumper stickers on and we agreed on just the kind that stick on the glass because they’re removable.
P P: And now we have those on a window in our home. We still have them home for the candidate, but I was outnumbered. I had to let it go through.
L K: We were told that it wouldn’t leave Marks. We weren’t so sure, but we just put tape all over the car with a lot of signs.
DDM: But you know, I was thinking when you both were speaking, because we speak about in a way our capacity for our hearts to be expanded. To be loving, to be compassionate, but having your heart expanded is, is very uncomfortable down to the practicality of. I really don’t wanna have signs on my car.
DDM: You know, I was identifying with you when you were speaking that, but sometimes what does it mean to allow everything that we own to actually be a tool for goodness, justice, for love, for compassion, you know which, isn’t always comfortable, you know?
DDM: What coming out of this experience do you wish more people knew about immigrant workers ICE raids, detention.
L K: One thing is that I wish more people understood that nobody is safe. I, I don’t feel that any of us are safe right now. There are masked men in unmarked cars. They are taking people off the streets, out of homes. There was a raid in a small packing facility in a small town called Cato, New York.
L K: And up to 60 people were taken. Many of them had legal papers to work here legally who’ve already been deported, but people are being taken without any warrant, there’s no judicial arrest warrant. There are reports that people have the blank warrants in the car, and they will fill in the names after they round up the people.
L K: And, it, it’s very dangerous. So, we stopped in a very small town in Western New York, and one of the speakers, he said he had a friend there, a childhood friend who still lives there and works for ICE, and has worked for ICE for many years. And he said, now the pressure from Washington is immense.
L K: It’s all about numbers now. And so, what’s happened there, we were told is that some of the business owners and the farmers, they’re working with the workers because instead of having the workers all go and stay in one place, because that is what ICE likes, they like one place where they can take a lot of people.
L K: So they figured out how they can move around and just have one or two people stay in different places.
L K: So there is actually some local people who might just hear through the grapevine, you know, be careful tomorrow. So there is definitely unhappiness here over a job that used to just be legitimate law enforcement.
DDM: Right.
L K: So I think these are human rights abuses that we’ve just a accepted, you know, the lack of privacy. I mean, one person on the caravan she told us of a man she knows who was detained and kept in the handcuffs and chains with other men in a van for 24 hours without water.
L K: There’s no place for them to go to the bathroom. So the ice, they don’t wanna give them water. And so these human rights abuses that we all just kind of accept are not acceptable.
P P: People are uninformed. I was with a friend of mine about a week ago, and we were having this discussion about immigration and he said, no, they’re only rounding up the criminals. They’re only taking the criminals. And I said, “no, that’s not true.” ‘Cause when we were on the caravan, we learned of an Episcopal priest, I think it was at Scarsdale somewhere. Her daughter is a student at…
L K: I think it’s at Purdue right now. She was high school graduate of Scarsdale high school. Her mother is here legally from South Korea. Her mother is an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of New York.
DDM: Right.
P P: Right. So I told him this. The daughter went in to renew her visa. ‘Cause she was getting ready to go back to school and it wasn’t coming up until the end of the year. She went in, did what she had to do inside. When she came out, ICE was there and picked her up.
P P: The next day she was shipped to…
L K: Louisiana Detention Center.
P P: Now she since has been released, but the horror that she had to go through that’s gonna live with her, if not the rest of her life, for quite some time.
DDM: Absolutely. And especially, I mean, you think her daughter, just what could happen to her? I mean, any of us who are parents, you think if that was your child,
P P: And my friend, thankfully, he believed me. believed what I was saying. He says, well, I didn’t know that
DDM: I think that’s the problem. There’s so many of these stories that people are just not hearing.
P P: They’re, misinformed on the topic. A lot of people don’t pay attention to it because they have their own things going on in their life, and
DDM: Of course. Of course.
DDM: What have you both done since the caravan last August? And what are some of your thoughts about what you may be planning to do in the future?
P P: There’s this weekly protest on Fridays at 12 Corners in Brighton.
L K: I think it’s the First Unitarian church. They have organized it. Because one thing that we learned on the caravan. Oh, there was a small town we went through where six Roman Catholics, they said, we stand here, with our signs once a week in the town square. And we’re just wondering, you know, are we all by ourselves?
L K: Is anybody else with us? And then we went, through another town where every Wednesday they have a protest or a vigil, they hold signs. And it’s just, it put it in our heads that doing something once a week as a ritual is helpful.
P P: Helps to raise awareness people who aren’t aware.
DDM: Right.
P P: So what we’ve been doing is we go on Friday, it goes from five o’clock to six. It’s at 12 Corners and each week there’s a few more people there. The last time we were there it’s over a hundred people.
DDM: Wow.
P P: In 12 corners, and everybody’s got signs except me. I go there to protect Linda. I am the protector.
L K: Paul. The first time we went, somebody came up to you and asked you a question.
P P: Yeah, that’s right. Yes. She remembers everything. Yeah. I’m sitting on the bench there, and I am observing the people because you never know if some kook’s gonna come over there and you wanna protect your family. ’cause one week we brought my granddaughter with us, so we had her to a watch out for, so the woman comes up to me and she says, may I sit here?
P P: I said, sure. She says. Were you in the caravan last week? And I said, yes. So she introduced herself as the person from the Unitarian Church, and she organizes this protest. She’s one of the organizers, her church is, and she’s part of that. And, so she remembered us from the dinner that we had there that night. So I thought that was so neat. And so she’d come up to me each week, you know, and one week she gave me petitions. I forget what the petition was for.
P P: But anyways, it’s that kind of relationship that has started, you know, and hopefully we’ll continue on.
DDM: Right. And it’s almost like that networking and a network of people who, who are prepared to put their bodies where their values are a way.
L K: Yes, exactly. Because you know, as we got closer to home in the caravan, when we went through the Finger Lakes area, some people joined us and they had signs that said, “free Elena, Louise and Raymundo.” These are local people in their community who were taken and then they’re trying to get them released.
L K: So they joined us in Auburn, at the Harriet Tubman house. So we went there, which was very special. And they stayed with us through Rochester and into Buffalo. And I, talked to the one of the women there and I said, you know, I’m gonna remember this. And a week later we saw a notice that there was a rally in Geneva.
L K: To free Elena, Luis and Raymundo. So. We went and I saw at least five or six people there who were on the caravan with us in this part of New York state. And you’re right. And one woman came up to me and she said, oh, I lost the piece of paper you gave me with your, your email address and your phone number.
L K: And I’m so glad that you’re here ’cause I wanted to tell you about this rally. So you’re right, this type of networking it’s very, very important now.
DDM: And I was just thinking as well the fact that Paul’s going to a protest once a week is unbelievable. If you know Paul, it’s not who Paul normally is, but, I was thinking, you know, part of what’s so important about that is the raising awareness because, you know, a lot of people, as you say, are just simply not aware of these issues if they’re not touching their intimate lives.
P P: And a lot of people that may have these type of characteristics that I do in this topic might be afraid. To go to one of these protests, you know, ’cause there’s a lot of us that have been changed by the politics and the ongoings of our country in the last 10 years.
P P: And so we may have been here at one point, but we are now here, you know, we’ve moved, not that we have changed. You know, we have changed,
DDM: But the political landscape
P P: we’ve become more aware of a lot of the things that are going on. In this case, we’re talking about immigration, which is huge. It’s huge. The nursing home we were at. There’s many immigrants in that system working in the healthcare system, at the nursing homes throughout the country. And if you took them out of that work, out of the nursing homes, who’s gonna do it?
DDM: It would collapse.
L K: Nursing homes, home healthcare, the hospitals. Yes. So we did have one stop where a doctor came. Came and talked to us and he told us about the whole healthcare economy there. And without the immigrant workers it would just collapse.
P P: Yeah.
L K: But you’re right, there is a lot of fear right now.
L K: And, you know, we’re all in a computer, we’re all in a computer on the wrong side of fascism. So, that is true. And, i’ve been thinking a lot about a movie I saw back in the eighties. We’re. Baby boomers. So we grew up with a lot of the books and the movies about the resistance during World War ii. There’s a movie, a French movie with English subtitles. The director is Louis Malle, it’s called Au Revoir Les Enfants. It’s about boys in a Catholic boarding school in France and the priest who leads the boarding school. He also uses it to hide two or three Jewish students from the Nazis. And so it really is kind of a coming of age movie, but also you see at the end.
L K: It’s not really a spoiler ’cause you know how it ends, but the Nazis come in, they arrest the priests. He goes to a concentration camp, where he dies. They take the boys, they find them. And it’s based on a true story. This director Louis Malle lived through this when he was I think 11 years old.
L K: In France and so I think clergy now are all at risk of something similar. If we don’t stop what’s happening.
DDM: Yeah. We forget about the parallels in this story with history. We’ve been through this before and we know it doesn’t end well. know, how can others support the rural migrant ministry that was so foundational to this whole
L K: So on their website. If you just go and search for rural and migrant ministry, you can sign up for a newsletter. There’s a way to donate and you know, there are many activities there that you can sign up for. They have annual dinners and then also while you’re on the website, if you search for the Journey of Empathy Caravan, you can see a lot of the local news coverage that we had going town to town.
L K: And you can see the daily schedule that we followed.
DDM: Lovely. Well, I’m so grateful to the two of you for firstly making that commitment to go and see and hear what too many of us just don’t see and hear in our communities. And then of course, for coming today to share a little of what you saw and heard and learned. And I’m also really grateful to each of you who are listening into this podcast for your openness to hear the stories of people who are vulnerable in our communities, perhaps more now than ever.
DDM: As Paul and Linda shared, I really encourage you to go to the Rural and Migrant Ministry website, but also maybe. To consider becoming a part of the Rapid Response Network, which you can also get onto through their website. They offer multiple opportunities for training on how local individuals and communities can respond to ICE raids, how to help vulnerable families, and really just to become a partner for Justice and hope in your own community and for our international listeners.
DDM: Maybe some questions are, how are immigrants being treated in your country right now? How are your agricultural laborers being treated? Are you struggling with some of the same issues that we in the USA are facing? And how are you managing to make a difference with your voice, your body, your car, your faith?
DDM: Please reach out and let us know. And thank you once again, Linda and Paul for being with us today.
P P: Thank you.
L K: Thank you for having us.
MET: Thank you for listening to the Priest and the Prof. Find us at our website, https://priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at https://priestandprof.org/donate/. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.
DDM: Music by Audionautix.com
Leave a Reply