Toybox Crucible

Conventional wisdom: "Don't politicize your blog" — but you know what? Our workplaces do not exist in a vacuum. And I am sick of personality-disordered pundits and self-ordained "moral compasses" enriching themselves by preaching hate, fear, and intolerance. So this post is not about design or marketing, soft skills or leadership, not about print sales or optimizing customer service. This is about being American. This is about being human.

We take empathic selfies holding up little signs that say #bringbackourgirls but there are xenophobic "patriots" at the border with bigger signs declaring "return to sender" — and threatening to shoot children — as if we Americans have had nothing to do with the turmoil of Central America. Boy, have they got it wrong.

The murderous Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13 or MXIII) is to Central America what the Boko Haram is to Nigeria, and where did MS-13 get its start but in the streets of Los Angeles, a product of failed U. S. drug enforcement policies and practices in the 1980s. In deporting those LA gang members back to El Salvador, we merely transplanted the problem. In the 1950s the CIA-assisted overthrow of Guatemala's legally elected Jacob Arbenz opened up decades of dictatorships that led to the genocide of over 100,000 Guatemalans. In our self-certainties, puffed up on American exceptionalism, we have contributed to the violent forces in these nations, and we are now paying that price. For example, earlier this year Atlanta Safe Streets enforcement caught up four rampaging MS-13 thugs and sentenced them to life for terrorizing Atlanta neighborhoods — so yes, our "borders" have long been compromised by more than hungry frightened children. MS-13 alone has over 10,000 "foot soldiers," a stockpile of serious weaponry, and operate within at least three dozen U.S. states. They're now international.

Thousands of Central American children will no doubt be sent back, much to the elation of our self-ordained "border guards," but they'll be returning to lives of chaos and constant danger, either as collateral damage of organized crime activity, or recruited into one of the local gangs.

The homicide of children is a good indicator of violence levels in any country. Honduras has an extremely high murder rate: the city of San Pedro Sula may be "murder capital" of the world, averaging three murders per day. From 1998-2010, over 6,000 children/youth under the age of 23 have been murdered in Honduras as the result of organized crime activity, 61% of those under the age of 18. MS-13 starts recruiting at age 10, graduating members from lookouts and mules to drug dealers and hit men. Loyalty has to be continuously proven and disobeying orders or "turning rat" is punishable by death. In 2012 El Salvador, nearly 1,200 women and girls were the victims of sexual assault, a quarter of them having witnessed the assault of another woman in their home. In 2011 Guatemala, 437 kids were murdered, and 834,000 kids live and work in unsafe or inadequate conditions. (World Vision reporting)

These stats don't include the unquantifiable cost of millions of children living too precariously to benefit from a complete education. If we don't address it within our time, in a transnational collaboration with the "sending countries," we'll be facing generations more of this. We can make a strong start by confronting and prosecuting the "coyote" organizations that exploit and profit from these kids.

These Central American kids have not come here to freeload off our wealth and good will. They just want to survive. This problem has been gaining critical mass for years, we have been part of its genesis, and we are now faced with a moral crucible. This transcends party politics re illegal immigration. As exhausted as our entitlement systems are purported to be, we Americans still do not live in a country where calling for help entails yet more threat of danger from corrupt and violent first responders.

We cannot be a nation that embraces both #bringbackourgirls and "return to sender"; it's a hypocrisy, given that for over 200 years we've hung out a shingle that says we're a safe harbor for those fleeing violence and persecution. No more Voyage of the Damned stories conveniently tucked away as footnotes in our history books: we need to land on the right side of history with this one.

The black-and-white photo shows two German-Jewish children on the ill-fated S. S. St. Louis, whose journey to Miami and Cuba was dubbed "Voyage of the Damned." Although close enough to see the lights of Miami, the St. Louis was denied — gripped as they were by anti-Semitism and xenophobia, both Cuba and the U. S. refused to help the refugees of Nazi Germany. The ship was returned across the Atlantic. Although a handful of European nations took in some of the passengers, hundreds more perished in the Holocaust.