Most of today's walk was along Highway 99, past SeaTac Airport. All of it was through airport parking lots, airport hotels, and strip malls, a commercial no-man's land. Had the pastor, staff and parishioners of St. Thomas not been so gracious to me, I would not have had the stamina to walk as far and as fast as I did. I was also very glad for the company of my good friend Paul Fiorini, who drove up from Olympia to walk with me. His presence and companionship sustained me over the miles.
Once we got past SeaTac Airport, the commercial properties alternated among new looking strip malls filled with national franchises, rundown-looking local businesses and vacant properties and lots. The vacant stores all seemed to be locally-owned businesses that had not been able to compete with the franchises. The immigrants we saw were all working hard, from auto-mechanics to beauticians and barbers to a Korean-American bagel baker. (We stopped there to eat lunch and the Korean bagels were very good!)
The night before, at dinner, I had met a Tukwila City Councilwoman who is much concerned for the dignity of every human being in her city. Like so many other Americans, wherever their family origins, she and her husband had worked hard and achieved positions from which they contributed to the common good. At St. Vincent de Paul Church in Federal Way, a gentleman who was waiting in the office asked me about the cross and what I was doing when I arrived. I explained, and he said that not all immigrants come with the right motives and those should not be allowed in. This struck me as a striking contrast to the attitude of the couple in Tukwila. I had no chance to ask him which immigrants come with the wrong motives, but I wonder who he had in mind.
We use words like "criminal" and "illegal" which lump the overwhelming majority of honest, hard-working immigrants with the few who truly are criminal, drug lords and the like. The true undesirable people everyone seems to worry about have not been evident on this pilgrimage. How strange that the poor are so invisible unless we see them as criminals, while the real criminals, and our complicity in their poverty, are so easy to ignore.
I dropped the camera last night, so no photos of today's walk.
Tomorrow, we are leaving St. Vincent de Paul in Federal Way at about 9:30 am, after the morning Mass at 9:00 am. Please come join us for the walk to St. Martin of Tours in Fife, about an eight mile walk.
posted by Nick
Comments