As a Quaker who refused to swear loyalty to the king, William Brinton faced a difficult choice in the summer of 1684: risk imprisonment and torture or abandon the town literally named for his family and venture a new life in what would become Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He chose the ship.
My earliest ancestor on these shores, he arrived along with several hundred other asylum seekers to an especially harsh winter that they certainly would not have survived except for the generosity of the Lenni Lenape, who fed them out of their own store of food.
Pacifists who held the firm belief that every human contains the divine light of the Creator, the Quakers to whose community of Friends William Brinton belonged were early and ardent abolitionists, suffragists, and egalitarians who also lived a largely peaceful coexistence with the Lenni Lenape, unlike many of their fellow colonists.
In writing, speeches, and casual conversation, I often trace my own sense of progressivism, rebelliousness, and patriotism back to my family’s original immigration story in what is perhaps the ultimate expression of white privilege. Because who else but white people in this American ICE Age have the freedom to flaunt their immigration stories so carelessly?
Certainly, this freedom is not afforded to our Latino and immigrant community members whose culture we endeavored to celebrate this past week through our city’s much-beloved tradition of Fiesta. Because while Fiesta’s subtitle reads “Old Spanish Days,” it’s not tapas, tempranillo, and classical guitar that inspires us to spend an hour looking for parking somewhere, anywhere even remotely close to the party. It’s tacos, tequila, and mariachi that fuel the joy of Fiesta and get us dancing in the streets.
And it’s not the Spanish colonists who stole the land and committed unforgivable atrocities against the Chumash people whom we celebrate. But the immigrants who, against all odds and in the face of mortal danger, came to this country seeking liberty and a better life and who, in the process, made all of us more free and all of our lives immeasurably better.
Yet it is precisely these immigrant stories that ICE endeavors to eradicate in horrific raids with names such as Glass House and Father’s Day meant to inspire fear and conjure images of urban warfare, which, after all, is what ICE is waging. Nor, for ICE, does it matter if those whom we celebrate during Fiesta have immigration stories that predate my own, as many do. All that matters in their view is that these origins, however distant in the past, are not in a white country. For the many Indigenous and Native people that ICE has stopped and detained, that includes what we now call the United States.
Luckily, our city was able to let out a collective sigh of relief at the end of Fiesta when the current administration’s agents of a white nationalist agenda failed to rear their ugly masked heads. But that does not mean they were absent from our collective imagination. Many, I am sure, looked over their shoulder before smashing a confetti-filled egg on an unsuspecting loved one. And some, undoubtedly, stayed away altogether.
Back in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, which I like to believe still contains the spirit of my Quaker ancestors, the artist collective Make It Weird perhaps best articulated our era’s echo with Germany’s fascist past in their text-based installation reading, “Somewhere in America, a little girl is hiding in an attic, writing about ICE.” Given all we know, I cannot help but imagine this is happening right here in Santa Barbara.
And still, the Spirit of Fiesta shone brightly this past week.
Despite the clear and present danger, thousands in Santa Barbara’s Latino and immigrant community showed up to celebrate their heritage and immigration stories openly, joyously, and boldly. And, they invited everyone to celebrate, even and especially in the face of tyranny.
Because there is resistance in joy, there is courage in community, and there is strength in celebration. Viva la Fiesta.
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