Did you hear about the woman who climbed the stone pedestal of the Statue of Liberty to protest U.S. immigration policy? It was last July 4, and her actions prompted evacuation of the monument on one of its busiest days. The same woman, Therese Patricia Okoumou, staged a similar protest just a few weeks ago in Austin when she climbed to the roof of Southwest Key Programs, an agency that operates schools and shelters for unaccompanied immigrant children. The building is only four stories tall, but the protestor’s actions shut it down for a while and got people talking about family separation policy again.
It’s all very timely, but the piece of the story that grabbed my attention was that after Okoumou was found guilty in December of misdemeanor trespassing and disorderly conduct at the statue, Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein decided he needed to see things for himself before determining her sentence. So, on February 27, the judge went to Liberty Island with Okoumou, Park Service officials and others from the court. He wanted to get a better idea of the danger Okoumou posed to tourists and to first responders who had to climb a tall ladder to bring her down from her perch among the folds of Liberty’s green copper gown.
Perhaps it’s just my heightened senses as we enter this season of Lent, but I seem to see little flecks of the Easter story in all this business of climbing up and down. After all, these days leading to Easter are a time for contemplating the God who came down from heaven and lived as human to experience firsthand our human condition. And while with us, he advocated for a better way of living with each other.
Okoumou has climbed monuments and buildings to advocate for children, and Gorenstein did the same to advocate for those put at risk by her methods. The judge ultimately ascended the pedestal to pass judgment as is his duty, but that’s where the stories diverge, because Christ ascended the cross to remove the final judgement once and for all.
In the end, Gorenstein didn’t climb the ladder to the hem of Liberty’s gown. It was deemed unsafe, but he saw where the ladder had been positioned on the day of the protest and he got a sense of the risks and dangers. Christ, on the other hand, experienced the fullness of human suffering and descended fully into the depths of our human death.
Okoumou will have to wait until mid-March to learn her sentence, but that’s just for the here and now. We know that through Christ our sentence is life – abundant and eternal.