Shepherd, Liz Layton

Liz Layton Shepherd
Boston, MA

I am interested in participating in the Build Hope Not Walls project because I have long- standing sympathy for the plight of refugees. This empathy has its roots in my heritage as a Jew and was re-enforced when we visited Berlin in January of 2009. We visited the Reichstag on a bitterly cold day. I was wearing so much warm clothing that I could barely move but standing there, freezing, all I could think about was concentration camp slave laborers dressed only in rags. It was this moment of being in a place I had so frequently read about and seen in film that brought an infinitesimal part of the tragedy to me, in a very real and personal way. Later, when I saw a picture of myself from this day, I thought that I looked like a displaced person, perhaps someone who was being deported. I started a series of etchings that I still return to periodically. This brick is made from one of those etchings.

A wall and the anti-immigration laws that have been proposed by our racist and xenophobic president cannot be tolerated. Inclusion is the heart and soul of America; anyone who doesn’t understand that doesn’t understand the history of this country.