Singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens joined the masses of celebrities denouncing President Trump’s executive order to ban immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries with a blog post he published on Monday.
Stevens’ post argued there’s no such thing as an “illegal immigrant,” and reminded his fans that each citizen’s freedom is a result from the mistreatment of others.
“The truest of ‘Americans’ have either been destroyed by the white immigrant, incarcerated, isolated, held captive, or stolen and enslaved,” he wrote. “We are all complicit in the injustices against basic human rights and common decency, to put it mildly, which renders our own ‘inalienable rights’ as questionable or obsolete.”
"…we are all immigrants and refugees in a wildly changing world…" – Sufjan Stevens https://t.co/wWLX1vhXrH pic.twitter.com/1BoSWvKouo
— Asthmatic Kitty Records (@asthmatickitty) January 30, 2017
The blog post was sprinkled with references and quotes from Jesus Christ. Stevens also wrote that Americans will pay for their sins and the sins of their forefathers.
“In the meantime, I charge you to eradicate barriers (physical and social), and listen and learn from each other, embrace each other, help each other, and worn on transforming your mind and your behavior in the direction of love,” he said. “This is not New Age balderdash. This is what it means to be a human being.”
At the bottom of his post, Stevens included a definition of refugee: “a person who has been forced to leave their own country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.”
Since the executive order was passed last week, waves of celebrities have spoken out against President Trump and the ban, including Stranger Things actor David Harbour, Kerry Washington, and Ashton Kutcher. Barack Obama voiced his support of recent protests against the executive order on Monday.