{"id":992,"date":"2010-03-16T21:37:07","date_gmt":"2010-03-16T21:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoe.com\/wheresjoe\/?p=430"},"modified":"2010-03-16T21:37:07","modified_gmt":"2010-03-16T21:37:07","slug":"it-just-broke-my-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=992","title":{"rendered":"“It just broke my heart.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Atlanta, we headed a couple hours east to Jubilee Partners Community<\/em> in Comers, Georgia, for a series of interviews. \u00a0 The first day we met with Brad Smith who gave us a tour of the rural property. \u00a0 Jubilee was started some 30 years ago as a Christian community. \u00a0 Their mission quickly became helping new immigrants to this country. \u00a0 The first people they took in were “Vietnamese boat people” who were fleeing communist oppression in the wake of \u00a0the U.S. military \u00a0pulling out of Vietnam. \u00a0 On the property is a cluster of cabins where these immigrant groups spend the first two months in America. \u00a0Here they are housed, fed, tutored \u00a0and learn some about American customs and so on. \u00a0 Smith said Jubilee houses up to 30 immigrants at a time and averages about 100 immigrants in the course of a year. \u00a0 In addition, 12 staff members and 12 volunteers currently form a “community of caring” around these \u00a0new arrivals. \u00a0 Jubilee has taken people from 31 different countries (the Sudan, Ethiopia, Bosnia, Nicaraugua, Afghanistan…). By the time they get to America, Smith estimated many of these people have been in refugee camps between 10 and 15 years. \u00a0 He said the stories of poverty, \u00a0oppression, war, and so on, are tremendously overwhelming. \u00a0 What’s more, Smith said \u00a0after their two month stay at Jubiliee, the immigrants are then situated in metropolitan Atlanta where they assimilate into low paying chicken factory, hotel cleaning, \u00a0garment shop… jobs, amidst the crowded bustle and violence of the city. \u00a0 Smith said in the face of this, one father \u00a0of a family from the country of Mouritania in Africa, approached him and \u00a0innocently asked: \u00a0 “Isn’t there \u00a0perhaps a quiet farm around here where we could tend sheep like we did in our country?” \u00a0 Smith had to tell him no, understanding what awaited the family in Atlanta. \u00a0 “It just broke my heart,” Smith lamented. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Atlanta, we headed a couple hours east to Jubilee Partners Community in Comers, Georgia, for a series of interviews. \u00a0 The first day we met with Brad Smith who gave us a tour of the rural property. \u00a0 Jubilee …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}