We are all entitled to good and nutritious food for ourselves and our families. This is something many of the refugees I am meeting need but do not have.

There is something especially raw and especially powerful about getting to know the refugees I am meeting and writing about and hoping to help. In our country, the refugees are just another story, another controversy, something else to divide us, for politicians to exploit, and that list is now so long almost no one is thinking of the lives of the refugees at all.

Here, so many of us are refugees, often literally, sometimes in spirit, in many cases because of our family histories and experiences. The refugee experience is a very deep chord running through our national soul, I do not believe it will ever be destroyed or wiped away.

Here, we are all refugees in one way or another.

I am learning once again – I saw this in my own family –  about the drama of the refugee, the endless anxiety, the despair, the delusions of normalcy and recovery, the struggle for optimism, the hard labor of adjustment, the sense of isolation and the staggering daily challenges of life.

And the awful trauma of losing everything and facing cruelty, death, starvation and ruin, year after year.

In America, we are just beginning to understand the awful toll trauma takes on our soldiers and the victims of rape and violence, we call it PTSD. To the refugee, almost all of whom have seen their loved ones slaughtered or perish, or left behind, trauma is life itself, it shapes their very existence., it is as regular as the sun rising.

Being a refugee is about the search for dignity, safety and opportunity; a search for a personal existence within a larger community that must fight for its dignity and right to exist  every minute of every day.

In a sense, the refugee has nothing to lose because she has already lost everything, and is once a again punished, condemned to be a stranger for the rest of their lives. The husbands back home seem to die the most frequently and immediately, so few of these families have men at home.

The refugee is never safe, their tragedy and struggle never ends.

The great hope and faith of the refugee is for their children, many will say it is too late for them to ever have a normal and rational and knowable life again. The children have a chance, the mothers say, which is why so many refugees sacrifice again for them.

Having been driven from their homes and land in the most horrific and unimaginable of ways, they again confront indifference and outright hostility, this time in their new home. This cruelty is an ugly tear in the moral fabric of their persecutors.

The moral philosopher Hannah Arendt, herself a refugee,  wrote powerfully about the refugee experience in her famous essay, “We The Refugees,” published in 1943 after she was driven from her home by the Nazi’s.

It is true, she wrote, that refugees have to seek refuge,  even thought ” we committed no acts and most of us never dreamt of having any radical opinion. The refugees of today say the same thing in the same words. A mother of four, a refugee from the Middle East, told me no one in her family had ever uttered a political thought or committed a political act, they were almost all butchered or bombed to death.

“Our optimism,” Arendt wrote, “indeed is admirable, even if we say so ourselves. The story of our struggle has finally become known. We lost our home, which means the familiarity of daily life. We lost our occupation, which means the confidence that we are of some use in this world. We lot our language, which means the naturalness of reactions, the simplicity of gestures, the unaffected expression of feeling.”

And they left their relatives and best friends behind, killed in the genocides and wars and coups that are the hallmark of human men. The private lives of the refugees are forever ruptured, there will never again be normalcy, life can never again be taken for granted, not even in the land of the free and the brave.

Nevertheless, the refugee is uncomplaining, and looks ahead. I have never heard a refugee complain or show any kind of self-pity.

“We start our new lives,” one mother from Syria told me recently,”and try to follow as closely as possible all of the advice given us. We are told to forget, and to pretend we are American now, and so we try. Among ourselves, we know we are exiles forever, strangers always. We hope and pray for our children, they have hope here that we did not have.”

It has taken me months to get to know the refugees, to be accepted and trusted by them, I have had to move more slowly and patiently than I ever have, and I have a long way to go yet.  Many of them know me now, and i have given them no reason not to trust me. The more I move among them, the more I learn.

They are afraid to call attention to themselves now, to have their photos taken or to be quoted publicly, and there is no reason for them to take risks. They they believe it is dangerous for them and their children. But they are also in need, and so they speak up reluctantly and carefully.

If I had not been a reporter for years, inured to people who didn’t want to see me, I would never have gotten this far. I want to be in the middle of one of the great moral struggles of my life. I know where I want to stand.

Many of the things I am learning are hard to see. I know there is hunger in America, but I rarely see it up close.  I know children who wear flip-flops to school in the winter, and who have white rice and beans for dinner every night.

The refugees have been abandoned by their old countries, and abandoned once again by their new country, where many people do not want them here, including many powerful people.

Their subsidies and grants and support are drying up quickly, ever thing is being slashed or canceled. Nobody wants to remember any promises made, or obligations that were once honored.  They used to have time and support to adjust, not there is little time and no support. They get here, and in a few weeks, with nothing but what’s in their suitcase, they are on their own.

The most basic human right, I believe, is to eat and feed one’s family. I have not seen anyone who is starving, but there are many who are hungry and do not have enough money to eat well and regularly.

So my first goal is to ask the Army Of Good to help in the new First Week Refugee Grocery Campaign, I am starting with my friend Ali (Amjad Abdulla) in January. Each month, we are going to a market to buy $150 worth of groceries. The families cannot help us, they can’t afford baby sitters and work all the time.

This is a drop in the bucket. We will help a dozen families one time. But you have to start somewhere, and see if the Gods and their winds will get behind you and push on ahead. One step at a time.

So we will talk to them, find out what they need and bring it to them. Once a month, every month. This idea is a powerful one for many reasons. One is that it is needed badly. Another is that it is inexpensive.  This program will cost about $1,800 for the first year, and I have half of that money in hand already..

I will not have to ask for much more for this grocery program. It is not really about money, we will never have enough of that, but about heart.

If you wish to donate, you can, to P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816 or via paypal, [email protected]. I have  enough on hand to get started and I will meet with and photograph the families as we progress, you will get to see them and meet them also.

I will put some other projects and ideas aside, if necessary, no refugee who comes to our bountiful country should want for food or go hungry. I am already pestering a grocery store chain for a discount.

I am embarrassed that my country has admitted these long suffering people, and is now abandoning them, there is so much wealth here.

I am heartened that so many people are eager and willing to help them. I am focusing on the good, there are good people willing to help, we have identified the need and can address it.

We can’t perform miracles or wave magic wands, but we can fill some of the holes – and bellies – that the refugees know all too well.

Many of the people I meet have been brutally driven from their homes, often raped and assaulted and spent years languishing in refugee camps. To a one, they dreamed of coming to America, a land where their children can dare to aspire to better lives.

I propose to help them see that the American dream is real, and the American spirit of generosity and acceptance is very much alive.

One day a month, this is something we can do. And that is the way for to respond – one day at a time, one thing at a time. Small acts of great kindness. Thanks.