Hey there, it's Maggie. For the next two weeks of episodes, the poet Samir Bashir will be guest hosting The Slowdown.

I hope you enjoy her selections and reflection. I'll return on February 18th.

I'm Samia Bashir, and this is The Slowdown.

This Saturday, rock and roll aficionados will celebrate the 13th annual International Clash Day, in honor of legendary punk band The Clash.

The day was launched in 2013 by Seattle DJ John Richards of K-E-X-P,

and has since been picked up and spread worldwide.

Today, their message feels even more evergreen.

We're anti-fascist, we're anti-violence,

we're anti-racist, and we're pro-creative, said the late great Joe Strummer, the band's co-founder, lead

vocalist, and key spokesman. We're against ignorance. Hmm, same, sis. Same. They say the immigrants

steal the hubcaps of respected gentlemen, he sung on 1980s something about England.

They say it would be wine and roses if England were for Englishmen again.

Immigration, which built the United States, for better and for worse, is again on trial,

not just here, but in much of the West.

The crackdowns are beyond devastating. Yet the potential for complete societal collapse seems unable to trigger our better natures to see each other's humanity. The crackdowns seem instead to be

quickly creating a whole new disaster. It takes so much strength to leave everything you know behind

to try to build a new life amongst strangers. To find that the place one has been sold as the new North Star of

safety carries yet more danger directed specifically at those who've worked so hard to survive,

who continue to work so hard to contribute, must then be a devastation beyond words.

Today's poem, written by a Somali immigrant who has made

a home in England, breaks through the rhetoric to the heart of asylum-seeking.

Home by Warson Shiree.

...