Sanctuary cities are more than a series of flawed municipal laws and administrative directives. They represent an opportunity to strengthen communities, foster democratic participation, and reframe political organization.

Despite their best charitable impulses, citizens watch as poverty grows, mental-health cases mushroom and jobs vanish. In such a setting it remains hard to believe that individuals can make a difference. Except they can, of course.

One of the great lessons we are now learning since World War Two is that democracy is fairly useless if it is merely inherited. Growing up in countries that have enjoyed advanced political systems doesn't guarantee that they will automatically function effectively. For it to truly work democracy must be reinvented in every generation.

On Monday March 6, 2017 you deported Len Van Heest, a Canadian for the last 59 years. Yes, a Canadian but without the citizenship papers. He has several convictions for assault, mischief and uttering threats -- all stemming from and related to his mental illness, the bipolar disorder.

While the operating principle in our modern politics has been partisanship, its equivalent in our communities has been polarization. More than a few are now worried that this practice has carried over into how we treat one another as citizens.

We have in our midst many newcomers who were forced to flee their homelands, but live in constant fear of being found and forced to return. Their need to escape to this county was just as great as that of the Syrians, and yet that need is often not recognized.