By David Futrelle
Just a quick post with list of things you can do to fight Trump’s horrific policy of separating children from their parents at the border.
CALL YOUR REPS: Call your Senators and Congressional representative. Go to 5calls here (they have several scripts you can use and all the phone numbers you need) or call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121; they’ll connect you to the right people.
PREPARE FOR THE NATIONWIDE MOBILIZATION ON JUNE 30! Big demonstration planned for DC and in cities across the country, sponsored by Families Belong Together. Go here to find a demonstration near you.
FIND GROUPS DOING OTHER THINGS TO HELP. Here’s list of relevant groups and other ideas for activism on Slate.
I’ve been wondering if the protests are still on too. I haven’t received an email from the organizers saying it’s off though.
Given that there are no reunification plans, families are emphatically not together. So I would think they’ll still be on.
I hope the protests are still on.
@weirwoodtreehugger: Can I share your brilliant post about all the continuing issues on my FB – with or without your user name added.
I hope that the chant is something like “Impeach and Prosecute”. Like, let the fuckers know that they don’t get a do-over because the pumpkin signed his name in a little book they made. Don’t let up!
And here I am, sick with anger, disgust, and impotence, wondering what little I can do other than a few dollars to the ACLU per month. My Senators are solidly blue, but we’ve got to get our damn orange ass-kissing Representative out of office, and I’m trying to focus on that as a goal.
Fuck. This is not my country. When did it all go wrong?
…don’t answer that. I have enough shame as it is.
Abolish ICE
Skyla (is that an ok shortening?),
Please, share away.
And from what I’ve been seeing on the Twitters, the protests are still on. So everyone who can make it, go sign up!
Skyla is fine. Or even Sky if you want to make it shorter. Thanks for the permission
@Skylalalala
Hello my people and thank you for being brave and bringing up the child trafficking, kidnapping and false imprisonment of mothers and children that goes on every day in this country and around the world…..ooops, I meant adoption too. The US is the most vicious and continually cruel of all the western nations in the way they continue to harvest mothers and children for the trafficking trade both here and abroad. I read an article today about the lifelong cortisol and ptsd that results from this. I’ll link it in another post.
Back to the current iteration of human rights violations:
1. We have to keep on top of this even though it looks like things are better. Another poster is right, they could just jail entire families.
2. There are still 1475 children not presently fully accounted for. Older children who are less attractive to the adoption market (they know their identity thus it is hard to impossible to steal it) are prime fodder for sex trafficking.
3. The adults are seeking asylum from Central and South American wars and organized crime that lives like war for the people so affected because of US foreign policy cryptic and otherwise. Beyond the fact that it is the right thing to do, we actually owe these people. I guess we didn’t learn anything from turning away all of the Jewish refugees during WWII.
4. There really is a sizable group of citizens who not only believe this is legal and moral but want to hurt people. This is gleeful stuff for them. Two examples from my real world life and the last 48 hours.
a) I happened to mention this to a friend/acquaintance yesterday. I’ve heard her make dog whistle racist comments before and have tried to fight them without just causing her to shut down. I thought we’d made progress. Seems not and we aren’t speaking and I don’t care if we ever do again. She tried to argue that it was the parents own fault for “breaking the law” and they “deserved “ it.
b) Another friend dropped by today and showed me a debate he’d had on Facebook the night before about this very issue. A debate with a local person that my friend has known since childhood. My friend was told that “he should be careful because pretty soon things were going to change and “every democrat, atheist, liberal snowflake, homo, feminist and other dreck would just get two in the head without trial”. So what my friend says to me, do I need to worry about a person I’ve known for almost forty years shooting me?
Yes, I think we all need to be at least a little worried and we need to form what communities and resistance we can both online and IRL. I’m still a bit in shock and denial that this is happening in my country. That our racism wasn’t changing, even if slowly, that we still hate people for orientation or gender or political affiliation or religion. The virulence of it is just horrifying. I know I shouldn’t be surprised. I belong to several of the groups listed; it isn’t like I haven’t experienced hatred and prejudice but I guess I usually thought it was a localized phenomenon. I wonder if I get two in the head for each category.
I wrote to my senators and my congressman about these issues. I guess the next step is letters about the missing children and the treatment of those seeking asylum and immigration in general.
I hate the idea of desperate people seeking help from war and crime and other social breakdowns being not only not helped but further brutalized. Someone should really tell these people that none of this is legal, moral or ethical and certainly isn’t even remotely Christian. Or maybe it is actually Christian which is why I’ve never liked the abrahamic faiths.
I know that a lie can get around the world while truth is still trying to get its shoes on and I suspect that good and evil are often on similar timetables, but even though despair and helplessness seems the only logical response, we have to keep on keeping on.*
* With brings breaks for proper self care for the exhausted activist above. You can’t give what you don’t have. I struggle with this too. You aren’t alone.
@AuntieMame
It sure as hell isn’t part of any Christianity I was ever raised in. Then again, I was raised in a liberal Protestant denomination. The Jesus I heard about hung out with and showed compassion for those that his society considered dreck, and had all kinds of harsh words for the privileged and powerful. Not to mention was good at shutting down all the gotcha ethical questions they tried to fire at him to shut *him* down.
He ended up dying for doing it. Resurrection or not, knowing he’d end up paying for it and still doing it anyways in the name of doing what was right? Would we all had even a thousandth of that bravery.
None of what these pieces of shit bray about has anything in common with what the Christ I heard about did and taught.
Oh yeah. And that one song that his mom did? You know, the Magnificat? That was a fucking protest song. He got it from somewhere.
These people never consider the child’s right to not be traumatised, and kidnapped, their right to stay with their parents. It’s always about punishing the adults and ignoring the monumental, lifelong harm to the children. It’s no wonder they’re ok with this, they clearly don’t think children are human. Same with the way they crow about taking the children of addicts.
Most, maybe all are probably safe. They were given into the care of relatives, many of whom were “illegal” and are undoubtedly hiding from the government with the kids.
I’m an adoptee and an activist for massive reforms to adoption and foster care. Or even ending them entirely if they can’t be fixed in such a way that children aren’t harmed. It’s all broken and harmful to children.
Yes, infants and young children have permanent brain changes from losing their mothers, even temporarily, although getting them back can mitigate most of the damage. Young children who lose their mothers have massive floods of cortisol – the brain damaging stress hormone – resulting in hypervigilance for the rest of their lives. Not to mention the issues of being able to connect to other people, self esteem problems and deep seated need to avoid rejection, even if it means sabotaging relationships themselves. It’s a form of complex PTSD, and for those who lose their mothers at birth, means the child has no pre-trauma self to revert to.
If you’re interested, Paul Sunderland has a great lecture on the topic on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3pX4C-mtiI&t=7s
It’s not just the kids on the border who’ve been ripped from their families who will have to deal with trauma issues. It’s every child who has ever been taken from their families for any reason.
@Ivory Bill Woodpecker, @Bananananana dakry – When Sessions used the Bible in his defense, it was jaw-droppingly stupid as well as wrong. He said that Paul told us “to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them.” (I’m quoting from Saturday’s Montreal Gazette.)
Now I don’t really like that St. Paul character, but he was talking about ordinary people obeying laws. If you’re part of the government, and there’s an unjust law, and you have the power to CHANGE that law, you really don’t have this excuse.
Trump has just walked us through a bit of classic abuser strategy.
Does horrible thing.
Claims he’s not really doing the horrible thing. Well maybe he is, but everyone does the horrible thing. Is angry, threatening or mocking towards any expressions of distress at the horrible thing.
Tells you it’s your fault for making him do the horrible thing. Claims justification: from Bible, law or other authority, for doing the horrible thing. Claims you deserved the horrible thing anyway. Claims he’s doing the horrible thing for your own good.
Announces he will stop doing the horrible thing.
Expects your love and gratitude for stopping doing the horrible thing.
May bemoan your reluctance and caution to respond to his calls to “make up”, “forgive and forget” “help me do better next time”. May blame you for not being convinced he means it.
May interpret your love and gratitude for stopping doing the horrible thing as permission to do more horrible things further on down the line… or indeed for continuing to do the horrible thing he has promised to stop doing.
Does nothing to clear up the mess caused by the horrible thing.
Trump has just walked us through a bit of classic abuser strategy.
Does horrible thing. Claims he’s not really doing the horrible thing. Well maybe he is, but everyone does the horrible thing. Is angry or mocking of your expressions of distress at the horrible thing.
Tells you it’s your fault for making him do the horrible thing. Claims justification: from bible, law or other authority, for doing the horrible thing. Claims you deserved the horrible thing anyway. Claims he’s doing the horrible thing for your own good.
Announces he will stop doing the horrible thing.
Expects your love and gratitude for stopping doing the horrible thing.
May bemoan your reluctance and caution to respond to his calls to “make up”, “forgive and forget” “help me do better next time”.
May blame you for not being convinced he means it.
May interpret your love and gratitude for stopping doing the horrible thing as permission to do more horrible things further on down the line… or indeed for continuing to do the horrible thing he has promised to stop doing.
Does nothing to clear up the mess caused by the horrible thing.
We all need to bear in mind that every single bit of it – including the U-turn, the expressions of regret, the demands to make up… that’s all lies and all part of the abuse.
Not the solution to the abuse.
@epitome of incomprehensibility
And unless I’m mistaken, there have been some brutal political cartoons made on the subject and his level of hypocrisy.
@bluecat
The asshole is U-turning in part because he’s realized he’s gotten the water too hot too quickly for the frog and is covering his ass. It doesn’t make it any less abhorrent or abusive.
God damn, this country.
I need a Xanax.
Avaaz.org is raising money for legal representation for the separated children: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/child_hostages_21/?fpla
Open to international donations. Here is what they say:
I’ve signed up for the rally on the 30th; there’s one about half an hour from my house. And Husbeast is going with me!!!
I’ll be making lots of signs since it seemed like there were nothing like enough at the gun control rally. Finally get to use my almost complete graphic design education! I also plan to bring an ice chest with drinks and snacks (which will probably stay in the car.)
Husbeast and I are furious that this administration is using tax dollars to kidnap children and brutalize asylum seekers.
wwth
Everybody should keep the pressure on. I know most Americans breathed a cautious sigh of relief when himself announced that families would be kept together. I’m Australian, I groaned. Keeping families detained together for what seems like forever (and looks as though it will be literally forever for some of those poor unfortunates on Manus Island) is no solution if the government makes no effort to process asylum claims promptly.
More importantly, take a _really_ long hard look at Australia. You lot don’t have hundreds or thousands of kms of open ocean that people need to cross to get to landfall. However, I’m pretty sure that evil fuckers like Sessions, Trump and their henchmen can dream up some version of you’re OK to claim asylum if you come by air but not by boat. You’ve currently got a trivial version of it with the only if you cross the bridge we’re blocking but not if you risk crossing the river.
Keep the pressure on until the whole thing is properly sorted out. Every child and every parent (including those who’ve already been deported) should have DNA samples taken and everyone should be properly cross-matched to establish all family relationships. Parent, child, sibling. Every last one of them. And make the government find a way, even if they have to use Red Cross or Catholic Charities or other groups that do family reunifications after natural disasters. American taxpayers money was used to deliver this disaster, so taxpayers money should be used to resolve it.
(And take especial note of the truck-sized loopholes in the executive order. Esp about using military facilities which, if allowed, would remove the protections normally provided by state governments which set standards for accommodation and related services for children.)
Yeah. No one should view this as a concession or caving because of political heat. It is not. This EO represents an escalation of a genocidal policy and it was most likely the plan all along. He’s counting on people believing it’s an end to family separation. It is not. This isn’t a soothing cup of hot cocoa. It’s a soothing cup of cocoa with a poison pill dissolved in it.
@epitome:
I can just imagine the author’s reaction to this…
Sessions:
God: Remember that flood, way back? Well, we’re getting perilously close to the point where I say “fuck it”, set fire to the very quantum vacuum itself, and then start over from scratch.
… Perhaps it’s fortunate for those of us living in the less-affected countries that there is, in all likelihood, no God …
Erm, what happened to the text after “Sessions:”? Somebody seems to have edited it out … and it wasn’t me.
Put it back.
@epitome of incomprehensibility Thanks for the link. <3
@Surplus I see text until “in all likelihood, no God…” Is that the end of your comment?
Hmm, I’d previously thought she could be spared the tumbrels.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/21/melania-trump-jacket-i-dont-care-child-detention-center-visit-clothes
@Scilfdreja:
Eh?