Many are reeling from the ever-emerging news that the Trump administration has been turning away people at the border, who are seeking asylum. They force them to cross illegally, so they can detain them instead. This is egregious enough, but that’s not enough for the white supremacists in the White House. They are ripping kids away from their parents arms, and separating them. The parents get detained, and charged. The kids are being sent to detainment camps and agencies all over the country, with no paperwork, to reunite them with their parents, ever.
Some people think it’s not their problem. Some people are wrong. There are about 65 million displaced people in this world (https://news.sky.com/story/we-must-help-refugees-because-simply-it-could-be-you-11410452). Human beings. More often than not, they are taken in by developing countries, while more developed countries, like the US, shrug their shoulders and prioritize that we have to protect our borders. People need to fill out the proper paper work, is the problem. If only these people fleeing devastation, would ask nicely, get in a line and wait their turn, then we would welcome them in. I highly doubt that is true, but my priority is on all these kids, that the government has effectively kidnapped.
The rest of us want to help those who need help the most. Many of us want to help these people who have had their kids ripped away from them, by our government. Many of us want our government to be held responsible for the human rights abuses they are committing in plain daylight.
So it’s us vs them, right?
Who is the us, though?
Who is the them?
Left vs right?
American vs immigrant?
I say we chuck all the dividing lines and look at this differently. Us, are people. The human race. A global community. If we are all one people, then maybe we can support each other, without regard to whether that person lives next door to us, in the next country, or across the world. It shouldn’t matter. If your house was on fire, and you ran over to someone else’s house to ask for help, what would you hope they would do? Let you in? Or tell you to just go back to your house, fill out some paper work, and prove that I should let you come into my house? Should I take your kid and have you arrested, for trespassing on my property? I mean you did step on my property, which is trespassing. Is that what is important here, or is your house being on fire, maybe the more important issue we need to prioritize?
I don’t care if an immigrant comes here legally or illegally, I will not call them illegal. They are human beings. They are souls, and they are people who bleed, just like me. I will stand up for them, as soon as I will stand up for my friends and family. I don’t understand people who won’t. I admire those who do.
An old friend asked me some ideas for how to help, so I put this together. I thought I would share it, for anyone else looking for ways to help. I by no means have all the best ways to help, but this is what I’ve got.
Donate
Contact Your Reps in Congress
Contact reps and keep contacting them:
Use @resistbot – you start a message to resistbot in fab messenger. It will get your info to look up your reps, and then it’s easy to type “resist” then “Congress” then type your message. Hit enter, then “done” and then “send” and they send you message right to your reps.
@Countable is another great app for messaging your reps on any legislation being voted on.
Calling reps is really important too, especially if your rep is a Republican. We have to demand they vote with Dems on this. They should sign on to Senator Feinstein’s bill called Keep Families Together.
We should be calling for an investigation and hearings. There is no oversight, so abuses aren’t being reported at all.
Protest
Sign up for a protest event for June 30th. This will hopefully be a massive nation-wide protest in solidarity with our fellow global citizens, who are being horrifically mistreated by this government:
I saw people have been protesting one ICE office so much they had to close:
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/21/622243400/ice-temporarily-closes-portland-office-amid-tumult-of-protests-across-u-s
Not sure that is realistic, nation-wide, but hey I’d love to see them unable to do their job.
As crappy as it is, we need to get people registered and convinced that their vote is everything. It’s crappy, because we can’t wait that long. These kids can’t wait that long. That’s not soon enough to help all those people, but there are some horrific realities:
- Some parents have already been deported and kids placed in private adoption agencies. It will be near impossible to get them reunited
- Some kids have been “misplaced” and turned over to human traffickers.
- At least one father killed himself, after his kid was take from him
- Congress is controlled by the GOP, who will not hold the Trump administration accountable
- Russia is going to attempt to hack our election. We need a blue wave so that the margins are so wide, Democrats overwhelmingly take over Congress.
Those realities are why we need an independent investigation, public hearings, and independent oversight of family reunification. We need an independent and accountable source, so that they will actively advocate for the parents and kids, not be shills for Trump’s fascist administration. None of that is going to happen, while Republicans are in control of Congress. They won’t stand up to Trump. They just enable him with their complicit silence.
This isn’t a legal issue, or a political one. It’s a moral imperative. The crux is that we need political power, to ensure the moral imperative is achieved. We can no longer allow voter apathy to be accepted. We have no excuses. We should have near 100% registration and voter turn out. If we want our government to be a transparent and accountable body of citizens representing citizens, we must hold them accountable. We must be informed and we must vote in every election. We must do the hard work of convincing our friends and family to do the same.
We have to condemn the eye rolls at politics and campaigns. Being patriotic isn’t about waving a flag, as much as it’s about participating in the democracy that is the lifeblood of our country. Politics and campaigns are dirty and nasty, but the more citizens pay attention to the real issues, and not the character assassinations, we can push it to be cleaned up. We can reward honesty and transparency. We can expect our elected officials and candidates to answer hard questions and call them out when they duck those questions.
If we sit back and expect it to be done for us, it will, but it will look like the Handmaid’s Tale. If you haven’t seen it, it’s terrifying.
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