By Anna Daniels
Kronos devours his son by Goya
Is there no limit to bureaucratic sadism?
“Where are the girls? Where are the babies and toddlers?” are the questions many of us have been asking all week.
We have learned that the GOP is our domestic Boko Haram, silent on the location of the girls and their treatment. And now we have learned that the babies, the children who have been ripped from their mothers’ arms are being placed in “Tender Age Facilities.” These are not shelters. These are prisons—for babies and toddlers who sit unattended in cages.
Over 2,300 children have been separated from their families since May. The GOP is a terrorist organization.
Trump and his administration are gleefully holding girls, babies and toddlers as bargaining chips for a goddam construction project—the wall.
This atrocity is also being used as a deterrent to the men, women, boys, girls, babies and toddlers who make thousand mile journeys through the most dangerous circumstances to ask our country for asylum.
This atrocity is being used as a deterrent to the browning of America. This atrocity is being used as a deterrent to the future, to democracy.
This atrocity is also an essential part of Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign.
What is being done in our name? We don’t comfort children crying for their papa. We don’t change their diapers. We let children sob in terror and sleep on concrete floors. Many of these children will never be reunited with their mother or father because there is no process for how to reunite these children with their mothers and fathers. This is unspeakably evil.
This is on the Republicans. This is on Trump. Trump proudly owns it, doubles down on it while the so-called “moderates” are going all wobbly in the knees but will do absolutely nothing because 40% of the electorate remains Trump’s rabid racist base.
But 66% of the American public is against family separation. We are not powerless against this cruel authoritarian infestation of our democracy. This is not who we are.
Get active this weekend and in upcoming days.
Friday, June 22 – Keep Families Together Nurse-In, 3-4:30pm, Edward J Schwartz Federal Courthouse. We condemn the brutal separation of a mother from her 4-month-old infant as she nursed. We stand in solidarity with migrant parents who have risked everything to flee violence and give their children the hope of a brighter future.
Saturday, June 23 – Families Belong Together March San Diego, 10am, Civic Center (200 C Street, Downtown) Families Belong Together opposes the cruel, inhumane and unjustified separation of children from their parents along the U.S. border with Mexico and at other ports of entry into the U.S. We protest the conditions in which these children are kept. We protest the irreversible trauma that has already been perpetrated on these children and their parents for the crime of seeking a better life.
Saturday, June 23, 10am Families Belong Together Rally North County at Westfield North County Mall, 272 E Via Rancho Parkway, Escondido 92025 (intersection Westfield Way).
National Action: June 30. A nationwide response in Washington DC and other cities. Details coming soon. Sponsoring organizations (list in formation) include:
ACLU, Advancement Project, AFT, Avaaz, Center for Community Change, Credo, Daily Kos, DC Immigration Hub, Gamliel, Greenpeace, Indivisible, LGBTQ Task Force, Moms Demand Action, MomsRising, MoveOn, NARAL, National Nurses United, NCJW, NDWA, NEA, NextGen, Pantsuit Nation, People’s Action, Planned Parenthood, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, SEIU, Sierra Club, Sojourners, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Unitarian Universalists, United We Dream, Voto Latino, Women’s March, YWCA, MarchOn, SwingLeft.
The San Diego response is tentatively scheduled for Waterfront Park (County Administration Building) at 11am on Saturday, June 30
Jam the White House switchboard (202-456-1111), speak to this moral atrocity and demand:
• No family separation at the border
• Reunite families now separated
• Legal ports of entry must be open to asylum seekers.
Call our Senators and Reps and demand that Democrats shut the legislative process down until these demands are met. Call Speaker of House Paul Ryan 202-225-3031 and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell 202-224-2541.
There should be no doubt in our minds that ICE must be abolished.
Above all, we must be prepared to vote in 2018 (and 2020) and support progressive candidates across the country. This is on us.
Anna Daniels
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- The Urgency of Transgender Safety, Legal Protections - November 27, 2018
- Chaos and Cruelty at the Border - November 26, 2018
I’m reading this as the BBC has discovered that the Mad King has — once again — reversed himself and announced he’s going to order the Border Patrol to end the separation of families. No doubt he’ll demand we all stay in a Trump hotel, eat American beef and buy Harley Davidsons in repayment for His grandness, but it’s time to march. Time to see crowds in the streets nationally. Let’s get together, let’s find out how many we are, and how few share the Mad King’s madness.
We must win big in November and the Democrats better gear up for the fight of their lives if they are not too beholden to their perfect and lush lives as the Republicans are presently. Show us a difference!
We need to let him know that we will be watching-we will take him on if anything like this happens again! We also need to make sure that family reunification happens like STAT! We need to let him know “it’s a process,” “We’re working on it,” “it’s a complex problem,” is unacceptable!