Time out from writing today to make a quick trip into Boston to protest the inhumane treatment of families at the border and elsewhere.
My sign wasn’t quite in keeping with the crowd’s.
One of these protests, I’ll get it right.
Many passionate pleas, including this young man who kept asking if our governor, Charlie Baker, could hear us.
And this young woman told a harrowing piece of personal history — about how her grandmother saved more than 100 Jews and also shot a Dutch collaborator in her living room.
“…hold onto what motivates you to act. Find all the humans you can find who agree with you and make calls and register voters. Because if things continue on this way for people without funds, or with brown skin, or for women and children and the sick, there will come a time when we all have fewer choices. This is not yet that time. Get out of the snow bank, find the St. Bernard with the tiny flask of hope, and stomp around like democracy depends on it.”
‘It’s All Too Much, and We Still Have to Care’ by ‘Dahlia Lithwick
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/family-separation-is-horrifying-but-we-cant-go-numb-and-turn-away.html
Beautifully put!
the photograph that accompanies Lithwick’s words….i see my own granddaughter, my own
great granddaughter…they are mine. What did you come away with? What was energized
in you? What will you do now?
I find self moving along through the days, finding small joys and hard work, but now with
always a low level feeling of nausea. It’s what is there, first in the morning….
THEY continue to take it all one step further. Almost every day. one more step further….
I cannot understand how this can possibly be happening
I was moved by the pleas that we all step up and challenge these injustices… that we not remain silent… I was unnerved by the comparisons of ICE to the Nazis under Hitler. I am supporting legislation in Mass. that will make us almost like a Sanctuary state, but not quite (because our governor is a bit of a coward).
I cannot understand how this is happening either. There are too many bad actors to pay attention to. Too much corruption to remain abreast of. The descent into a kind of madness seems to be happening at a faster and faster pace. I went precisely because I am exhausted by it all.
I was surprised by how small a crowd it was. One of my friends thought there were 250 people present, but I’d put the number closer to 100. There was a protest at the same spot yesterday, so that may be part of the reason for the small size, but more likely, it is the degree to which the onslaught of corrosive inhumane nonsensical government actions are overwhelming us all.
Normally, I would’ve jotted down some of the inspiring words to be able to share here, but I was tired.
Most of the crowd was white. Most of the crowd was my age and older.
that photograph continues in my mind’s eye. Yesterday, my 29 year old granddaughter,
Allyssia boarded a plane here in California. A lay over in Phoenix. then on to Texas,
I think Houston? (how am i not sure?) to take her 10 month old daughter to see the father of this child, to meet the grandmother, aunties of this child. You have seen pictures of them
that i have posted on the blog. They are brown. My granddaughter is half black. Emrie, the
10 month old girl child is half her mother and half her father who is El Salvadoran. All that extended family in Texas is El Salvadoran.
Both my granddaughter and the child’s father are veterans of the United States Navy. How they met. 8 something years ago.
I think how it could concievably be that under some circumstance, passengers on those
flights might have been detained. SHE could be detained because of how she looks. Emrie could be detained, having an El Salvadoran father, who is now in the last year, a police
officer there. Detained. detained. It all somehow would be clarified and she would be released.
She and Emrie would return here to this Hill of Refuge in California.
but to sit here this afternoon and “entertain” these thoughts, the possibility of this,……
Emphasizes what is actually HAPPENING.
You are right to worry.
I think.
I remember the morning ALyssia was born. 1989, how so beautifully brown she was. How we smiled and said we were strengthening our gene pool.
Beautiful memory.
phone call. they are There. Planes were delayed and they didn’t arrive till very late but
none the less, drove directly to his mother’s, Emrie’s grandma there, who didn’t know of
her existence till some few days ago. It was her birthday, that grandma, and she decided that it was right, that Emrie was her gift. Today, all the aunties came throughout, bringing the cousins. There is such such BEAUTY in the threads of humanity that it pulses so strong,
and rises above all
Thank you for letting me know. Hope their return home is as safe.
No one close to me is under threat and EVERY ONE IS UNDER THREAT when this Administration approves of unspeakable policies. No, they are not the first administration to err but they are THE WORST AND GETTING WORSE with each tweeted breath…(that I, weary and overwhelmed, might mount a protest rivaling Shakespeare).”O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend. The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act. And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!” https://youtu.be/CZFngXSDD0I
I am hoping June 30th will be a greater uprising … and I think we are not only brutalizing the families, the children, but we are also doing great harm to the souls of those who are carrying out the edicts of separation. Surely there are those who are walking away from livelihoods needed to support their own families rather than “follow orders” … others will remain, some hoping to make the best of the situation if they can, others who will become brutalized by their own brutality. This is such a frightening re-living of Nazi Germany … I am stunned that we have fallen so far
Agree. It’s important to remember how far the damage goes. I’ll be marching in Boston. I hope it’s bigger than the women’s march.