Pierre Damas Bel
TW: suicide, racism, fascism
Continue readingElection Connection – Say His Name
immigration
Families Belong Together
StandardSome Twitter resources for today as well as throughout this election year. None of these accounts are affiliated with the federal government or official accounts of the departments they talk about.
Jacob Soboroff (journalist covering the border crisis)
RAICESTEXAS (helping reunite families)
Alternative Dept. Homeland Security
Ireallydocare.com (not a Twitter, but a list of non-profits helping (also listed below))
Al Otro Lado – serves indigent deportees, migrants, and refugees in Tijuana & Los Angeles
The Florence Project – providing legal & social services to detained immigrants in Arizona
Neta – a Latinx-run progressive media platform telling the stories of what’s happening on the border
Innovation Law Lab – working in immigrant detention centers and hostile judicial districts; keeping the definitive list of kids being held
https://www.innovationlawlab.org
Fuerza Del Valle – organizing workers & immigrant communities in the Rio Grande Valley
http://www.fuerzadelvalle.org/
The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights – promoting the best interests of unaccompanied immigrant children
https://www.theyoungcenter.org/
We Belong Together – women for common sense immigration policies
https://www.webelongtogether.org/
United We Dream – the largest immigrant youth-led network in the country
Womens Refugee Commission – advocating for the rights and protection of women, children, and youth fleeing violence and persecution
https://www.womensrefugeecommission.org/
ACLU – fighting attacks through the legal system
Kids In Need of Defense (KIND) – protecting unaccompanied children who enter the US immigration system alone to ensure that no child appears in court without an attorney.
Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project – providing asylum seekers with legal aid and community support across the country
Human Rights First – helping refugees obtain asylum in the U.S.
https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/
La Union del Pueblo Entero – founded by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, a community union that works in the Rio Grande Valley from the grassroots up
Committee for the Protection of Journalists
Alternative National Parks Service
Update and Call to Action
I wanted to write an update before my next post.
My intention last week was to return with more information about the border crisis, and that is what it is – a crisis, and then continue writing and sharing.
I was a bit overwhelmed with the horrifying news that children were being taken from their parents and detained. I was horrified that asylum seekers were being lied to, and sent, instead of to legal entry points, to illegal entry points, where they are then arrested, separated from their children, and detained.
Some of these children have been taken to New York and Michigan, not to detainment centers, but to foster care, and in the case of MI, a Betsy DeVos affiliated Christian adoption agency. Many of these children are pre-verbal.
This is beyond horrifying. I can’t find the adequate words for how bad and inhumane, and diabolical this is. This is a catastrophe.
With the executive order signed by President Trump, nothing has changed. Families will not be separated for twenty days, but then are subject to separation and detainment. Parents are being blackmailed into immediate deportation by being promised reunification with their children.
These people are not entitled to lawyers, and many of them do not speak English.
There is so much more to say and to more, and I sadly admit that I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t wade into the research of what’s happening there to explain it to you. I’m still trying to explain it to myself.
There is one group helping who I can reliably recommend: RAICES. Please contact your Congress-people and your Senators, no matter what state you are in, to voice your outrage at this racist and inhumane policy.
You can also go to ireallydocare.com for a list of other organizations helping the kids at the border.
My family decided to take a spontaneous road trip to Destiny USA, and that also contributed to my absence. I’ll tell you more about that in a subsequent post. It gave me a tiny respite of no television, no news, I kept thinking I’d write, but we just went, and it was fun; taking a couple of days away.
But those parents at the border…they don’t get a day off; they don’t get respite.
Border Update. 10:05pm EST, source: MSNBC
StandardI don’t know what just happened in Texas about babies and toddlers at the border and shelters but Rachel Maddow just lost it on the air and couldn’t finish her show.
Did Lawrence O’Donnell just say babies are being arrested?
We still don’t know where the girls are.
We just pulled out of the UN Human Rights Commission.
I need to look into this.
