Outpouring Of Grief And Rage Across A Nation Caging Children #LightsForLiberty

Waterville, Maine  July 12, 2019

My husband and I attended two events yesterday in Maine protesting the child concentration camps and family separations employed by the federal government to terrorize asylum seekers and other immigrants.

Waterville, Maine July 12, 2019

50 people turned out in Skowhegan to stand for two hours on the bridge, ending with a candlelight vigil.

Skowhegan, Maine  July 12, 2019

It was part of the nationwide Lights for Liberty campaign to bring the demand to the streets and, where possible, to the concentration camps themselves.

50 is a lot of people at a protest in central Maine, but there was no press at the well-publicized event.

Many of my own children's retired teachers were there, as well as current teachers and several children. Organizer and educator Aliza Jones was there with her daughter who was eating ice cream -- what children should be doing on a summer night, rather than crying for their parents while laying on concrete in a cage near the border.

Skowhegan, Maine July 12, 2019

Lots of signs called on the federal government to do better. Some expressed a belief that the USA is better than this.

Waterville, Maine  July 12, 2019

I wish I could agree that our country is better than this. Built on the genocide of Native people and the labor of slaves, we do not have an admirable history. My white people always seem to be forgetting that many of us could be holding Bobby Hayes' sign above: Grandchild of Immigrants. 

But many people do not know the true history of this nation: the U.S. government turned away boatloads of Jewish refugees who died in concentration camps, knew about the Holocaust but allowed it to proceed anyway, and, after tardily "liberating" the camps, ran show trials at Nuremberg while quietly bringing Nazi rocket scientists to the USA.

Skowhegan, Maine   July 12, 2019

But we, the people of the U.S., can do MUCH better than caging toddlers and torturing them by withholding food, showers, and hugs.

Bourassa family together in Skowhegan  July 12, 2019

As the Japanese-Americans interned during WWII hysteria have said, At least we were with our parents. 

Even for adults, even if they are alleged to have broken a law (note that seeking asylum is not a crime), indefinite detention goes against the rule of law the U.S. claims to have been founded on.

It could be you or a toddler you love next.

Skowhegan, Maine  July 12, 2019

Get busy now demanding that your elected officials shut down the camps and reunite the families: 202-225-3121.

U.S. Concentration Camps Housing Children In Conditions Of Torture Where Some Die #nobabyprisons

Copley Plaza, Boston, June 26, 2019  Photo credit: Faith Ninivaggi, Reuters

While I've been busy organizing resistance to climate-killing weapons of mass destruction, the news has been full of horrifying accounts of migrant children jailed, kept from their families, and neglected to the point of death. My husband has been calling our congressional delegation from Maine every day demanding that they visit the centers, close them down, and reunite the children with their families.

It terrifies me that by paying federal income taxes (deducted from my salary as a school teacher) I am complicit in these racist,  for-profit schemes of death dealing.

Soon I will retire, and I will have more opportunity to resist paying those taxes. And more time to organize and participate in resistance.

Copley Plaza, Boston, June 26, 2019  Photo credit: Charles Krupa, Associated Press

Yesterday employees at Wayfair furniture walked off the job protesting the fact that the corporation profits from child detention. They were supported by hundreds in the streets in Boston.

As reported by Joey Garrison in USA Today:

"We don't want our company to profit off of children being in concentration camps," said Madeline Howard, 29, a project manager at Wayfair, who has worked there six years and emceed the event. 

"We want them to have a code of ethics that blocks orders like this from happening again."

Wayfare's owners have said they donated a large sum to the Red Cross, but they won't cancel the contract to supply beds to yet another concentration camp under construction in Texas. Wayfare's employees say another walkout could be in the works. (Maybe a trip to Boston is in my summer plans.) 

"We do care" is a reference to the First Lady touring the Mexico-U.S. border last year wearing a jacket that read, "I really don't care, do U?"

Last year a few times I donated to support activist Patricia Okoumou of Staten Island. She made several famous climbs -- one up the Statue of Liberty's base, two up the Eiffel Tower, and one up Southwest Key which operates several detention center in Texas -- to call attention to the horrors of children in concentration camps.

Okoumou marching before her Statue of Liberty climb, NYC, August 6, 2018     Photo credit: Alex Hollings

She is now being harassed by GoFundMe threatening to withhold $20k donated by her supporters to help her continue her work. Allegedly, because she posted an update that she is pregnant. 

Last year, U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gornstein sentenced her to harsh conditions of release saying that she was supporting herself by profiting from her activism.

Okay if General Dynamics profits off the detention centers, war ships and other death dealing though, right? Because that's the American Way. (General Dynamics could well be the poster child for the ugly, ugly mess we're in.)



These are the values of our government: ok to profit from jailing toddlers in squalid conditions, not ok to "profit" from objecting to those jails in a way designed to attract publicity.

Okoumou has opened a new account at Patreon.

Meanwhile there is the brouhaha in the corporate press because Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted on Instagram, "The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border."

Some have objected to the use of Holocaust language to describe these detention centers but others, notably Japanese-Americans who were sent as families to camps during WWII, have agreed. 

Interviewed by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now!, psychotherapist Satsuki Ina, who was born in an internment camp in California, had this to say:

the reality that this is happening again is causing many of us to recognize that this is an injustice that is discussed in the same way...that we were a threat to national security, that we were an unassimilable race of people, that we were a threat to the economy of the United State... 

Captivity trauma is known to have lifelong effects on children growing up, and results in depression, and anxiety, and post-traumatic stress (PTSD).

Some of Patricia Okoumou's posts sound like she has PTSD, too. She can't sleep for worrying about children in cages. A lot of us are feeling that way, and we can't figure out what to do about the evils perpetrated by our government, with our money, allegedly in our name.

So we'll go to the streets. Here are events coming up in Maine, one organized by a young mom who was arrested with me protesting the Pentagon's climate crimes at contractor General Dynamics last week. 

Hi lovely family, friends, community members and hopefully beyond.

I've been feeling a mix of emotions especially sadness as I learn each day about the escalation of horrific and dehumanizing treatment of people, notably children in "detention" aka torture camps. I feel powerless, relying on my elected officials to take my calls seriously and do something as quickly as needs to be done. What more can I do way up here in Maine to make this stop fast!

I think about the pain I would feel if my two-year-old was taken from me. Who will comfort him when he cries? Who will change his diapers and keep him clean? Who will protect him from those who harm? I'm crying again now thinking about what the answer is for these detained kids. I am feeling a strong need to take the time to process this tragedy of dehumanization.

WHAT IF WE ALL JUST STOPPED TOGETHER and put our collective energy towards these children and their families?

Here is what I propose: at 11:00am, JUNE 28 we all just STOP. Maybe for an hour, maybe for half and hour, maybe for 10 minutes if you would otherwise get fired. Maybe we can join in common spaces (Congress Square Park, our places of work, our parks) or maybe just be alone. Can we all just stop together and feel this? Can we cry together? Can we say, "yes this is really happening" and feel it? Maybe we can collectively hold the a banner above our heads (the original hashtag) that reads, "REUNIFY DETAINED KIDS NOW". We will be in Monument Square if anyone wants to join us there.

Then I propose we all COLLECTIVELY GIVE. Get out an actual piece of paper and pen/pencil, and write something for these kids (or parents). Maybe a poem, short story, prayer, hope for them, etc. You can share it or not but whatever it is, put some loving energy into it. I'm not sure what we can do with all these papers. Any ideas? Maybe we burn them and send all of that love into the sky?

And finally, do a BRAINSTORM about what you/your community can do. Maybe it's calling elected officials (again). Maybe you work for a newspaper and you can print this story front and center everyday? Maybe you have sweet art skills and can make something cool that would generate attention. I honestly don't know but would feel better thinking about it with more people. How can we keep our attention locked on reuniting these children as quickly as possible and ensuring their and their families' safety?

Thanks to all who join me this Friday, June 28 at 11:00a.
Love,
Ashley and Dan

PS this picture is of me and my sister swinging my two-year-old who is laughing and having the childhood EVERY kid should have.

https://www.facebook.com/events/2298006317117115/


Finally, here's a link to events all over North America being coordinated for Friday, July 12. There are currently three listed for Maine: Lewiston, Westbrook (next to Portland) and Presque Isle. And a fourth, in Augusta, has an event listed on Facebook.

And here's a link to a Facebook event for a weekly vigil in Waterville, Maine. Thanks Mary Dunn for organizing this. https://www.facebook.com/events/349937269025576/349938469025456

Moms In Prison, Kids In Concentration Camps For Profit #HappyMothersDay

I started out Mothers Day donating to National Bailout to help free black women from jail so the can spend the day with their kids. I know, it seems late, but they assured me that they will be working all day to free moms incarcerated for the color of their skin rather than the severity of their crimes. Black woman are disproportionately jailed for minor offenses that someone who looks like me would probably not even be prosecuted for, or charged with in the first place. Because I have donated to their project in the past, they sent a nice ecard that I could print out for my own mom.

My mom with her mom, her dad and her brother.

But my mom isn't on the planet anymore. She was surely with me yesterday though, because my youngest child graduated from college and my mom was big on education. My mom raised her kids not to kill another mother's kids, and I've tried to do the same. Her parents traveled from Oklahoma to California to escape dire poverty by picking cotton and grapes in the San Joaquin Valley. 

I'm out of town to celebrate my son earning his degree, so I won't be able to attend the rally my retired colleague in a nearby town has organized for Mothers Day. I'm there in spirit as the rally she organized calls attention to the cruel U.S. policy of separating asylum seeking children from their parents. Migration due to poverty is nothing new, but infants and toddlers are now routinely terrorized to discourage their parents from trying.

From Meg Robbins reporting in the Morning Sentinel:

Central Mainers for Change will hold a “Mother’s Day Rally to End Family Separation and Child Detention” from noon to 2 p.m. Sunday at Head of Falls in Waterville. 

The rally is part of a national movement that 20 other communities across the country will participate in this weekend with the goal of bringing attention to aspects of the United States’ immigration policy.

My friend Mary Dunn's focus has been on a particular shelter i.e. concentration camp for children in Florida, Homestead, which is expanding. It is highly profitable for its owners who are awarded no bid contracts to run the facility.

Remember when we were horrified to learn how the Nazi government of Germany had separated families and herded children into detention centers? Yeah, me too.

Court Today For Activist Whose Dramatic Protests Bring Attention To Caged Kids #AbolishICE

Patricia Okoumou is a woman of conscience who could not stand by and watch children being separated from their parents and caged at the U.S.-Mexico border.

First on July 4 she climbed the Statue of Liberty with her banner and was arrested. I wrote about that at the time, and you can read that here.

In an interview with Democracy Now! this month she explained that the slogans on her attire are a response to the current First Lady who wore a jacket that said: I REALLY DON'T CARE DO U. Also Okoumou said she was inspired by our former First Lady, Michelle Obama, who was often targeted by ugly racists and who responded, "When they go low, we go high." 

Okoumou commented, "I went as high as I could."


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12UC55fSREA

Subsequently Okoumou, an immigrant herself from the Republic of Congo, targeted Juan Sanchez, a billionaire who profits from child detention in Texas. On Valentine's Day she joined a group shouting out love to the children kept inside, and calling for their release. Then she climbed Southwest Key, a building owned and operated by Sanchez. 

When Okoumou was interviewed by Paper magazine, reporter Michael Love Michael wrote that she said:

...the way conservative politicians talk about the family separation crisis is steeped in misleading and xenophobic rhetoric designed to keep people distracted. "You can't call human beings illegal; you can't call human beings aliens because our children are listening," she said. "Aliens come from outer space, and by calling our children that who want better lives, we are a detriment to them."

Most recently news that child separations and detentions were kept secret, that they generate profit for corporations like Northrup Gruman and Amazon, and that even infants have been separated from nursing mothers makes Okoumou's cause even more pressing for those who care what their government does in their name. 

Today activists will pack the courtroom in NYC for Okoumou's bail hearing. A bad judge sentenced her to house arrest claiming that she engages in activism because it is the only way she has to make a living. Shame on him. 

Those of us who can't be in court with Okoumou today can help by contributing to her defense fund and other expenses here:  https://www.gofundme.com/PatriciaOkoumou.

Photo of an intact family protesting at City Hall in Los Angeles (source: Reuters)

Patricia Okoumou hears the children crying for their parents. Do you? (Trigger warning: this recording of their voices could make you cry, too).