More Questions Than Answers On Portland Police Coddling Neo Nazis

Screengrab of white power salutes by neo Nazi group in front of Portland City Hall April 1, 2023
Source: NewsCenterMaine

Today I return to considering the ongoing controversy in Portland, Maine about flaccid police response to a neo Nazi group that assaulted several people on April 1. If local resistance to white supremacy and street violence is not of interest, maybe skip this one. (For background with links to video and eyewitness reports, check out my April 13 blog post on this topic.)

I've now had time to review the two hours of testimony from the public at the City Council meeting of April 10, followed by the self-congratulatory -- and evasive -- remarks of the interim police chief. Also the District Attorney's public criticism of police inaction and suggestions for improvement in coordination with her office.

Here are some questions I still have:

Why do people with privilege think they are qualified to evaluate how safe or unsafe someone else without that privilege feels?

Why did the police department refuse to take statements from any of the victims who were assaulted by members of the neo Nazi group?

Why did the police appear to order the neo Nazi group to kneel briefly on the sidewalk in front of City Hall?

Why did one officer appear to pull a gun on the group, and what kind of gun was it?

Were the neo Nazi group members carrying guns, as some have alleged?

Why did the police appear to signal to the neo Nazi group that they could depart without being questioned, identified, or charged for the assaults?

When will the police release body cam footage of the incident, and when will the city release surveillance camera footage from Monument Square and City Hall?

When the police say they couldn't tell "who started it" in reference to one of the physical attacks they witnessed, why does this matter? (I've never been a cop but being a teacher on playground duty I often confronted this issue and resolved it by enforcing the consequences for physical violence no matter who started it.)

Were the neo Nazi group members federal agents, as some on social media have suggested? If so, did they coordinate in advance with the Portland police? 

Did the police have snipers on nearby rooftops as they did during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020?

What are the likely consequences of showing a neo Nazi group that their presence will be, not just tolerated, but protected in the City of Portland?

What are the likely consequences for tourism, a major revenue source for both Portland and Maine?

How true is the claim that the culture of Portland attracting 5.4 million visitors a year was largely created by LGBTQ and/or people of color? In other words, the very groups targeted with shouted slurs and physical attacks by the neo Nazi group on April 10?

What role does the long history of white supremacist violence in Portland have in informing our understanding of what happened this month?

What role does Portland's recent history of welcoming immigrants, including refugees and asylum seekers, many of whom are Black, have in drawing neo Nazis to Maine?

Screengrab of the first stop by the neo Nazi group, followed by them assaulting individuals in Monument Square and in front of Portland City Hall on April 1, 2023
Source: NewsCenterMaine

Councilor Andrew Zarro expressed my sentiments when he said on April 10 :

"I feel like I have more questions ending this evening's public comment than I did going into it...

What is the next step? How are we going to show the community what the next step on this is?"

Ranked Choice Voting Will Be Associated With Defeating Poliquin, Who Chose The Racist Wall As His Last Stand

Photo credit: Jim Anderberg

I'm no Democrat and I don't expect much from Jared Golden who unseated incumbent Bruce Poliquin because Maine voters got to use Ranked Choice Voting. The Maine constitution has language that will need to be amended for RCV to work for state elections, but nothing in the U.S. constitution stood in the way of using RCV to choose who would represent the 2nd district in the House of Representatives.

RCV allowed me to vote my conscience rather than hold my nose and vote for Democrats I believe are just as warlike as the other corporate party's candidates.

Last month I got a phone call from a nice woman at the League of Women Voters. She was responding to my affirming that I had ranked independent candidates in slots #1 and #2. She wondered if I would be interested in being party to the lawsuit the League will conduct to uphold RCV.

Yes, please! (Turns out they probably don't need me after all but that is ok because they won!!!)

Told the League of Women Voters person that I created the spybook page Where's Bruce Poliquin? in response to a request from my friend Ridgely Fuller. We used to be able to meet with our former representative Mike Michaud and share our concerns as his constituents, but Poliquin's Wall Street handlers put a stop to that sort of thing. He's best known for ducking into a women's bathroom to avoid reporters asking questions about his votes against health care coverage for the multitude of poor people in Maine's 2nd district.

Now he's being a sore loser and challenging RCV with a lawsuit. Which was thrown out of court but is now being appealed.

The Green Party, of which I am a member, fought for RCV for years before Maine voters passed it by referendum on November 8, 2016.

It was pretty clear that the Republican Party feared RCV as they fought it every step of the way.

When the oligarchs are united against a voting method, you can be pretty sure that it favors democracy rather than kleptocracy. 

Finally, we see some poetic justice in the end of Poliquin's term. He chose to make his last stand slavish obedience to The Wall.

You know, the pet project of the demagogue with bad hair in the White House. The one who shut down the federal government at midnight last night in a hissy fit over congressional opposition to the racist artifact he insists will be built. The one who tweeted his support for the losing candidate back in October.

What a fitting end for Poliquin. His defeat via ranked choice voting will historically be associated with cruel and injust immigration policy on our border with Mexico. 

He must be licking his chops in anticipation of the cash rewards headed his way.

Saying Native Mascots Honor Indigenous People Masks White Insecurity, Fear Of Competition

Cartographer Aaron Carapella with his educational map, one of a series you can buy to donate to a school,
from the website Tribal Nations Maps (photo credit: Hansi Lo Wang/NPR) 

When white Europeans first encountered indigenous people in what would come to be called the Americas, they were amazed. Clearly these were fellow humans, but they were so healthy and vigorous compared with the whites after a long sea voyage fleeing pestilence and famine in Eurasia.

"They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features." That is a translation from the memoirs of Christopher Columbus, who hacked off the hands of the handsome Arawak people when they did not bring him enough gold. (Source: Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States).

Aside from their physical appearance, Native people appeared to be highly skilled hunters and gatherers. Their tens (hundreds?) of thousands of years of experience in relationship with the ecosystems where they flourished gave them what appeared to be almost supernatural powers as seen by starving white people. Even sustainable agriculture, which had been shared via trade from its origins in Mesoamerica, was practiced skillfully; the "three sisters" of corn, beans and squash supported each other in cultivation and then produced complete protein when eaten together.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, convened to break a cycle of violence between various Native groups of the woodlands, was studied as a model in representative democracy. Too bad the founding fathers-only culture of the whites did not take note that a sachem or tribal leader was respected not only as an accomplished hunter, but as a generous man or woman who was skilled at listening. Also, that the elder women could and would remove a sachem who was not serving the people.

Typical of the patriarchal culture of the invaders, Native women were demeaned with an insulting nickname I won't repeat here while Native males were exalted with the mythic stereotype "braves."

Inauthentic portrayals of Native people began to ornament consumer products -- in much the same way that Australian white colonists created and used images of the indigenous people of their continent. 

"Aboriginalia" collected and repurposed by Tony Albert, Ybarra conceptual artist,
for his show "Visible" at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Australia, 2018

I've written before about the idea that fear of competition is what drives xenophobia in the U.S. today.

Colonizers are eternally insecure.

The very ground they stand on is contested. They often starve or go mad. They sometimes die out before their germs can infect the Natives, even if the colonizers distribute contaminated items from the biological warfare arsenal of attempted genocide. They are "terrified Inhabitants" battling an insurgency that seems to materialize from nowhere, a forest where "every Tree is become an Indian" (from Col. Henry Bouquet's letter to Gen. Jeffrey Amherst, 1763).

Can't beat 'em?

Create images of indigenous people that colonizers can consume like cannibals. Give them demeaning nicknames like Redskins, a reference to the blood running from their heads that were scalped by bounty hunters. 

Make up stuff about them. Keep telling yourself this makes you stronger; hope that's true.




"6 Misconceptions About Native American People" Teen Vogue on YouTube

Which Side Would Lady Liberty Be On In The #SecondCivilWar ?

Therese Patricia Okoumou made history on July 4th by climbing to the feet of the statue of liberty in New York harbor, refusing to come down until all the caged children seized at the U.S. border were released. 

Instead of complying with her humane demand, law enforcement used force to remove Okoumou, jailed her, and then attempted to trivialize her protest by charging the 44 year old immigrant with performing a "dangerous stunt."

I don't know about you, but to me this looks like a woman staging a direct action, not a stunt.

Okoumou put her safety on the line. Reportedly, she was not backed up by the Rise and Resist group she had been demonstrating with. I'm curious about that and looking for confirmation/more information. If I had to guess, I'd say they probably retreated to cafes and continued tweeting out #SecondCivilWarletters which have been cracking me up and sometimes inspiring me as I read the news from home.

My darling wife--Today we celebrate our #IndependenceDay fighting for children at our borders, for the freedom elusive to so many. We just got word of a black woman in another regiment scaling the #StatueOfLiberty. We cheer her!
xo#secondcivilwarletters pic.twitter.com/eSVSJucCcg

— Victoria Brownworth (@VABVOX) July 5, 2018

My brothers and sisters:

I regretfully report that I will not be able to make it to the battlefield for the #SecondCivilWar. I was drafting battle plans in a Starbucks when I was arrested for not buying anything. You must stay strong in my absence. #secondcivilwarletters

— Louis Morgan (@MasterMorgan317) July 4, 2018

Beloved,

We have reached Fort Indianapolis, where the Holy Family has been captured. What manner of evil is this? Pray for strength to resist such horrors. #SecondCivilWarLetters pic.twitter.com/15p7jlHkSB

— Elaina Ramsey (@elainabueno) July 4, 2018

A "well regulated" militia the Redhats are not. One need merely shout at them "Jesus was a refugee!", promoting a state of panic and hysteria inducing them to fire aimlessly in all directions. We are running low on almond milk. Pray for our safe return. #Secondcivilwarletters

— Mike Kelly (@mikepup) July 4, 2018

My love,
We are bunkered down in the public library, practically alone...no sign of MAGA troops anywhere yet. We will defend our position by throwing biographies of women like Ruth Baden Ginsburg and Ann Richards at the enemy. The end of war is in sight! #secondcivilwarletters

— A Touch Of Glitz (@atouchofglitz) July 4, 2018

My Dearest,

At first we were scared of the enemy artillery, but when we realized their trajectory math was based on the earth being flat, we relaxed. Their shelling has fallen woefully short for days and yet they refuse to recalculate.

With Love,
Derek#secondcivilwarletters

— Doctor Doom (@VicDoomMD) July 4, 2018

Dearest,

I thought I was at the battleground, but when I arrived, I saw moms marching to keep us safe from gun violence? Can someone tell me where the civil war is?

Sincerely,
Laura #secondcivilwarletters #FourthofJuly2018 @MomsDemand @shannonrwatts pic.twitter.com/ZgPY60BAaN

— Laura Kirk (@LaurakKirk) July 4, 2018

REVISED July 24 to include the funniest tweet yet on this subject:

#secondcivilwarletters
We have snuck behind enemy lines and removed the gender-specific signage from their latrines. Now we wait for their bladders to explode.

— Xeya Waxe (@TruthArrmy) July 4, 2018

Under Regimes Of White Supremacy And Kleptocracy, Suicide Rates Are Skyrocketing -- Even Among Elites

Lorie Meacham

Follow · June 6 · 

I don't care how you try to spin it. Children are not criminals. They don't belong in cages. Period.

When Europeans landed in North America with their heads full of white supremacy and colonialism, it was the beginning of a long demise. For them and for everyone unfortunate enough to be in their path to conquest.

NEW- CLARIFICATION OF WHAT TRUMP WANTS INSURANCE COMPANIES TO BE ABLE TO DENY OR UP-CHARGE FOR:

-Asthma inhaler
-Mild anxiety
-Alcoholism
-Toe fungus
-Being 50
-High blood pressure
-Birth control

Individual coverage for cancer, diabetes, a transplant, epilepsy wouldn’t exist https://t.co/CRFEYwEP45

— Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt) June 8, 2018

The places where white supremacy and unregulated capitalism have brought us are dismal. 

Dismal for everyone. This is the part elites don't get: a society ruled by racist kleptocrats is not worth living in. The suicide rate in the U.S. has risen dramatically in the last two decades, and elites are far from immune from this particular disease of despair.

From the Center for Disease Control:

If you need help for yourself or someone else, please contact the

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Talk: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

Chat: www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

Emulating my shero Cecile Pineda, here's a rose among thorns from Maureen Ostensen of Maine's Smilin' Trees Disarmament Farm. May it give you hope for the future!

Frances [high school daughter] participated in a forum for Democratic candidates for governor.  Each student wrote questions for one candidate, and Frances wrote the questions for Mark Dion.  She asked him how he voted on the tax break for BIW and why.  He responded that he is one of five Democrats who voted against the tax break calling it corporate ransom.  He said there is no need to take money from the tax payers in Maine to give a tax break to a corporation whose CEO earned in excess of (I think he said $20 million).

With this statement he received almost a standing ovation from a large crowd of pretty affluent Democrats. 

I wanted to share this with you, as I was impressed at how well the crowd understood the issue.  I do not think there would have been that kind of recognition had you [Bruce Gagnon] not made such a valiant effort to publicize the issue.

I have to believe there are pockets of support for a more human approach to weapons and war out there who are beginning to make connections to BIW.

My note: BIW refers to Bath Iron Works which is a subsidiary of super wealthy weapons manufacturer General Dynamics.

Created In 2003, ICE Is The New Gestapo -- How Will We Stop Their Crimes Against Humanity?

My sister posted this photo of the young woman murdered by border patrol with the comment, "Looks really threatening, huh?" Maybe it's because I've been reading I, Rigoberta Menchú recently, but I can totally understand why a traditionally dressed young woman from Guatemala with a sober expression on her face is perceived as a threat by the violent patriarchy that rules the U.S.

Image: GoodReads

Women in Central America, especially women from indigenous cultures, have mounted decades of serious resistance to right wing governments and the thieving corporations they enable.

So, the kleptocracy ascendant here in the USA rightly fears indigenous women.


Note that I am not in any way excusing the murder of Claudia Gómez by ICE. 

The death, which her boyfriend waiting for her in the U.S. called "an assassination," was reported by Molly Hennessy-Fiske in the Los Angeles Times. The story includes an interview with a witness on the scene, amateur videographer Marta Martinez, who sees people running and hiding from ICE in her Texas neighborhood all the time.

Something interesting I learned today from sister activist Jessica Stewart:

ICE was only created in 2003, as part of the US's post-9/11 hyper-militarized, xenophobic frenzy.

We didn't have this department 16 years ago, we do not need it, and we should abolish it immediately. 

I do not say this lightly: ICE is America's gestapo and we should treat them with that level of serious resistance.

Ms. Gómez’s family in Guatemala City

Her aunt had this to say about the death of her niece, as reported by Sofia Menchu for Reuters:

“To the government of the United States,

(I ask) that you do not treat us like this, like animals, just because you are a powerful and developed country,” 

Dominga Vicente, Gómez’s aunt, told reporters in Guatemala City. The young woman from the Guatemalan highlands had left her home in search of work and education opportunities, Vicente said.

From the YouTube post of Martinez's video:

Gómez Gonzáles was a Maya-Mam indigenous woman and had reportedly graduated from a program in forensic accounting in 2016. She had hoped to further her education, her father, Gilberto Gómez, told the Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre. 

Lidia Gonzáles, the woman’s mother, told a local news channel that the family didn’t have enough money for her daughter to continue her studies. “She told me she wanted to keep studying at university but we don’t have the money,” Gonzáles said, according to a translation by The Guardian. “We’re poor and there are no jobs here. That’s why she traveled to the U.S. But they killed her. Immigration killed her.” 

Back to the Gestapo theme.

Did Nazi Germany as a "powerful and developed country" treat Jews, including young women and children, as animals? Unless you're a child yourself, you know full well that they did.

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has achieved infamy by telling reporters for NPR that separating families is a effective deterrent to asylum seekers, and that it's not cruel because the minor children are “put into foster care or whatever.”


Did you think as you learned about the Holocaust: If I had been living in Europe at that time in history I would have resisted with all the resources I had available to me? Well, here we are now.

More from Jessica Stewart:

Who is following recent news about Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE)? For those of us who are citizens, what if it were your kids or my kids? What would you or I want people to do? 

1. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently announced that for families seized by ICE, children will be separated from their parents in detention with no word on when they will be reuinted (more here: http://time.com/526…/jeff-sessions-illegal-border-separated/) 

2. Of the 7,000+ children that ICE has captured from their families, 1,475 are unaccounted for. Gone. And this is only the first report, numbers may be much higher. (More here: http://time.com/5256734/government-missing-migrant-children/) 

3. Documents obtained by the ACLU show massive horrific abuse of children in ICE custody, including kicking a child in the ribs, running over a 17 year old with a patrol car, sexually assaulting a 16 year old girl in a search, and detaining a 4 pound premature baby and her mother in an overcrowded and dirty cell full of sick people. (More here: https://www.aclusandiego.org/civil-rights-civil-liberties/) 

4. ICE plans to destroy records of immigrant abuse, including sexual assault and deaths in custody (From an August 2017 report, more here: https://www.aclu.org/…/ice-plans-start-destroying-records-i…) 

Here's reporting from Curt Prendergast and Perla Trevizo for the Arizona Daily Star:

Alma Jacinto covered her eyes with her hands as tears streamed down her cheeks.

The 36-year-old from Guatemala was led out of the federal courtroom without an answer to the question that brought her to tears: When would she see her boys again?

Jacinto wore a yellow bracelet on her left wrist, which defense lawyers said identifies parents who are arrested with their children and prosecuted in Operation Streamline, a fast-track program for illegal border crossers.

Image: Facebook post by Jeanne Morales, an immigration attorney in Texas

Anne Frank and her family were deemed illegal border crossers, forced to wear badges on their clothing identifying them as Jews and criminals.

One thing you can do: teach Holocaust history, which many young people in the U.S. are completely ignorant about. 

Photo by Henryk Ross "Children being transported to Chelmno nad Nerem (renamed Kulmhof) death camp." 

You can also join or donate to the ACLU to support the legal fight against ICE detention and separation of families. Or find other organizations to support that are battling ICE forces of evil.

You could write to the kleptocrats in Congress and the White House for all the good it will do (note that Obama's record on immigrant detentions and deportations was also abysmal). 

You can also write letters to the editor, which are free and reach thousands of people daily. 

Spread the news!!!

#ViolentAnimals At The Helm Of The Foundering Ship Of State

It is really beyond irony when the White House swears in a torture queen to head up the CIA and simultaneously publishes a press released entitled "What You Need To Know About The Violent Animals Of MS-13."

The dog whistle slur against Latin Americans is tied to the effort by thousands of families to flee U.S.-funded and supported violence in Central America. No doubt MS-13 -- like any profitable drug trafficking gang -- uses violence to control territory, intimidate its opponents, and silence potential critics.

Image: Anthony Freda

By these definitions, the U.S. government qualifies as a profitable drug trafficking gang.

Philosophers among us will argue that "violent animals" is an apt label for humans in general.

As aggressive primates who have allowed testosterone poisoning to infect our entire culture and way of life, humans continue to devise ever more shocking forms of violence against their siblings in the human race. Not to mention the violence routinely visited on other species, our neighbors on this planet.

The rise of hateful language emanating from the demagogue with bad hair and the rest of the kleptocracy is, in some ways, even more alarming than the actual violence. I say this as a history major and long time school civil rights team adviser.

Dehumanizing language always precedes pogroms. Always. It's a bad, bad sign of things to come.


We've heard an outpouring of hate language against a long list of targets during this administration, with many commentators noting that racism in particular has come crawling out of the woodwork where it had been (not very successfully) hiding into the light of day. Among those spattered with hateful epithets: teenagers pleading for gun control after surviving mass shootings at their school; black and brown people going about their business; immigrants who've worked and paid taxes for decades and now face deportation; trans women and men; Muslim-Americans; Palestinians asserting the refugees right of return; refugees in general.

U.S. airstrike on Mosul, Iraq in March, 2017. Photo by Aris Messinis, AFP/Getty. Source: The Intercept

This last group often raises the question: if NATO nations are concerned about the massive influx of refugees destabilizing their countries, how about they stop bombing the places the refugees flee?

Violent animals bomb civilians. Violent animals starve children, and drive the life expectancy of their parents down because they can't afford the oxymoronic for-profit health care. Violent animals exploit vulnerable populations who lack the resources to defend themselves.

In these degraded times, many political commentators indulge in name calling and personal insults on social media. One reason I won't share posts calling someone an idiot, or monster, piece of shit, etc. is that I'm loathe to support hate language. I can harshly criticize someone's actions without dehumanizing them.

Within every human, no matter how depraved in thought or deed, there is a spark of the divine.

Or, put another way, no one is excluded from being loved and valued by the goddess. Every sinner is capable of redemption.

Even those most violent of animals, the human beings.

Troll Bait Hashtag #HereToStay Builds Solidarity On Twitter

I'm a sporadic twitter user mostly because lack of time doing my day job, plus not being glued to my phone which barely works at home in the woods. But I love twitter and it's my best news feed for sure; I joined it after experiencing the floodgates of facebook friending. 

Why did people who hated what I stood for in high school suddenly want to see my facebook posts? We're old enough now that apoplexy increases the risk of stroke, doesn't it?

Unitingwith undocumented immigrants & refugees in Lewiston . #heretostay #mepolitics pic.twitter.com/6LAowA8ukH

— Lisa Savage (@NaturalGuard) January 14, 2017

So with more careful following I built a more international and, yes, intellectual list of twitter users who bring me news I would never get from corporate sources (which I mostly ignore anyway).

But if I'm at a live event that seems to have broad significance, and I wasn't an organizer of the event so I can mingle and flirt with babies and take things in, I often tweet about it. Yesterday's attendance in Lewiston, Maine at one of the many January 14 immigration support rallies was such an opportunity for me.

The event poster and a twitter user I sat next to advised me that #heretostay was the hashtag du jour. Boy, did that turn out to be troll bait!

Many fine young poets from Maine's extensive Somali immigrant population took to the stage and I tweeted a few clips from their heartfelt words about growing up black and Muslim and, in the case of the women, covered in the whitest state in the U.S. 

One of many fine banners on display in Lewiston courtesy of ARRT!

Rakiya Mohamed, a student at nearby Bates College, read a message from her 21 year old self to her "fresh off the boat" childhood self. She also gave an interview to a WCSH reporter on the scene where she described a 10 year old girl being harassed and spit on at a 4th of July fireworks display.

It was often tough to catch the speakers' names or spell them correctly as there was no printed program. This poem entitled "Lazy Boy" spoke poignantly about the struggle to be a high school student and eldest brother of a family of first generation immigrants.

#HeretoStay in Lewiston #Maine pic.twitter.com/iUmSpTCJVt

— Lisa Savage (@NaturalGuard) January 14, 2017

One poet I could identify correctly was Tufts student Muna Mohamed whom I remembered from her days at Lewiston High School. She made the news there as part of a group that put up a Black Lives Matter educational poster only to have the principal take it down. And then, bowing to public pressure, put it back up again. Her poem about being mis-identified by others was one of the best.

Lewiston High School grad now at Tufts Muna Mohamed sharing her poem on being mis-identified #heretostay 💞#mepolitics pic.twitter.com/r0hN7R1wV8

— Lisa Savage (@NaturalGuard) January 14, 2017

Portland's first African-born Muslim city councilor, the recently elected Pious Ali, who hails originally from Ghana, spoke well. He asked for a show of hands about who among us were immigrants, the children of immigrants, or the grand and great grandchildren of immigrants. And who had a neighbor or friend or co-worker from a family of immigrants. Everybody, right?

About 500 people were in attendance at the (mercifully) indoor venue. We finished off by singing Neil Young's updated version of the classic Woodie Guthrie tune "This Land Is Your Land" together which was a beautiful experience.

Grand finale to Lewiston #Maine #heretostay" rally today👏🏻 👏🏻 pic.twitter.com/yZBFFohbUO

— Lisa Savage (@NaturalGuard) January 14, 2017

This is the tweet that most seemed to anger those who dwell under the social media bridge. An avalanche of nasty replies -- the likes of which my twitter feed seldom sees -- awaited me this morning. I guess I struck a nerve, or maybe it's just that someone paid folks to troll for the #heretostay hashtag and churn out some vitriol in response.

Are they angry because their beautiful daughters can't afford to go to Tufts? Or because they imagine that refugees who work in nursing homes in Maine are taking jobs away from white people -- who don't want to work in nursing homes?

Not sure, but I do appreciate the traffic on my twitter feed.

I got many new followers, retweets and likes from being a citizen journalist at yesterday's rally. 

I'll end with my sign of the times, the one I carry in my vehicle and use to show that, as an ACLU lawyer observed, "Before the government can come after any individual in this room they'll have to come through all of us." Amen to that, sister.

In Lewiston #Maine with immigrants & refugees today. Glad y'all are #heretostay. @mainepeople 💞#mepolitics pic.twitter.com/itv8ayartq

— Lisa Savage (@NaturalGuard) January 14, 2017