Tuesday, August 21, 2018

PSA for These Difficult Times

Letting my snaggle tooth hang out


You're exactly where you're supposed to be this moment. I tend to project all my fear out into the future, but you know what? It's my present that's terrifying at times, and I have to tell myself that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be this moment, over and over and over. Sometimes cliches are necessary.

Here's the PSA part of this post:

Do you listen to The Daily? It's a daily podcast that digs deep into a pertinent issue for twenty minutes, five days a week. The New York Times does it, so I suppose some of you out there reading will say it's fake news or liberal biased media or whatever lazy cliches are being thrown about. I say lazy because we're all subject to lazy, particularly intellectual laziness, and these times call for us to gird our loins and pay attention and read quality journalism and listen to careful, investigative work. I think The Daily does important reporting, and from what I've listened to for many months, it appears to cover sides of an issue when that's pertinent but also THE FACTS as they appear to our eyes and ears.

Truth is always truth, contrary to what you might have heard out of the Powers That Be's very own mouths.

Today's podcast was Part One of a two-part series called Divided: How Family Separations Started, 
and it'll blow your mind and break your heart.

Recently, I wrote a post detailing my happiness at Sophie finally starting her new adult day program. One of my Anonymous commenters wrote this:

What, you are happy with a great program for Sophie. That is wonderful. But what about all the children separated from their parents at the border?

I replied:

Anonymous, what do you mean? Have I forgotten that our government kidnapped thousands of children and put them in internment camps. Never. Doing what I can — do you need info or resources on how you can help them?

I suspect that this is the same Anonymous who spent a lot of time on an earlier post of mine defending the separation policy, so I'm hoping that she listens to the podcast. I wonder, too, whether her feelings about the great tragedy on our borders have evolved at all. The reason why I'm wondering is because I think it's going to take as many people as possible to exact justice. Yesterday, the POSPOTUS himself blessed and spoke warmly to those who work for ICE and for their actions at the border. 
So what can we do about the clusterfuck beyond educating ourselves? The obvious solutions are to pressure your representatives to work toward reuniting these children with their families, to vote for those people who fight injustice, to donate money or even donate and subscribe to the ACLU, to protest whenever there are gatherings, to hold your government responsible, to speak the truth and refrain from arguing that there's any reason at all to separate any child from his or her parent because they are seeking asylum or a better life for their families and happen to have brown skin.
Here are some more ideas that I found on the Internets.
  1. Become a child advocate.
  2. Become a Court-Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for young people in foster care or donate to your local CASA program
  3. Donate to Comfort Case which gives backpacks of comfort items to kids in foster care
  4. Volunteer to visit people in immigration detention.
  5. Help transform your faith community or business into a sanctuary space.
  6. If you happen to be a lawyer, paralegal or law student, a number of organizations are looking for pro bono volunteers.

Click HERE for more information and links to explore the above.




#familiesbelongtogether
#resist

8 comments:

  1. Thank you Elizabeth. 💜 I am not a fan of Anonymous🤭

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  2. Thank you for this. Anonymous thinks you can’t hold two things in mind at once? I find it maddening that one can start an innocuos (spelling???) thread, a post, a thought and among the general population it eventually turns into name calling and shaming. Just look at any Nextdoor.com post. So when it comes to really important things I would think it would be different but not so. I appreciate that you always give a voice to what we can do, if anything and that you take your time to help so many people with your words and actions. As exhausting as it might sometimes be, it breaks thru the clutter.

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  3. I loved your response to Anonymous, if they needed to be provided with information or resources on how to help, I suspect they didn't ask for any though. I am always skeptical of any Anonymous commentary, if one isn't bold and brave enough to identify themselves while pontificating their beliefs, opinions or stance on important issues, it is highly suspect to me and they are more likely to be all talk and no action.

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  4. If you do indeed feel that you are exactly where you need to be you might like this.
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=18s&v=eqZYd2UCfI8

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  5. I will have to listen to that podcast, and have my heart broken all over again. I am glad you write here and keep everything in perspective, by which I means yours is the real true perspective, and anonymous could learn a thing or two or ten from you.

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