"Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive." ~ The Dalai Lama

And then it happened. The dark days descended.

Source

The United States of America began to use state-sponsored psychological warfare and child abuse as a weapon. Lady Liberty was brought to her knees crying.

Her poor, her tired, her huddled masses yearning to be free: ripped at the seams. Children torn from their mommies and put in cages.

I truly can't believe that my fingers are typing these words. I took up the task of documenting this shit show, and so I must. It's the hardest post I've had to write.

In March, 2017, MSNBC was first to report on the "zero tolerance" policy soon to come, that children would be separated from their families at the border. They admitted then that they planned that this policy would act as a deterrent.

A year later, the policy was put in place, with the blatantly false narrative that it was a Democrat's law that mandated the separations. In April, 2018, Attorney General Sessions implemented the policy and by the end of May, over 2000 children were taken from their families and kept in detention facilities ran by prison contractors. Thousands more unaccompanied minors have also been held.

It was the most unconscionable act this sham of an administration could muster. It's hard to fathom than anyone would even consider this action. I'm sure you, like me, started losing sleep over it. I felt anxious. I could barely absorb the news; I didn't want to click on one more link.

On June 4, Senator Jeff Merkely (D-OR) tried to gain entry to a detention facility in Texas and had the police called on him to make him leave. This week, Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) tried to tour one of the facilities in his home state of Florida but was refused.

Let that sink in. United States Senators were denied entry into federal detention centers housing motherless children.

That is some scary shit.

Citizens, political leaders, corporate leaders, religious leaders, healthcare leaders, and every human being on the planet who has an iota of morality (insert mirror here), were becoming outraged. All five living first ladies made statements of outrage. The Pope made a statement of outrage. Drumpf dug in. As did his minions.

• Attorney General Jeff Sessions: Invoked the Bible to justify his heinous act
• Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders: Strapped on her puppet strings and sang her boss's song in a stomach-turning press conference. (Side note: I was curious, so I found that $165,000 was Sanders's price to sell her soul)
• Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen: Gave Orwellian answers and flat-out denied that separations were happening. Just looking at this person with her gotta-take-a-poop look on her face gives me the willies.  

Finally, yesterday 45 relented and signed a toothless executive order, which stopped the separations but did nothing to direct the reunion of mother and child. It was reported that Melania urged her husband to revoke the policy. Perhaps she did, her voice rising above the 7.6 billion other anguished voices, but she all but undid any of her nascent compassionate tendencies by her misguided decision to wear a $39 jacket that proclaimed with 6-inch letters on the back: "I DON'T REALLY CARE. DO U?" when she went to visit one of the detention centers holding primarily unaccompanied minors (she did NOT visit a center holding children separated from their families). Is she really that tone-deaf? Are her English language comprehension skills that limited? Did she have lapse of judgment? Did her handlers have a lapse in judgment? Was she sending a message to the media, as her husband claimed? Whatever the cause of the unfortunate wardrobe choice, it was really an unconscionable decision during the biggest crisis our nation has faced in many many years.  The world's eyes were watching.

The order ending the separations has been written, but it is not clear when it will be implemented. Nor is there a good plan -- or any plan -- to reunite families who have been separated. It is feared that reunion might not happen at all. The logistics are daunting. Their record-keeping has been null.

The Department of Justice has made movements to make family detentions indefinite.  Babies do not belong in jail.

Every piece of this breaks my heart.





So, what do we do to help? There are plenty of organizations ready to help. This article has a list of legal and social services organizations. As always, I encourage you to do due diligence and check any charity through a watchdog like Charity Navigator or Charity Watch before you donate.  The ACLU will lead the charge. Donate to them again.

And another way to help: Protest. There are protests planned around the country for Saturday, June 30. We cannot rest until the families are reunited. The US -- and that's all of us -- MUST get the kidnapped children back to their moms and dads. Look for a march or rally in your area. Make a sign. Yell loudly.

Resist.

And just because I think he is brilliant, here is Colbert's take. Cuz yanno.






Thanks for reading.