Liberation

I wore my New El Salvador Today T-shirt from the 1980s to the “Lights for Liberty” demonstration in front of the courthouse in my little hometown on Friday evening. Who remembers the beginning of the Sanctuary Movement in the 1980s? Can you believe we’re still protesting this same old mess? If you don’t want to read all my words, then please cut to the chase and read the last paragraph where I provide some direct actions you can take to protest the imprisonment of children under deplorable conditions at the detention centers.

In the 1980s, my synagogue in Berkeley belonged to the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant of Faith-based Communities. We harbored Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees, connected them with services, and supported them with supplies and inclusion in community activities. What I learned from them is that these refugees are fleeing untenable living situations in countries destroyed by US foreign policy and US corporations. The Salvadoran torturers in the prisons during the era of the death squads under Duarte were trained in torture techniques by the U.S. military. The United Fruit Company seized pretty much all the land in Guatemala and by now they have ruined it so that there’s precious little arable land in Guatemala. Basically people can’t grow food there. They’re starving. They’re fleeing land that can’t support human life.

As a Jew, I come from a people with a long history of fleeing for our lives. We became refugees 70 years after the birth of Christ, when the Romans tossed the Jews out of our homeland and we went into exile until 1948 when Israel was born. Most of us still live in the Diaspora since we have chosen not to move to Israel. The Jews were expelled from England in 1290, France in 1306, and Spain in 1492. Jews were legally prohibited from living in Spain until 1973, when the 1492 law was officially overturned. We all know what happened in Germany, where simply throwing us out of the country would have been kind compared to what actually happened. Not many countries have welcomed us wandering Jews. We have been homeless, migrant, seeking asylum, fleeing persecution, and often one step ahead of extermination for around two thousand years. There’s a joke in the Jewish community that the explanation for every Jewish holiday is “They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat.”

FDR turned away hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees seeking asylum during the Holocaust, despite the fact that Eleanor kicked and screamed about it. Jewish immigration was restricted then, as it is now for the refugees at the Southern border, as a direct result of the Immigration Act of 1924, which is still in force, and which limits the number of immigrants allowed entry into the U.S. each year through a national origins quota. FDR could have accepted more Jewish refugees through an executive order, but he chose not to do so. I find that interesting since nowadays there’s an executive order about some type of national emergency or other every week. Usually a national emergency fabricated to begin with by the executive. In 1939, FDR and the  American public didn’t know what was happening in the extermination camps. They didn’t know the full horror until the camps were liberated at the end of the war, and then it was too late.

What we learn from this is that when people say they can’t survive in their country and they are fleeing for their lives, we need to believe them. When they come to the U.S. seeking asylum, when they say the violence in their home country is intolerable, we need to believe them. When they leave their home, which they love, and go into exile, to wander for the rest of their lives, when they leave their community, when they jeopardize the health and safety of their children because they see no future for them in their homeland, when they risk having their family separated, we need to believe that they are desperate and need help. When they say that the conditions in their homeland are horrific, untenable. We need to believe them.

As a Jew, I agree that these detention centers at the southern border are concentration camps. What else could they possibly be? I imagine that many of you have at one time or another asked yourself, as I have, “What would I have done if I had lived in Nazi Germany?” Well now we find that out. A Jewish group of protestors arrested outside a detention center in New Jersey a couple of week ago carried signs saying “Never again is now.” I confess that I am disappointed in myself for not doing more. I should be standing outside a detention center full of children in Clint, Texas bearing witness to this national horror, expressing my outrage until these children are freed. I should chain myself to a fence and get carted off to jail. But I’m not willing to give up my familiar life where I live, here in paradise, to take that kind of stand. I need to keep working to keep my house and my comfortable lifestyle. I’m definitely not willing to eat prison food. In my defense, I’m also not silent and not compliant. I stood at the courthouse on Friday evening. I spoke to those gathered. I can and will do something. We can all do something. And even if it may seem like that something doesn’t make a difference, we should do it. Because it might actually make a difference.

Here is a case in point.

A year ago in June I demonstrated at the Richmond Detention Center during the Families Belong Together Action. I chose to demonstrate at a detention facility because I wanted to stand outside a prison where ICE detainees were locked up. The only detention center in the SF Bay Area at that time was in Richmond. The demo at the Richmond Detention Center that day was organized by the Jewish community. It was a fairly small demo, with about 1,000 people, in an out-of-the way location. But something extraordinary happened last June at the Richmond Detention Center. After the demo, the official in charge of the facility spoke with the Alameda County Sheriff. He said that the protest had been stressful for his staff because it was dangerously distracting and because everyone working at the facility knew they did not have the resources to ensure the safety of the people in the crowd that turned up. They could not support continued protests at that facility. The result of that conversation was that the Alameda County Sheriff terminated the county’s contract with ICE and gave ICE six weeks to remove all the ICE detainees from that center. There were 200 adult detainees there. When the sheriff cancelled the contract, ICE told him that it would be detrimental to the detainees because they would have to move them further away from their families. I call bullshit on that. The only reason these asylum seekers were detained in the first place is because they couldn’t post bail. What kind of crazy person sets bail for asylum seekers?! If ICE would eliminate their bail, they could release them on their own recognizance until their asylum hearing. I’m telling this story because I feel like I actually made a difference by protesting there. For one, ICE got its hand slapped by Alameda County and the detention center was effectively shut down. For two, the detainees inside the facility were able to hear us outside during the demo. It was impossible to insulate them from the sound. They heard our words and our songs and they knew we were there, supporting them. My point is that you never know if what you do will make a difference. So do whatever you can.

On that note I want to give you some ideas about things to do to protest the child abuse being committed, the trauma being perpetrated on immigrant children by the predator in chief and his ghastly regime. Number one, contact congressional representatives. Call, write, and email them nonstop. I often call after hours and leave a message. I call my own representatives as well as Republican senators all over the country to express my outrage. These contacts are logged and tracked. Number two, donate money (even if it’s not much) to organizations working for family reunification. My favorite one at the moment is ImmigrantFamilies Together. This organization focuses on reuniting parents and children. One of the most important things you can do to help families get back together is donate to organizations raising bail funds for parents. That’s one of the main things Immigrant Families Together does. They raise bail funds, get parents out of jail, locate their children, provide transportation if necessary, and bring the parents and children together. Every dollar you donate to them is used to find children and put them back into the arms of their mothers. Finally, number three is a project I cooked up. I call it my toothbrush project. I’m mailing toothbrushes to the detention center in Clint, Texas (which is the one that has been in the news lately for abusing the children held there). I’m spreading the word about this project and asking other people to do likewise. Please help me flood the detention center at Clint with toothbrushes. Here is the address:

US Customs and Border Protection

13400 Alameda Ave.

Clint, TX   79836

The predator in chief spent $1.2 million dollars on that military display on the Mall in Washington last week, but he claims he doesn’t have the money to feed the children he has put in cages in Clint, Texas. He says he can’t afford to buy these children toothbrushes, soap, or three square meals a day, and yet he could afford those tanks. So I’m sending toothbrushes. They are quite affordable. I want to shame the authorities. To bear witness. To show them that the whole world is watching. To express my outrage.

This is me suggesting actions people can take at Lights for Liberty on Friday.

 (Photos by Ron Reed.)