Speaking of protests

I hope you were all able to participate in an anti-immigration policy protest yesterday. Or, if not, to at least have had the chance to talk to someone about this terrible violation of human rights.

Someone told me about white crew bosses in air conditioned trucks in a nearby town in our hundred-degree heat working Mexican laborers to the point of heat exhaustion without adequate water or opportunity to cool down. Kind of like they were expendable animals. Or Jews in Hitler's Germany. It was said that the person observing this confronted the contractor and vowed to report him if he continued the practice. I wonder if the contractor would actually face any consequences if no one actually died.

As large parts of the country sweltered beneath a heatwave, marchers braved the blistering sun to express fierce opposition to the president’s policy of separating undocumented immigrant families at the southern border. They also voiced concern over Trump’s forthcoming supreme court pick.

The president, who was playing golf at his club in New Jersey, attacked what he called “radical left” Democrats, who he said were behind calls to disband Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the agency central to his hardline immigration approach.

[...]

“This is an all-hands-on-deck, stop-the-madness moment,” national protest organiser Ai-jen Poo told the Guardian. “It’s not a red or blue thing … what you are seeing is the downright refusal to accept this administration’s policies.”

  The Guardian

Well, sort of.

In Indianapolis, thousands gathered outside the seat of government in the home state of Vice-President Mike Pence. As people cheered, Mahri Irvine, a 35-year-old anthropologist, spoke to the Guardian by phone.

“Our country is really, really close to the edge of the abyss of just committing some serious human rights violations,” she said. “In fact, we have already. To me, it’s upsetting if people don’t have that level of imagination to think, ‘How would I feel if I had to flee a violent country, and I was incarcerated, and my children were taken away from me?’”

In the words of Melania Trump's coat: they really don't care. They assume it couldn't happen to them because they're special - you might say, elite.

Nineteen senior [ICE] agents sent an open letter to Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump’s homeland security secretary, saying it should be disbanded. The investigators said the immigration crackdown was interfering with the agency’s work against transnational criminal groups.

Well, that's encouraging.

Protesters marched by the White House in Washington, as well as the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. They yelled, "shame, shame, shame" and "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Donald trump has got to go." In New York City, thousands marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and massed outside Trump Tower to chant and wave signs.

But President Trump was not in either place. Trump and his family stayed at Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey for the weekend. Protesters followed, of course, but they only got as close as downtown Bedminster, New Jersey, about 4 miles from the golf club.

  CNN

Above all, we should protect our president from protesters, right Dubya?

Singer Alicia Keys read an affidavit from a woman who wanted to know why her son was still detained at a facility in Oregon. Keys brought her 7-year-old son, Egypt.

"I couldn't even imagine not being able to find him," Keys said about her son. "I couldn't imagine being separated from him or scared about how he is being treated. So this is all of our fight. Because if it can happen to any child, it can happen to my child and your child and all of our children."

While this is true, and it may be the only thing that gets some people to care, I don't like this argument. I see it a lot. It implies that if it were iron-clad that this could NOT happen to "our" kids, it would be okay to let it be. It wouldn't. This is never okay for anybody.

Chicago yesterday: