Where Are the Children ?

Donde están Los Niños ?

Thank you!  All who participated in the  Families Belong Together marches across the nation. Thank you for showing up!  It is a tremendous statement. 

Having worked in the immigration fight for years, this is a peak moment.  It is humbling to see the millions and the families uniting to find the children taken by ICE.  Thank you for standing with the immigrants’ rights movements.  
See Bee video.
https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article214134039.html#emlnl=Afternoon_Newsletter

 

It was a reminder that, for all the chaos and cruelty of those in power, a massive and growing movement exists in every corner of the nation that still believes in fundamental decency. It was a reminder that—at the ultimate wellspring of power in the American political system—the core values of we, the people blaze, undiminished, indivisible.

 

The horror that so many of us feel about the devastating policies of our government won't go away due to a march. But we are here, we are ready to fight, and we won't go away. This administration hopes to crush our will to resist. Today, we made clear that they will fail. 

 

In the days ahead, we'll be sharing more actions we, together, can take next to build upon this momentum, end these terrorizing and traumatizing policies, hold abusers accountable, and reunite families. Our movement needs to:

• Keep up the heat on decision-makers everywhere. We'll organize more in-person actions to create pressure to reunite families, close family prisons, and end indefinite detention—working with Indivisible, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and other organizations.
• Hold corporations accountable for profiting off this system—companies such as Wells Fargo must be held accountable for their role in funding family separation infrastructure.
• Rein in the excesses of the brutal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers who are terrorizing communities and tearing apart families across the country.

And we need to make sure everyone who is eligible registers to vote—a critical way to get involved with all the issues that matter to all our communities and families. 

 

More on all of that soon. Watch your email for opportunities to take action, or join MoveOn's SMS list to get text messages with alerts about clear, impactful actions by texting FAMILY to 668366. 

NYT Editorial Board

The marches taking place across the country this weekend are really about the soul of America. Forcibly separating children from their parents is not about “deterrence,” or the legal technicalities of law, or illegal immigration, or anything else President Trump has claimed to justify his latest and most odious outrage. It’s about “Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation,” to borrow from the Declaration of Independence.

No, the United States does not have clean hands: It has tolerated many inequities and atrocities throughout its history, toward Native Americans, blacks, Japanese and women, among others. Yet against that is the tradition in American law, culture and practice to defend the weak, to welcome the other, to give refuge to the oppressed and to refuse to acquiesce when a government acts against basic dictates of conscience.

The Trump administration has committed a gross offense. It is the duty of every decent American to demand that it promptly reunite these children with their parents.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

Demonstration Against ICE- June 30-Sacramento

Seeing thousands of immigrant families torn apart, I am devastated and beyond furious.

Join me on June 30 in Washington, D.C., or in a city near you to demand an end to this disgusting family separation policy.

A new Trump administration policy has been separating children—including babies younger than a year old—from their parents at our border, and detaining them in cages and tent cities. It is cruel and appalling, and it is our moral obligation to demand that it stops.

Even now that Trump is feeling pressure, he's not solving anything, as there is no plan to reunite the thousands of kids who have already been taken from their parents. And instead of stopping the imprisoning of children, he's proposing locking kids up with their families in cages for indefinite spans of time. I have visited the inside of a "detention" center, and make no mistake, they are prisons in which families and children are treated like criminals for fleeing life-threatening situations and seeking asylum.

I just gave birth to my first child four weeks ago. When I hold him in my arms, my heart breaks with the weight of my love for him, and I can’t help but imagine the devastation these parents and their terrified children are going through. As a parent, I can’t help but feel a responsibility to speak out against this horrifying situation. As an American, I know it is my duty to condemn these dehumanizing actions and demand that this never happen in our country, on our watch.

Many of us feel this pain and call to action so deeply—which is why hundreds of thousands of us are preparing to take to the streets at more than 600 events around the country next weekend to declare Families Belong Together.

Join me and hundreds of thousands of people who have committed to showing up in Washington, D.C., and in cities around the country on June 30 to demand that the Trump administration keep families together and reunite the thousands of families it has already ripped apart.

Have you ever read about a moment of crisis in history and wondered how people could let something so evil happen? This is one of those moments. We have to speak up. The Trump administration chooses to brutally punish families like this. It’s immoral, it’s wrong, and we can force them to stop.

We're seeing that our outrage is working. But this crisis is far from over. Now's the time to declare that these brutal policies must end, families must be treated with dignity, and the monsters who created these policies deserve to be held accountable.

Families come to the U.S. seeking a better life than was possible for them in the country they came from. Can you imagine living in such a dangerous and untenable situation, that your best option is to subject your family to a harrowing and life-threatening journey, only to arrive in a new country and have your child ripped from your arms with no indication of whether you’ll ever see them again? Can you imagine your terrified and confused child imprisoned by themselves?

MoveOn, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the ACLU, and others, are calling for June 30 to be a Families Belong Together national day of action. More and more Americans are mobilizing, and we need you to join us.

Sign up now to attend a rally in Washington, D.C., near the White House or in a city near you on June 30, and then ask your friends and family to attend with you to demand an end to family separation.

In solidarity,

—America Ferrera

Sacramento Rally.  10 AM.  ICE Administration Building.  650 Capitol Mall.

Organized by Move On, ACLU, and many more.

Endorsed by Sacramento Progressive Alliance

Democratic Socialists of America,  and more

FAMILIES BELONG TOGETHER—ATTEND A JUNE 30 EVENT!

But we won't allow it to continue. On June 30, we're rallying in Washington, D.C., and around the country to tell Donald Trump and his administration to permanently end the separation of kids from their parents. End family internment camps. End the "zero-humanity" policy that created this crisis. And reunify the children with their parents.

Trump and his administration have been systematically criminalizing immigration and immigrants, from revoking Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to ramping up intimidating ICE tactics. 

Join us on June 30 to send a clear message to Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress: Families Belong Together! 

Sacramento Demonstration Agains ICE- today

LACLAA ( Labor Committee for Latin American Advancement)  organized a  noisy and dynamic demonstration today at the ICE offices in Sacramento to oppose the policies of jailing children and to slow down ICE.  Photos, videos, and sound recordings contributed to the scene.

Desiree Rojas

Desiree Rojas, Sacramento LACLA President pointed to large photos and said we have now seen children put into dog kennels.  We have seen ICE Separate families. And, we must resist. 

“We will fight for the children !  We will fight back against ICE !” 

LACLAA , a part of the AFL-CIO, has been organized and active in Sacramento since 1982 and was particularly active in the anti NAFTA efforts and in organizing annual Cesar Chavez marches. 

Local residents of the Japanese Citizens League,  who had themselves been incarcerated in 1942 in the Japanese Incarceration told of their stories.  And, how the incarceration haunted them for decades.

Fabrizio Sasso, Executive Secretary of the Sacramento Central Labor Council  described today’s effort as a part of the battle for Freedom and Democracy. 

Duane Campbell (DSA) the Co Chair of the Immigrants’ Rights Committee of Democratic Socialists of America told the crowd of some 200 of the DSA campaign to Abolish ICE.  

“This issue before us is one of human decency.  Under the Trump Administration ICE has developed a new policy of deliberately separating families of immigrants and refugees.  They are separating parents from their children as a form of collective punishment.    We have seen the photos. We know what is happening! 

Now they claim to have changed  the policy and they will keep the children with the families—in jail!

Poor People's Campaign - Live. Now !

As you read this, thousands of us from California to the Carolinas are gathered on the National Mall, preparing to march on the U.S. Capitol to deliver letters to Congress demanding an immediate end to the policy violence that hurts poor children and families of every color and creed. 

We are faith leaders of numerous religious affiliations, advocates and poor and disenfranchised people who are directly affected by the policies being pushed by the Trump administration and Congress. 

We are the “new and unsettling force” that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King called for in starting the Poor People’s Campaign along with so many others 50 years ago.

And people are watching us. 

We have a our own livestream for supporters like you who’ve been with us from the start. Tune in to the action right now!

This campaign isn’t just on the ground. Even from home, you can take part in the event by amplifying it on Facebook and Twitter.

Click the graphic below to share a Facebook post linking to our livestream. And get the word out on Twitter with the hashtag #poorpeoplescampaign. 

This is the moment we’ve been building toward, the start of a new phase in our movement to organize and build power to end policy violence against the poor once and for all. Don’t miss your chance to be part of it.

Sincerely,

The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

CA to sue Trump over immigrant family separation | The Sacramento Bee

CA to sue Trump over immigrant family separation | The Sacramento Bee

Children Belong With Their Families, Not Alone and Fearful in Cages.

Tom McClintock is Running for Congress

Tom McClintock is running for re-election to Congress.
This is his policy.

Caged Children & Terrified Infants: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee Describes “A...

Seizing Children at the Border - The Poor People's Campaign

Thank you for being here today.  This is a critical day in our efforts.  At the Poor People's Campaign. 

Duane Campbell, photo by Leisa Faulkner

My Name is Duane Campbell.  I am a co-chair of the Immigrants’ Rights Committee of Democratic Socialists  of America.

Let us be clear. 

Seizing children from their parents at the border is immoral. 

This issue before us is  one of human decency.  Under the Trump Administration ICE has developed a new policy of deliberately separating families of immigrants and refugees.  They are separating parents from their children as a form of collective punishment.   They are violating both  due process and human rights.

 Many of us have seen the photos and the video.  We are here to disrupt the Immoral narrative  that terrorizes children for political gain. 

The United Nation says so.

The U.S. Catholic Bishops say so.

Most religious communities say so. 

 Trump, and Republicans in Congress have rejected a way to fix DACA and protect Dreamers. Now they are forcing a vote on two cruel bills that hold dreamers hostage to the Trump Administration’s deportation machine .

This is state  terrorism. 

This is not who we are as a country.

There have been other times and places where this policy was practiced. 

 The Nazis did this in Germany in the 1930’s.  One of their victims was a Protestant Minister. He survived Auschwitz.

Opinion | Seizing Children From Parents at the Border Is Immoral. Here What We Can Do About It. - The New York Times

Opinion | Seizing Children From Parents at the Border Is Immoral. Heres What We Can Do About It. - The New York Times

And, participate in the Poor People's March.  Monday, June 18.  12:30 PM.  State Capitol. North Steps.

Join Us ! Week 6. Poor People's Campaign

Dear friends and supporters of the California Poor People’s Campaign,

We are 48 hours away from gathering as a new and unsettling force to conclude this phase of our 40 days of sustained nonviolent civil moral unrest because the status quo in our Golden State has far too often been paved with poverty. Over the last five weeks, we have boldly declared, “Somebody is hurting our sisters and brothers and we won’t be silent anymore!”, and have shifted the moral barometer in the halls of our Capitol. Our time together has taken us from blocking the streets to the Senate and House galleries, from Assembly Budget Conference Hearings to speaking out against ecological devastation and violence against our Indigenous communities in front of the Columbus statue in the Capitol’s rotunda, and to having 51 one arrests and over 500 rally supporters lining the hallways of Our House. We have solidified a new and unsettling force to fight for the soul of our state until all of its citizens have dignity, human rights, and are freed from the violence of poverty, racism, ecological devastation, and the war economy.

Yet, California continues to violate our deepest moral convictions and inflicts pain and suffering on the most vulnerable in our society by passing a budget that continues to give money and tax loopholes to the rich, leaving little for the poor.

This Monday represents the culmination of the birthing of our movement. We will be confronting this nation and state’s distorted moral narrative, echoing throughout the capital that “We are a New, Unsettling Force, and we’ve got nothing to lose but our chains!” Our six weeks of Nonviolent Moral Fusion Direct Action at the Capitol might be coming to a powerful close, but this is just the beginning of our fusion movement. We invite you to rise up and join us at the capitol this Monday, either as a Moral Witness or a supporter of those who will be putting their bodies on the line in the name of nonviolent struggle, justice, and freedom.

Poor People's Campaign + Sacramento Week 6

Yesterday we began the fifth week of the birthing of the California Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. We had a full day of action led by hundreds of low-wage workers, the houseless, tenants, union members, and folks from every walk of life. From delivering an eviction notice to the California Association of Realtors, to occupying the Senate gallery, to filling the halls of the capitol with song, we were a new unsettling force felt in Sacramento and across our state. Simultaneously across the nation, once again, thousands of others also gathered at their state capitals, including in Washington D.C, where Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis and 8 other faith leaders were arrested for praying outside of the Supreme Court. Their prayers come on the heels of the Supreme Court's ruling to protect Ohio's newly passed voter suppression laws. As dozens were arrested around the country for standing up for affordable housing, livable wages, guaranteed annual income, and education, we are determined to keep organizing, to keep building, and to keep walking forward towards a radical revolution of values across this nation.  Watch a montage from yesterday's actions in Sacramento: Now it is time to get ready for our last gathering in Sacramento as part of the 40 days of Nonviolent Moral Fusion Direct Action launching the Poor People's Campaign. Will you join us as we come together to show up in the full power of this growing fusion movement?

Trump is Tearing Apart Families

Each story I hear about what’s going on right now at the U.S.-Mexico border feels like a kick in the teeth.

Kids locked up like animals in cages made of fencing and wire. Others huddled together on cold metal benches and cement floor. Meanwhile, their parents are held in detention centers hundreds of miles away in a different state – with little to no way of communicating.

This is the reality faced by thousands of children who’ve been torn from their parents’ arms because of Donald Trump’s cruel and bigoted immigration policies. Of course, that’s not enough for Trump. News broke earlier this week that he wants to put these children in actual prison camps.

 this is inhumane – and goes against everything our country should stand for. I’m fighting my heart out in Washington to put an end to these horrible practices – but while we wait for Republicans who control Congress to step up and do their jobs, you can help separated families right now.

Caged children, lost allies, neo-Nazis:

What Trump supporters have done to America

BY SASHA ABRAMSKY

Updated June 12, 2018 02:53 PM

This month, ICE began readying roughly 1,000 detainees, caught at the border trying to enter the country without documents, to be sent to the Victorville federal prison in California. It was another extraordinary shift in how America views immigrants – legal and otherwise – and how this administration views human rights and presumptions of innocence as mere inconveniences in its crusade to reshape the world.

To pre-empt critics who say that I advocate open borders, that is not what I am saying. But I am advocating empathy. Anyone who has ever sat in an immigration court along the border and watched the proceedings – as I have, in Tucson, Az. – will know that the men and women paraded through the courtroom after being detained in the desertlands are not criminal masterminds; they are desperately poor people, oftentimes campesinos displaced from their land in Mexico, in Honduras, in Guatemala, in El Salvador.

NONE OF THIS IS THE STUFF OF DEMOCRACY. THOSE WHO DEFEND IT ALL, SIMPLY FOR PARTY-POLITICAL ADVANTAGE, SHAME ON YOU.

They trek north in flimsy sneakers and plastic sandals, generally woefully unprepared for the temperature and geographic extremes of the desert; many, by the time they are arrested, are dehydrated and violently sick. They come north not as part of an organized “invasion” army, but as human beings trying to earn enough money to feed their hungry children. If they make it across the border, they live in the shadows, work for pitifully low day-labor wages, are ripe for exploitation and violence.

Yes, we have a broken immigration system; and, yes, we face rolling humanitarian and economic crises in the countries south of the U.S. border. But no, the answer is not to round up thousands of the hemisphere’s poorest and least fortunate people and house them for months and years at a stretch in federal prisons with hardened, and convicted, criminals, while they await trial for the misdemeanor crime of seeking paperless opportunity in a place they have long mythologized as the land of the free.

Nor is the answer to rip young children from their parents’ arms when those parents do exactly what the asylum laws tell them to do: Present themselves at a border checkpoint and claim political asylum. Yet that is now happening on a daily basis – and the children separated in such a brutal way are then either placed in foster care or in vast government-run holding facilities.

Poor People's Campaign - Jobs, Income, Living Wage

Vince Villegas, Sacramento Progressive Alliance

by Duane Campbell

Hundreds of tenants, low-wage workers, clergy, union members and community activists descended upon the California state capitol today in a show of collective power to demand that state lawmakers take action to address the state’s homelessness crisis and to combat the systemic racism and poverty in our communities.

Working families traveled from San Diego, Los Angeles, Salinas, and the Bay Area to join in this fifth successive week of nonviolent direct action. 

Speakers and participants included union workers protesting the attack on workers rights and their unions.  Anti-worker attacks – like Janus V AFSCME -  would create so called ‘Right to Work’ status for government workers in California and around the nation.  

“ The greedy rich and the corporations backing Janus are coming after us because they know about our power in numbers, and they know what we can accomplish when we stand together,” said David Dunbar a SEIU Local 721 member from Los Angeles. 

As the rally concluded, hundreds entered the capitol building to take their message directly to the lawmakers and to bear witness to their crisis when communities are torn apart by homelessness, poverty wages, systemic racism, and corporate greed. 

Today’s event was one of thirty in state capitols across the nation and in Washington D.C.  This is the fifth week of the campaign.  The protests across the nation are organized to reignite the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968 started by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and many others to challenge racism poverty and militarism. 

The next rally and non violent  intervention will be on Monday, June 18, 2018.

Trump Doesn't Understand the Trade Deficit

Trump doesn't understand trade balances.  You should.
What Is the Trade Deficit? - The New York Times

Join Poor People's Campaign _ Monday June 11

Join us next week, Monday, June 11th at 12:30pm, as we continue, along with 30+ other states across the nation, to unite the poor and build a mass movement for our times. Next week we will be standing up for affordable housing, workers' rights, livable wages, and the right to education. Meet us at the Capitol!

On week 4 ;After the Indigenous-led prayer ceremony outside of the oil and health insurance lobbies, we took a stand in the budget conference hearing and read out our demands. Read the full list of demands for week 4 here:

Across the nation, despite the resistance of those interested in maintaining a violent status quo, we are determined, more than ever, to keep pushing for a radical revolution of values. In Week Five, our theme is, Everybody’s Got the Right to Live: Education, Living Wage, Jobs, Income, and Housing. We will kick off with a rally in the state capital on June 11. This is our second to last rally, during our launch, so if you haven’t made it out yet, now’s the time to join the movement.

End the Sacramento County Contract with ICE

If you have not voted yet.  See the voters guide below,

UPDATE.  By  a vote of 3 -2, the County Board of Supervisors voted to end the contract with ICE.
What a great day.

Duane Campbell

BY THE SACRAMENTO BEE EDITORIAL BOARD

                    






                            June 04, 2018 01:51 PM

How much is it worth to Sacramento County to stop being part of the Trump administration’s deportation machine?

That’s the question for county supervisors, who are to decide Tuesday whether to authorize the Sheriff’s Department to keep a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to house as many as 165 detainees at Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center in Elk Grove.

Terminating the deal (with 120 days notice) would cost the county as much as $6.6 million a year, but it’s a relatively small price to pay to be on the right side of one of the most important issues in America today.

Supervisors can find the money elsewhere in the $1.7 billion general fund budget they are now considering. They last voted for the contract in 2013, to expire June 30. If they allow it to continue, they should at the very least attach an expiration date so it can be reviewed again. It makes no sense to extend the contract indefinitely, as the sheriff’s department wants.

SIGN UP

We can’t trust Sheriff Scott Jones on this issue – not when he has sensationalized the public safety threat posed by undocumented immigrants. Also, supervisors can’t ignore a possible change in leadership. Milo Fitch, who is trying to oust Jones in the Tuesday election, says he would end the ICE contract.