#KeepFamiliesTogether | Land of Broken Dreams
First things first.
America Has Never Been Great.
June 30th, 2018 | Saturday the "Families Belong Together" marches swept the country as people came together to lend a voice to those that do not have one. In American current events, the Trump administration has brought about a zero-tolerance immigration policy. This policy separates children from their parents as the parents are prosecuted and potentially deported back to their home country for "illegally" immigrating to the United States. This past May, 650+ children were separated from their parents and now the number of displaced children has reached the thousands. In the months to follow, the media has been able to show the public what has been happening with as much information as the government has allowed them to collect. Images of children laying on concrete floors covered with emergency thermal blankets as they uncontrollable sob for their parents has been embedded into the minds of us all. This is America. This is what our democracy looks like.
Walking around the parade, a part of me was shocked. I was not shocked by the lack of black supporters or signs including black issues or the amount of people there for selfie purposes only. I wasn't even shocked by the about of people in attendance. But I was flabbergasted by the amount of people in complete shock that "This Is America." How? The #KeepFamiliesTogether march was held 4 blocks away from the Japanese American Museum. We have lived and breathed this moment before. In the years of WWII, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, America moved Japanese Americans into internment camps. The only difference now is that America is separating children from their parents.
Interment camps were 60+ years ago.
Most of my readers grandparents were alive when this happened.
I will always be American. I was born and raised here. This is what I know. As a country we need to understand that being American doesn't mean we turn our back on morality and belief in freedom, love and justice. The United States is turning into Margaret Atwood's "Handmaid's Tale" more and more everyday and all we are doing is holding signs. We have taken children and placed them in cages. We have wrapped them in foil and discarded them without a care in the world as if they were Sunday left overs. We are treating them like criminals when all they wanted from America was an opportunity for a future. Enough is enough America. Get your shit together. This is suppose to be the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave" yet, we strip children from their parents and allow black men to be slaughtered on the street by those that are paid to serve and protect.
We are no better than the countries we bomb or the cartels terrorizing foreign lands if we do not respect the bond between a mother and child. It's bad enough that we rip children out of the arms of incarcerated mothers and expect the "system" to be an adequate home to raise functioning members of society. Now we are potentially creating a foster care and adoption system where immigrant children will never know their culture, heritage or worth because we snatched the only love they have ever known out of there hands.
Please answer this for me. When these children become of age and see this in their history books, what lasting effects do you think this will have on their psyche? How will they feel knowing that their real parents are in another country heartbroken because they didn't have the tools to fight or look for them? What about effect on their adoptive parents? Will these kids even get the opportunity to have parents at all?
This is not democracy. This is America.
I waited to put this post out on July 4th; the day America celebrates its independence from Great Britain. This is a country that our founding fathers left in order to create opportunities that they didn't have. The original illegal immigrants. Those men and women that left Great Britain to steal and annihilate the natives who owned this land before them. Then they went on to enslave Africans and for the next 400+ years they persecute anyone that reminded them of themselves. Immigrants. People looking for an opportunity on a land that was not their own. Crazy how history repeats itself. Crazy how this country has continued to make the same mistakes again and again.
Use today to use your 1st Amendment right, while you still have one, and keep the conversation going. I don't care about your political views or stance on current issues .If you do anything today, please celebrate your own family and hold your loved ones a little tighter because this could be you. We are all immigrants on a foreign land. We must stick together.
This is America. We have to change.
5 things I recommend doing on your personal journey to Making America Better For Us All.
- Register to Vote.
- Watch legendary actor, George Takei, speak on his experience in the Interment camps.
- Do your research and donate to a cause such as the ACLU or RAICES to help the fight to #KEEPFAMILIESTOGETHER.
- Speak to your congressional representatives. Get them to do their part in keeping families together. (Click link for details).
- KEEP THE CONVERSATION GOING. DO NOT FORGET THE CHILDREN.
A U.S. government film from 1943 justifying the detention of Japanese-Americans in internment camps has new relevance in light of the president's immigration policies. - The New York Times.
The US is separating children from their parents at the border. Ebro in the Morning broke down the situation & why Rachel Maddow broke down in tears at the end of her show on MSNBC. - Hot 97 NY
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
-The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus (1883)
