Posted by
Rude One
Not for one single second should anyone trust Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell on his vaguely-worded fake promise to bring up a bill
for the undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. You
know, the Dreamers. McConnell is so full of shit that he should be
declared a hazardous waste site, but people keep wanting to build houses
on that toxic bit of Senate real estate.
Democrats
caved
after making multiple offers for ways to reopen the federal government
that would either force action on the DREAM Act or contain protection
for those recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. They
even offered to fund the stupid fucking wall. It went nowhere.
To be fair, the bill to reopen the government until February 8 does
contain six years of funding for the Children's Health Insurance
Program, which takes that off the
table
on the upcoming negotiations.
And, to be fair, the shutdown has brought
even more attention to the plight of the Dreamers, whose path to
citizenship is supported by a huge
majority of
Americans, and the fact that their fate is in the hands of the callous
GOP and their mad leader, Donald Trump. When the Republicans fail to do
shit, and they will fail to do shit, it will (hopefully) be as clear as
can be who broke their word when the government shuts down again. But we
have reached the limit of trust in the political process.
At this year's Women's March, I saw many more signs about immigrants
compared to last year. Hell, we even chanted pro-immigration slogans in
New York City. But I've started wondering at what point is marching not
enough of a statement, that the argument is not being made strongly and
forcefully.
Anyone with a fucking ounce of heart was sickened by the sight of Jorge Garcia,
saying
goodbye to his wife and children in Michigan before being deported to
Mexico, a country that he left 30 years ago, when he was ten. Garcia is,
for all intents and purposes, American. He is married to an American
woman. He has American children. Jesus fuck, can't we have some kind of
squatters' rights to at least be left the fuck alone?
And maybe you were outraged at the idea of U.S. Customs and Border
Patrol officers being able to walk onto a Greyhound bus in Florida and
ask people for proof of
citizenship.
It's a "show me your papers" scenario right out of every anti-Nazi or
anti-Soviet Union movie or book. They removed a woman from the bus and
her family hasn't heard from her since. Sure, there may be some
legitimate reason for the CBP's actions towards the woman. But if they
really are routinely asking for your i.d., that's some 4th
Amendment-violating shit right there.
And then maybe you can stomach
watching
this BBC report on Pacific County, Washington, which went for Trump by 7
points. The area has seen kids pulled out of schools to be with their
deported parents, industries running low on workers, and general shock
that, holy shit, "deportation" isn't just for undocumented murderers (of
which there are precious few, despite the GOP's best efforts to scare
you into thinking otherwise).
I keep wondering when is there going to be a breaking point. When is
there going to be a point where the citizens of a town or city simply
form a human wall against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement
officers who have been showing up in
hospitals and
courthouses and
other previously "safe" places? When will real resistance, peaceful,
nonviolent, but decidedly not just about your tweets or your
government-sanctioned march, come to be? When will people say that
enough is enough, get themselves arrested, and all flood the judicial
system so that it grinds to a halt (from the dying snail's pace it's
on)?
In New Fairfield, Connecticut,
another
man with an American wife and two American children, Joel Colindrés,
who escaped violence in Guatemala 14 years ago to come to the United
States, was ordered to leave the country. He is currently appealing this
decision, and several dozen people came out in this town north of
Danbury to protest his possible deportation. What if agents come to take
him away and some of those protesters decide that they will not allow
it to happen? That is the wall that's needed, the humane, caring,
righteous wall to halt the excesses of a government gone as crazy as its
leader in tearing apart families, that is harming our citizens,
especially the children of the deported.
This will be part of the next phase of resistance. It will happen. Perhaps with Colindrés,
perhaps
with Lukasz Niec. Niec is the doctor in Michigan (the fuck is up with
ICE agents in Michigan?) who was brought to the United States from
Poland in 1979, when he was 5 years old. He received permanent resident
status in 1989. But because he had a couple of low-level misdemeanor
convictions from when he was a teenager, he is subject to deportation.
He's a fucking doctor. He can't speak Polish. He's not even
undocumented. Hell, I left Queens when I was 4, and I wouldn't know what
the fuck to do if I were sent back there, let alone a completely
foreign country.
It's fucking gut check time. We are into "First they came for"
territory. We've gone from the undocumented immigrants to the Dreamers
to legal residents. When will we speak out? When will we act? Or will we
once again wait until it is us?
The government is operating against what a majority of the nation
believes, and it is harming communities, as well as families, hurting
the nation in the pursuit of a blatantly nationalistic and, frankly,
anti-American goal. It is long, long past the time for a new non-violent
resistance movement to protect the soul of the country. And if you
believe that soul is white, you can fuck off to some fantasy place and
wallow in hate and ignorance.