Witness: Thanksgiving

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I like to think of it as a harvest feast. Because thinking about Europeans arriving on the shores of a continent settled millennia earlier by earlier migrants—well, that flavors the food with the spice of conquest, subjugation, and genocide. Not an appealing recipe for turkey, or anything else.

Day 2 of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence:

"Availability of data on violence against women and girls has increased significantly in recent years, and data on the prevalence of intimate partner violence is now available for at least 106 countries." Learn more below and take action with "10 ways you can help end violence against women, even during a pandemic."

Day 1 of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence @16dayscampaign

#16days #orangetheworld #generationequality #ratifyILO190

Trump & Co step up deportations of Cameroonian and other African asylum seekers in flights operated by ICE contractor, Omni Air International.

Image: North Texas Dream Team

Time ticks on, making me ache with awareness of time’s limit for me. And ache with the larceny against us, the theft of our time and our lives, as we, starved for oxygen, await the end we are being denied. The end of this frozen grimace of an era, an era that hammered home the lesson that we never knew, that we thought we knew, but that we never knew: that tragedy is as human as hope, and that each breath delivers both.

Photo: @Allan Mestel

And here we are, beaten and bruised by a struggle we either were born into, or somehow got tangled up in, and now long too late to make our way out of. Some rely on hope, or faith. Some, like me, just pointing ourselves in the direction of a flimsy compass needle that trembles and flutters inside, feeling very much like heart palpitations. When there is comfort, it comes from the others that are also snarled and snagged so badly that they know any efforts to get out will only tighten the knots.

All of humanity suffers. At times, intensely. And even in those moments we do not, suffering is always available to us, because we have that lamentably human propensity to share the suffering of others.

The border wall, no matter how high they build it, will not stop the suffering.

WE ARE ASKING THE WORLD FOR MORAL HELP AND LEADERSHIP. THIS IS WHAT THIS ADMINISTRATION'S TERROR HAS BROUGHT US. PERHAPS THIS WILL HELP.

How do they justify it? To each other. Sometimes they just say it out loud. And you can get an idea about the shape it takes in their minds. Here’s one thing we just heard: only low-IQ people would be stupid enough to show up for their immigration court hearings.

Why is that considered a stupid thing to do?

It is tempting to imagine that we are living in end times. Those of us who are older and confined to quarters as the pandemic spikes might conflate our own fates with the fate of the world. The dead end in front of me could indeed be for me alone, or it might be for everyone. Those who speak of end times look for signs, and there are signs everywhere. Fires burning out of control, great storms, the pandemic itself. For me, the disappointments with the eruptions of age, flareups in body and mind, are signs as well.

Scorched earth.

During these days, days that we hope will lead to end of what I think could properly be called a reign of terror, we will see—indeed we are seeing—an angry regime doing its very best to hurt the country, the people of our country, and with specific vengeance reserved for people of color, all people who stand in the way of the imperium that was to last a thousand years. It is the imperium of greed, and its weapons, inequality and racism and exploitation, will be deployed with a resentful fervor in these days ahead.

A MELANGE OF EMOTIONS

Over the past few days Witness at the Border was humbled to work with over 100 amazing advocates to try to stop an Omni International ICE Air deportation flight to Africa. Despite the efforts of this tireless group and some Members of Congress (below), 60 Cameroonians were sent back to a country in the middle of a civil war. 28 Congolese were also deported on this plane to a country extremely ill-equipped to deal with the risk of COVID exportation. We failed to move ICE to a humanitarian place. We may have failed to save some lives.

WHY WE WITNESS – THE MACHINE

To be sure the past month or so has been filled with horrendous events including unaccompanied children held in hotels by transportation specialists, despicable medical conditions and encounters at Irwin Detention Center, detainee deaths reaching an all-time annual high, and ICE Air activity at record in-pandemic levels, just to name a few.

“False Profit,” painting by Mear One

It’s cool this morning here in Brooklyn, and there is a breeze. Breezes are a good thing, because they disperse and dilute the particles that carry Covid. To the south of the neighborhood I live in, schools are being closed. It appears the long-predicted fall surge of the deadly virus has begun.

Everything you NEED to know about America's most troubled law enforcement agency, with Jenn Budd.

When those we are against behave as horribly as those we now face, knowing what we are against is easy. We are against racism and xenophobia, and we are against a terrorist government that encourages terrorism by paramilitary groups and more official arms of terror like ICE and CBP, whose persecution of the poor and brown and black make them easy to hate.

Covid on the rise in our country, and likely in Mexico, too. The hurricane season has not ended, and along the banks of that fortified river that defends the unjust portion of the world’s wealth against the poor and hungry, people who have seen all of the seasons through wait to see what an empire does in what appears to be decline and fall.

We do some mental maneuvering to keep our balance. It is not easy to have perspective on the times we are now living through. No one I know was alive during the flu pandemic or the Black Plague. Nobody to advise us how to emotionally navigate these waters. And for those of us, many in this group, we have had our eyes on the borders that defend the unequal share of the world’s wealth, and have seen for ourselves the eyes of those who wait on the other side, or in camps that imprison, eyes that haunt us even when ours close for the night, at the end of long days of bombardment with the horror of the present.

How do we think about the revelation that there are women in an ICE prison saying that they were subjected to surgeries that will prevent them from having children?

Some people have told me that I should be measured and cautious in my reaction to this. That an investigation has not happened. But doesn’t that ignore lessons we should have learned by now? Women have said these things. To the brave nurse who came forward and from whom we learned about this. Now, to lawyers who represent them. To volunteers who have heard them.

This morning many of us are trying to come to grips with the news out of an ICE prison for migrants in southern Georgia. A nurse working there seems to have run afoul of the privately run prison’s administration over health practices. She tells of neglect and cruelty in the handling of the COVID-19 scourge. This part leaves us sad but unsurprised.