Jeanne,
Thank you for your post about Melania. The situation is so heart breaking I am looking for hope... If she wore that jacket as a deliberate message to anyone but her husband ( as if I don’t care about your directions) that’s a callousness my brain has trouble fathoming. Everything happening with this administration my brain has trouble fathoming. Nonetheless, I know it’s real- been calling, writing, donating- everything I can think of. If there is anyone in the North East or Mid Atlantic region - councilman Mark Levine - NYC- is collecting clothes & toys for the 300 children held currently in NYC. I just sent two boxes. Bad enough they are incarcerated children- least we can do while we try to reunite- is make sure they have clean clothes & anything else they may need.
As I'm sure other gardeners can relate, I've spent weeks and weeks weeding. This year I've been having a back and forth with the wild strawberries. I let them have their place and they rooted in, spread out, and started competing with others via strangulation. I made a new deal, created a boundary, and finally just started rooting them out and telling them they could get recycled in the compost that I'm very diligent about sharing with members of my community. I've been weeding out all kinds of other insidious growth, too; the kind that scatches toxic oil in my skin. I scrub it out of my skin and work other healing unguents in.
Laura and Jeanne's advise to avoid the pain of Trumpsters is good, but maybe it's just time to decord period. I've tried to understand and have compassion for Trumpsters; I live in a red state, but the radical right that produced them has spent decades rooting into churches, school boards, media outlets, and local, state, and regional governments. In the process they managed to believe they represent the voice of moral conscience in this country. It just seems time to weed out those insidious vines that hook in, cleanse, and smudge. How do we make room for the new: compassion for, kind treatment of, and sharing with those who have been harmed by this bs, unless we stop giving energy to what is essentially a bunch of wild strawberries and other varieties of weed that have just over taken over their place and need to get tossed?
It's not just "painful to hear how callous people are towards the undocumented," it's just time the space and energy given these callous people needs to end. My sympathy, respect, and prayers belong to the youth who have been, are being, and will be harmed. I don't have any energy left over for people who elected Trump or for Trump, his appointees, and family members. The only power they have is what they manage to hook from others. Imagine that hook is just so much metal you can boil and drop into the Mother's core.
There are reports today that the U.S. Navy is planning to build "austere" migrant tent cities on Navy and Marine bases that can hold up to 125,000 migrants. (Laura, There will be facilities to hold 47,000 on Camp Pendleton alone).
Meanwhile, if you look at the Border Patrol's own data, the number of people coming across the border is at its lowest level since 1972.
I hope I am wrong, but I have a strong sense that they need the extra space because they are going to start more aggressively rounding up undocumented people across America.
Oh Shawn. Thanks for sharing about your donations to the children. While we are just learning about a handful of children here in Oregon this is absolutely something we should all be thinking about. Reaching out, gathering information, sharing what we can with what we have. Thank you for sharing and giving. We all need to do as we can to help others today, everyday, and in the years ahead.
As for Melania's jacket it was either very clever on her part or on his, big distraction in the news and all of us talking about a coat when it wasnt even needed by the weather instead of them not allowing her to visit the shelter she asked for with the tiny crying children in the news instead of a clean, educating and toy filled one for young adults and older children. Officials claimed the other one was in flooding danger. To me, whether true or not, that was all thr more reason why it should have been the one visited.
And Rosieheart, that is an appalling thought. We know we are in for challenging times and causes to support but they are hitting all of us where it hurts us the most, our hearts.
Let's keep an eye on this, psychically scan the area with remote viewing and inner sense perception. I hope and pray its fake news but when I look at the evil unleashed throughout time at our most vulnerable how can we not see anything as possible?
Kamala Harris just spoke at Otay Mesa Detention Center.
https://www.facebook.com/ABCNews/videos/10157377895603812
Rosieheart- maybe I'll see you tomorrow in Otay Mesa?
Thank you, Laura, for posting the inspiring Senator Harris speech at the Otay Mesa Detention Center. We are so lucky to have you posting here and giving us helpful expert information.
Harris said, "I'm a career prosecutor, and that detention center is a prison. It is a prison! They are penned locked in there, and given a short time each day to exercise in a 500 square foot pen. We are putting asylum seekers who have struggled to get to our country, fleeing dangerous homelands, only to be put into prison." She said they are told the phone service is free, but in fact they are charing 85 cents a minute for phone calls! This whole zero tolerance has been huge boondoggle for some private companies. The more you look into this atrocity, the darker it gets. Harris spoke to some of the mothers at the center and told the crowd that the mothers think they are alone.
I can't imagine what the children feel. I think about those children day and night. I want to surround them with love, and make then feel safe and comforted. I am sending legions of angels to their sides. I pray that their ordeal will crush Trump and the GOP. The continued scapegoating of immigrants, the plans for 125,000 more beds is a calamity and the saddest episode in our country's history.
I believe in the power of prayer. Let's everyone send prayers of well being and hope to those parents and those children. May you all hold them in your hearts, see them lifted up and carried to safe refuge where they find what they came here seeking. May every child feel safe and comforted and somehow may he and she feel loved.
Zoron,
This atrocity excites the base. Trump has expressed his confidence that it will boost voter turnout for the midterms. He is completely confident that this is a winning strategy, that he will be seen to be strong, and that he is fulfilling promises. If he wants to bring the evangelicals to the polls, he’s going to have to go after women and women’s health care next. It will have to be big enough to make the child internment camps forgivable to them.
Gracesinger, re weeding:
Somewhere in the copious pile of media I consume daily, I read an article talking about how it is time to stop trying to reason with the fascists.
The TL;DR version of the article: Haters gonna hate. Don't waste emotional energy on them, use that energy to do positive things.
My sense is that if we can build a better world, hate will lose its attraction. That fascist's hate is a lot of displaced despair. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't a lot of red-staters feel as culturally shamed and oppressed as 1930's Germans?)
Let it be said, though, that I am not advocating a 'spiritual bypass' where we are all too holy to feel rage at what is being done to children. Rage is appropriate. It motivates action. Rage channeled into productive work is a good thing.
We tend our gardens, yank out the weeds, spade and mulch. We don't hate on the weeds.
R1
R1 thank you. As I said, it is a timeline, and I hope it does not happen. But it is very strong, when I view it. I agree with what you say, about the opposition in Latin America. I also am very aware, as someone previously involved in international Human Rights, at a fairly high level, (The so-called "War on Terror") exactly what is going on......Guatemala, for instance. The Hispanic elite there decided to dispossess and ethnically cleanse the majority indigenous population, the Maya internal Nations. This was sold to Wshington as "Fighting communism and rebellion." There were three million Maya in rural areas, at the start. One million were killed, in "Counter-insurgency operations". One million fled as refugees to a chain of camps in Mexico. The one million left were marginalized and robbed of just about everything. The whole thing was financed, (Military assistance) and armed, and trained, by the United States Government. Eventually, the UN and international pressure stopped the war, and a peace agreement was reached. The refugees came back, to a devastated land. Thats about where it is, at the moment. I say this, as it is the basic blueprint being followed right now, by the USA, in most underdeveloped third World countries. Guatemala was the laboratory. I am very aware of what is going on, in terms of resistance. The battles in Honduras, for instance, are linked to the USA intelligence community, and the links between the DEA, and the clique of ruling Oligarchs in new York. Not a lot different from Eichmann, really. I am saying all these things, as they set the context for what is happening. These people crossing the border are utterly desperate. Its not just central America. Deep in the South, in Chile and Argentina, the indigenous tribes are being driven off their remaining lands by violence. Think Honduras. We talking another million or so people here. American Corporations are the prime financiers and drivers of this. In Bolivia, where the population is about 70% indigenous, they have won, and an indiginous Government in power. It is being relentlessly attacked by the IMF and World Bank, and the American Corporations. It will probably not survive.
The great majority of Americans are not like you, R1. They re totally ignorant of what is happening, South of the Border. Those that are aware, are mostly linked to those starting these ethnic wars. They work inside the Military-Industrial Complex. Or they vote for the Trump Monster, and simply don't care, or actually support it. Sorry to post a long political post, but it might be useful. The people on here are outstanding, but not always aware of the background to these events. Given what I have said, I think that at the moment, my prediction of what is going to happen, with the refugee flow to the USA, is probably accurate, and highly likely. I despair. What is now happening is that the refugees, (not migrants) are extending the consequences of the wars in the south into the United States. It will get worse. I pray for the victims.