This coming Friday, July 12th, I am joining with thousands around the world for the Lights for Liberty Vigil to End Human Detention Camps. The event will bring thousands of Americans to detention camps across the country, into the streets and into their own front yards, to protest the inhumane conditions faced by refugees. You can check out lightsforliberty.org to find an event near you.

If you are in the Detroit area, please come join me, my family, and my friends.

The Detroit event will take place from 6-9 pm at 333 Mt. Elliot Detroit MI (US Detention and Deportation Center). 

**Please bring a candle for the vigil** (battery operated or one to light).

***If you interested in carpooling to the event you are invited to meet at my home anytime after 4:00 p.m. on Friday to make some posters for the event and to get hydrated. I will provide poster board and some markers, but feel free to make your own ahead of time, too. (Please call, text, or DM me for address.) We will head to the vigil site around 5:40 p.m.***

Remember, even if you cannot attend the event at a specific location in your area, lighting a candle on your own front lawn is a perfect place to stand in solidarity with thousands in speaking out against inhumane conditions at our borders. Please do that during this time with your friends and family.

According to the PRWeb press release sponsors now include SEIU, American Federation of Teachers, American Farm Workers, Dolores Huerta Foundation, New Sanctuary Coalition, Fair Immigration Reform Movement, Border Network for Human Rights, Witness Homestead, numerous frontline immigration advocacy organizations, a multitude of faith-based organizations, the Women’s March, and Indivisible.

Is it possible that there are organizations, politicians, and celebrities supporting this event with whose politics, economic ideologies, religions, and lifestyles that you don’t agree or have significant difference? Yup. But this isn’t about that.

This is about defending basic human rights and dignity of any person standing on American soil. If people are being stripped of basic human rights HERE in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA – politics don’t mean a dang thing.

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Randi Weingarten, President of American Federation of Teachers, said: “We are teachers, nurses and others who work to help others every day. What the United States is doing at our southern border in these detention camps is an abomination to the soul of our country and is contrary to everything we do. In the aftermath of World War II, ‘never again’ was meant to mean never again. America led the world in the fight against human rights abuses. Now, these abuses are perpetrated by our own president on the southern border. Silence is not an option. The Lights for Liberty vigil is showing it’s possible to resist the administration’s human rights abuses and point a path forward to a brighter, more just, future that honors the values that this country and the international community we’re founded on.””

PRWeb Press Release

My heart aches DEEPLY to see refugees/asylum seekers be treated inhumanely in the United States of America. And I agree, our systems are broken – a complete mess. We need to stand up for immigration and prison reform. We need tougher regulations on for-profit detention centers. Bernice King, one of my favorite Twitter follows and daughter of MLK, Jr. recently said, “Social justice is LOVE applied to systems, policies, and cultures.” We need to treat other humans better – we are not beyond repair and redemption. We are all worthy of love. And we need to have civil conversations about how to get there. We need to be collectively human to get there.

Why? Because in El Paso, Texas, migrants are being housed in outdoor conditions under a bridge with no running water for months at a time. Because at a detention facility in Homestead, FL, migrant children have experienced mass abuse and neglect. Because teen mothers and babies are held outdoors in cages. Because the sick and elderly have been confined to “icebox” rooms for weeks at a time. Because, unbelievably, children as young as 4 months are taken from their parents, medicine is confiscated, and medical care withheld, and LGBTQ and disabled individuals are held in solitary confinement. 

Please hear me out – I read A LOT of WW2 era materials and one thing is always blatantly clear: the Nazis believed that they were Übermensch (super human) and that while other beings might appear human they simply were not. Other beings were the untermensch, subhuman creatures, missing elements of what it meant to truly be human. The scary part is that it didn’t take much to convince the masses of this lie.

I love this country and I am patriot, but I am in NO FREAKING WAY a nationalist. My husband recently wrote a timely piece called ‘Love and Criticism’ and I could not agree with these sentiments more: 

“Whether it is in national politics, local concerns, or a job, there’s always a selection of people surrounding you who cannot accept an opposing idea, let alone any change it might precipitate. Even if they might benefit from it.

‘The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.’ (American journalist Sydney J. Harris, 1953.)

In each instance, be it regarding our government or office politics, I believe that people in power have cultivated “nationalist” thinking in order to maintain their power. They’ve tricked people into thinking a certain paradigm is their identity and, if it tries to evolve, the people feel this anxiety over their ownership of it slipping away.”

Josh Welton, TheWELDER Magazine, Playing With Fire: “Love & Criticism” July/Aug ’19

I believe that our greatest strengths and accomplishments still reside in “We the People.” I believe in democracy because I believe in myself and I believe in you as Americans, but we must recognize that “We the People” have the power and that we come from very different ethnic, cultural, economic, and religious backgrounds. The vast majority of us come from long lines of immigrants, many who peered at Lady Liberty as their eyes adjusted to the horizon, nearing the American shoreline.

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I have German and English roots. The county where I grew up surrounded me with families who immigrated from Poland, Iraq, Russia, Romania, Argentina, Italy, Ireland, England, Germany, Greece, Lebanon, Mexico, Yugoslavia, and Africa. Multiple cultures of the world are still right outside my front door and I cannot ignore that fact. I also cannot ignore that many families with African roots did not arrive as immigrants, but through the barbaric and once legal practice of slave trade. And many native peoples were violently forced off of their homelands during colonization of these lands. Racism, oppression, and slavery are ugly, but very real parts of our history and we MUST acknowledge and learn from these atrocities or they will continue to be grossly repeated.

Across this country, we have witnessed acts against people fleeing persecution that many of us thought we would never see in modern times. While it is not illegal to be an asylum seeker, some refugees do attempt to enter the United States illegally in action and we need to address that, but how lucky are we that most of us cannot imagine this brand of desperation? We cannot imagine setting out on these perilous journeys, risking our own lives and the lives of our children and elders in order to find a better way of life in a foreign land.

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My convictions are personal, political, philosophical, and spiritual. I share my heart and passion on this issue because LOVE compels me and requires such action of me.

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

INFO: Check out https://www.miunited.org/ for another organization fighting the good fight for civil liberties, basic human dignity, equity, opportunity, and immigration and criminal justice reform.

Want to have your brain and your heart challenged on human rights issues? Watch “Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz” on Netflix. You’ll have your heart jumped back to life by this 5 foot nothing, 99 year-old’s passion for justice. What a force! https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/movies/prosecuting-evil-review.html

http://www.benferencz.org/ Beginning in 1945 with his prosecution of war criminals during the Nuremberg Tribunal, the work of Benjamin Ferencz has long focused on issues of international criminal justice and world peace. A strong supporter of the International Criminal Court, Mr. Ferencz advocates steps to replace the “rule of force with the rule of law.” 

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For those of you who claim to be followers of Jesus, and share this in common with me, please digest these words:

Do not mistreat foreigners who are living in your land. Treat them as you would an Israelite, and love them as you love yourselves. Remember that you were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 19:33-34)

He makes sure that orphans and widows are treated fairly; he loves the foreigners who live with our people, and gives them food and clothes. So then, show love for those foreigners, because you were once foreigners in Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:18-19)

“Long ago I gave these commands to my people: ‘You must see that justice is done, and must show kindness and mercy to one another. Do not oppress widows, orphans, foreigners who live among you, or anyone else in need.” (Zechariah 7:9)

I am the Lord, and I consider all people the same, whether they are Israelites or foreigners living among you. (Numbers 15:16)

See that justice is done – help those who are oppressed, give orphans their rights, and defend widows. (Isaiah 1:17)

If you give food to the hungry and satisfy those who are in need, then the darkness around you will turn to the brightness of noon. (Isaiah 58:10)

Remember to welcome strangers in your homes. There were some who did that and welcomed angels without knowing it. (Hebrews 13:2)

“Whoever has two shirts must give one to the man who has none, and whoever has food must share it.” (Luke 3:11)

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