Right now, on our southern border…
Jul. 9th, 2019 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osodecanelaAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be a lightning rod for the right wing, but I’m grateful she has the courage to speak truth to power. Unlike many, the congresswoman has been inside one of the detention facilities our government is currently running on our southern border. She had the clarity to call a spade a spade & referred to it as a concentration camp.
Miriam Webster dictionary:
concentration camp : a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard - used especially in reference to camps created by the Nazis in World War II for the internment and persecution of Jews and other prisoners.
Many who have been to our detention facilities have been hesitant to call them concentration camps, fearing accusations of being hyperbolic, or provocative. However, this is the time to be provocative; this is the time for those of us with a conscience to say, “not in my name.” When we place people under dehumanizing conditions, we do exactly that; we dehumanize them. Those contained suffer, while simultaneously it’s affirmed to those who imprison them, those contained are lesser than, deserving of the treatment they endure.
This is a slippery slope. Our detention centers may not be death camps. Neither were our Japanese internment camps. People suffered in those camps. Some died. They lost their homes and businesses, their property and their freedom. It was an indignity done to them under the guise they were a threat to this country’s safety, a solution to the problem of a hostile minority who had infiltrated our midst. To accept that premise is nothing more than racism draped in an American flag. It was then and remains today scapegoating, nothing more.
Today our government is penning men, women & children under conditions that treat them as less than human. They had the temerity to try justifying it in Federal court, to a Japanese-American judge, himself once interned. Do we feel secure this administration can sink no further, if the President or his minions think it may serve them politically? Are we secure there is no possibility of an ‘ultimate solution’? I pray not, but did the average German know what inhumanities were being perpetrated by their government 80 years ago? My own family paid the ultimate price for the ignorance of the German populace; the bulk of my grandmother’s family perished.
E pluribus unum is stamped on all American currency. Our national motto reminds us all of the strength of this American experiment. Out of many, one. My family, all immigrants, came and embraced that. We arrived, fleeing both religious and economic oppression. My grandparents all stepped onto Ellis Island, in the shadow of the new American colossus; “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!” If as a nation we can accept without outrage, the treatment of asylum seekers at the hands of this administration, it is our obligation to converge on New York harbor, dissemble the Statue of Liberty, and return to France her gift. We have lost all rights to this iconic American symbol.
Miriam Webster dictionary:
concentration camp : a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard - used especially in reference to camps created by the Nazis in World War II for the internment and persecution of Jews and other prisoners.
Many who have been to our detention facilities have been hesitant to call them concentration camps, fearing accusations of being hyperbolic, or provocative. However, this is the time to be provocative; this is the time for those of us with a conscience to say, “not in my name.” When we place people under dehumanizing conditions, we do exactly that; we dehumanize them. Those contained suffer, while simultaneously it’s affirmed to those who imprison them, those contained are lesser than, deserving of the treatment they endure.
This is a slippery slope. Our detention centers may not be death camps. Neither were our Japanese internment camps. People suffered in those camps. Some died. They lost their homes and businesses, their property and their freedom. It was an indignity done to them under the guise they were a threat to this country’s safety, a solution to the problem of a hostile minority who had infiltrated our midst. To accept that premise is nothing more than racism draped in an American flag. It was then and remains today scapegoating, nothing more.
Today our government is penning men, women & children under conditions that treat them as less than human. They had the temerity to try justifying it in Federal court, to a Japanese-American judge, himself once interned. Do we feel secure this administration can sink no further, if the President or his minions think it may serve them politically? Are we secure there is no possibility of an ‘ultimate solution’? I pray not, but did the average German know what inhumanities were being perpetrated by their government 80 years ago? My own family paid the ultimate price for the ignorance of the German populace; the bulk of my grandmother’s family perished.
E pluribus unum is stamped on all American currency. Our national motto reminds us all of the strength of this American experiment. Out of many, one. My family, all immigrants, came and embraced that. We arrived, fleeing both religious and economic oppression. My grandparents all stepped onto Ellis Island, in the shadow of the new American colossus; “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!” If as a nation we can accept without outrage, the treatment of asylum seekers at the hands of this administration, it is our obligation to converge on New York harbor, dissemble the Statue of Liberty, and return to France her gift. We have lost all rights to this iconic American symbol.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-10 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-10 08:27 am (UTC)I’m grateful this post spoke to you.
I admit much of what I see today frustrates me & leaves me feeling impotent, incapable of effecting a positive change. If my so called eloquence inspires and becomes part of a force for good in this country, then I’m grateful. There are times when I’m certain I’m screaming into the ether.
Sent from my iPhone
no subject
Date: 2019-07-10 02:02 pm (UTC)You're not alone. I'm curious. Do you read my posts?
no subject
Date: 2019-07-10 06:36 pm (UTC)I’m not sure why, but even though we’ve granted each other mutual access, you weren’t coming up in my feed (reading page). I just went to your ‘about’ page and after going to your journal to find your last entry, you’ve now popped up in my feed.
Given all the stuff I’ve had going on with property and upcoming new job, I’ve only been getting to my reading page once or twice a week. Have you been there all along and I’ve missed you in my feed, or did I just trigger it to appear? Dunno.
I first friended you after reading entries a couple of years back. I liked what I read and more, how you appear to think. I guess I’d thought you had become similar to many of my friends, who read and comment, but don’t often post.
Sent from my iPhone