Suffer the Little Children

"A person's dignity does not depend on them being a citizen, a migrant, or a refugee. 

Saving the life of someone fleeing war and poverty is an act of humanity."

-- Pope Francis, affirming the 

US Council of Bishops' statement that 

Trump's border policy

is "immoral."

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."
-- Emma Lazarus

from "The New Colossus"

It's enough to make a grown man cry.  

I've come to tears a number of times these past few days observing the results of the Trump Administration's "zero tolerance" border policy on countless refugee families.

The stark reality of innocent children being separated from their parents and siblings to then be put into cages is nothing less than a freakin' abomination.  It's senseless and cruel -- and a violation of the tenets of the UN Convention on refugees.   

It's also immoral.  

Lest my lack of credentials other than that of being the founding S.O.B.* makes that claim a bit presumptuous, Pope Francis, the US Catholic Council of Bishops, and numerous other clergy worldwide, with the appropriate certificates hanging on their walls, agree with me.  Can you imagine it otherwise? After all, in what bizarre parallel universe would Jesus of Nazareth sanction the lack of decency that would allow Trump and his lackey Jeff Sessions to edit the plaque on the Statute of Liberty to read: 
                                             "Give me your tired, your poor,
                                                Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
                                                 -- and I will separate the children from their parents
                                                 and throw them all in jail!?"

If the Prince of Peace were in the flesh today, He'd be much more likely to hustle His ass into DC and turn the tables on this crew of miscreants.  He's been known to do such things back in the day.  Self-styled Christian VP Mike Pence would be the first to get a hypocrite's heave ho into the fiery pit. 

(Of course, as always, if these guys would finally come to their senses to see that Satan has hoodwinked them, their sins would be forgiven.  Sadly, I'm not holding my breath here. )

Besides the moral outrage I feel, I take this one personally.  

As a 12-year-old boy, having been abandoned with my younger brother and sister in a train station in East St. Louis, Illinois, I spent several days in a detention center.  Although my mother had been swept away by her own's demons, leaving me as the oldest child to protect my siblings, I was treated with compassion and respect by the police officer charged with sweeping me up into his arms and carrying me off.  Kicking and screaming all the way, at one point I bit his arm.  Without flinching, he responded gently and kindly in a language that I could understand, "It's going to be alright, son."

I can only imagine the terror being experienced by the estimated 3500 refugee children, most who don't even speak English, some of who have been injected with anti-psychotics for resisting their imprisonment, as they have been forcibly separated from their parents.  In my case, it was a matter of days before my father was contacted and we were freed to become part of the American Dream.  In those days, he readily found another union factory job and moved us out of Chicago into what was then an idyllic small town near the Wisconsin border.  

Today after decades of decline, both economically and morally, these poor kids face an American Nightmare instead.  Even when and if they are re-united with their parents, they face the probability of long-term incarceration -- for under the leadership of the misanthropes, militarists and materialists of the Republican Right we have become a nation that imprisons refugees! 

This is a crying shame.  

It's time for all people of good will to cry "shame on you" and let Trumposaurus Wrecks and the Republican-controlled Congress know that we won't sit idly by and allow this to continue.   

This is not the America we grew up with -- and this is not the America we wish to be today. 

Don't sit idly by.  Take a stand.

An Action to Consider:  
Find an Event Near You*

 

https://front.moveon.org/

*Greenfield Local Action:

Families Belong Together Rally

Saturday, June 30 at 1:30 p.m.
Hosted by Trystan and Arjuna G.
Greenfield Town Common
Greenfield, MA 01301

Rally on the Town Common in support of immigrants and asylum seekers, and to protest the Trump administration's cruel policies. 

Families Belong Together! 1-2:30 pm

SIGN UP TO ATTEND