if you’ve seen the breaking news that trump just signed an executive order today to end the family separation policy here’s some quick info to keep things in perspective
this doesn’t end the “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting anyone who crosses the border “illegally”
the only thing this changes is that going forward, entire families will be detained together while awaiting prosecution
this offers no solution for freeing the thousands of children currently held in ICE child prisons or any path to reuniting them with their families
children will still be detained and treated as criminals
this will likely lead to thousands of families being held in ICE facilities and tent cities that will face the exact same issues of overcrowding, abuse, and inhumane conditions that exist in the child prisons
this is not a victory or a solution. This is the administration trying to cover their asses and avoid any more public outrage. They want people to see this as the end of the news story and go back to their lives. They want people to forget the thousands of children they are still keeping in cages in ICE facilities across the nation. This issue is not over and we cannot stop being outraged until we are given proof that the thousands of kidnapped children are returned to their families, and that the policy of arresting and prosecuting people who cross the border is ended.
People of Tumblr, we’re throwing up the Bat Signal.
Though this Administration has vowed today to sign an executive order that would end the separation of families at the border stemming from its “zero tolerance” policy, we must continue to apply pressure and do our part. Families should have never been separated in the first place.
Here are five ways that you can help:
1. Call your Senator and let them know that immigration reform is still needed. Call the Senate switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for your Senator’s office.
2. Donate to organizations that are providing support to immigrant families being held in detention centers all over the country:
The Florence Immigration Project – The Florence Project is providing free legal and social services to migrants being detained in Arizona.
The Texas Civil Rights Project – Lawyers in Texas have banned together to fight for “equality and justice in and out of the courts.”
KIND – Kids In Need of Defense (KIND) provides legal representation for unaccompanied minors in detention centers. They’ve also provided other ways for you to help oppose family separation here.
CARA Pro Bono Project – Help alleviate the cost of housing for volunteer lawyers, as well as sending coloring books to those children in detention centers.
Refugee Caravan – Donate what you can to help detained immigrants make phone calls to their families and lawyers.
3. Contact the Immigration Justice Campaign if you, or someone you know, are fluent in Spanish and can assists lawyers at the border over the phone as an interpreter.
4. Contact Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and volunteer your services as a Spanish-speaking interpreter or as a lawyer for those parents who have been sent to the state of Washington without their children.
5. If you’re a lawyer, law student, paralegal or Spanish-speaking interpreter, contact the Dilley Pro Bono Project for a week-long shift as a volunteer in Texas.
Let’s do what we can to right this wrong because children and families should never have to suffer these kinds of irreparable trauma.
When I was training to be a battered women’s advocate, my supervisor said something that really blew my mind:
“You can always assume one thing about your clients; and that is that they are doing their best. Always assume everyone is doing their best. And if they’re having a day where their best just isn’t that great, or their best doesn’t look like your best, you have to be okay with that.”
Any now whenever anyone in my life, either a friend or a client, frustrates me, disappoints me, or pisses me off, I just tell myself They are doing their best. Their best isn’t that great today, but I have days where my best isn’t that great either.
I’m avoiding the thing about Trump’s family separation policy as much as possible because it literally makes me want to melt down in a rage the moment I think about it almost at all, and as a Canadian there’s an incredibly limited amount I can do when I have to keep my own precarious mental health functioning
but I just want you to know that a lot of the field of Attachment Theory in psychology began after WWII, when psychologists examined the physical and psychological health of children sent away from their parents for their own “safety”
and what we found about the psychological results of broken child-caregiver attachment has led us to conclude that it is literally MORE HUMANE to leave families intact in refugee camps in warzones, than to separate the children from their parents, even if those children are sent to the best of all possible environments.
Speaking as a fucking psychologist I just want you to know that if you want to fuck someone up FOR FUCKING LIFE, the BEST possible way to do it, is to abruptly separate them from the adults who love and care for them. For maximum fuckery do it before the age of 3, 5 is pretty damn good at fucking them up for life too, but honestly any time before adulthood is pretty effective. You will fuck them up in a way we just DON’T know how to heal yet. You don’t just leave them catastrophically more at risk for mental illness, learning disorders, addictions, abuse, and future trauma, you also put them at much higher risk of things like diabetes, heart attack, and suicide.
and then I thought about what kind of environments those kids ARE being sent into and I need to throw up now
Op do you have any links to papers or anything? Preferably not paywalled?
Honestly the field is so huge and so broad that I have too many sources rather than too few. The harder thing is pointing to a concise, targeted, tailored-to-be-relevant summary. (But if child trauma experts in the US aren’t working on producing one at this very instant, I’ll eat my hat.)
if you find bones in the forest, sit a bit and listen. they are old and have some good stories to tell. maybe they’ll teach you a spell or two, or explain where the water on our planet came from.
if you find bones by the ocean, run. don’t look back. run, faster, faster. the sea may love you but there are nights where she knows neither mercy nor science, and the bones warn you only once.
boi if you find bones call the police i hate this website so much
OP, you have such a lovely way with words! ‘The sea may love you but there are nights where she knows neither mercy nor science, and the bones warn you only once’ is a really haunting image. Thank you for writing this and sharing it with us.
Boomers that can’t wrap their heads around how much college and home prices have gone up are in for a rude awakening when they find out what nursing homes cost.
I love them so much because they’re about as sharp as a baseball and their anatomy is ridiculous to the point of them literally being classified as plankton for years because they just sort of get blown around by the ocean and look confused, but because they lay more eggs than ANY OTHER VERTEBRATE IN EXISTENCE, evolution can’t stop them
Why is no big predator coming and gnawing on them?
Their biggest defense is that they’re massive and have super tough skin, but they do get hunted by sharks or sea lions sometimes and they just sort of float there like ‘oh bother’ as it happens
Even funnier, because they eat nothing but jellyfish they’re really low in nutritional value anyway, so they basically survive by being not worth eating because they’re like a big floating rice cracker wrapped in leather.
So basically the only reason natural selection hasn’t taken care if them is because they are the most useless fish
yes, they’ve perfected uselessness to the point of being unstoppable
Can we all agree this is just the sweetest and most healing, heart-felt thing ever?
Reborn: Look, you can’t expect to hire sixty workers to dig a cave under your house and then keep it a secret. I mean, those men live in this town!
Verde: Yeah, but I told them it was part of a geological survey.
Reborn: They built a Lazy Susan for your nuclear car. That’s something they consider conversation-worthy.
“Authors can’t use it in fantasy fiction, eh? We’ll see about that…”
–Terry Pratchett, probably
Try to implement anything but a conservative’s sixth grade education level of medieval or Victorian times and you will butt into this. all. the. time.
There was a literaly fad in the 1890′s for nipple rings for all genders(and NO, it was NOT under the mistaken belief that it would help breastfeeding–there’s LOTS of doctors’ writing at the time telling people to STOP and that they thought it would ruin the breast’s ability to breastfeed well, etc). It was straight up because the Victorians were freaks, okay Imagine trying to make a Victorian character with nipple rings. IMAGINE THE ACCUSATIONS OF GROSS HISTORICAL INACCURACY
people just really, REALLY have entrenched ideas of what people in the past were like
tell them the vikings were clean, had a complex democratic legal system, respected women, had freeform rap battles, and had child support payments? theyd call you a liar
tell them that chopsticks became popular in china during the bronze age because street food vendors were all the rage and they wanted to have disposable eating utensils? theyll say youre making that up
tell them native americans had a trade network stretching from canada to peru and built sacred mounds bigger then the pyramids of giza? you are some SJW twisting facts
ancient egypt had circular saws, debt cards, and eye surgery? are you high?
our misconception of medieval peasants being illiterate and living in poverty in one room mud huts being their own creation as part of a century long tax aversion scam? you stole that from the game of thrones reject bin
iron age india had stone telescopes, air conditioning, and the number 0 along with all ‘arabic’ numbers including algebra and calculus? i understand some of those words.
romans had accurate maps detailing vacation travel times along with a star rating for hotels along the way, fast food restaurants, swiss army knives, black soldiers in brittany, traded with china, and that soldiers wrote thank-you notes when their parents sent them underwear in the mail? but they thought the earth was flat!
ancient bronze age mesopotamia had pedantic complaints sent to merchants about crappy goods, comedic performances, and transgender/nobinary representation? what are you smoking?
Artisan Scribbles 