Blogging from Slidell, Louisiana about loving life on the Gulf Coast despite BP and Katrina
Sunday, July 07, 2019
Saturday, July 06, 2019
Friday, July 05, 2019
Wednesday, July 03, 2019
You're not alone in your grief
If you've noticed that you've been unusually angry, depressed or generally in disagreement with things as they are, you could be experiencing grief. No one needs to have died for you to be grieving. It could be that you feel an important avenue has become closed off to you, or that something is standing between yourself and your deeply held values. You may be sad, angry or depressed because of world events.
Excerpt from an article at forbes.com. Here's the link
https://www.forbes.com/sites/remyblumenfeld/2019/04/28/angry-depressed-you-could-be-grieving-over-world-events/#7b0a3f9841ed
Excerpt from an article at forbes.com. Here's the link
https://www.forbes.com/sites/remyblumenfeld/2019/04/28/angry-depressed-you-could-be-grieving-over-world-events/#7b0a3f9841ed
Monday, July 01, 2019
Monday, June 24, 2019
RESOURCES TO HELP MIGRANTS

ACLU BORDER RIGHTS CENTER
The ACLU Border Rights Center defends the rights of border communities under the US Constitution.
RAICES
RAICES provides free and low-cost legal services to underserved immigrant children, families, and refugees in Texas.-
FAMILIES TOGETHER
Immigrant Families Together provides free social and legal services, focusing on unifying separated and detained families.KIND
Kids in Need of Defense provides free social and legal services to unaccompanied children in deportation proceedings.THE YOUNG CENTER
The Young Center Child Advocacy Program provides free legal and social services to unaccompanied immigrant children.ANNUNCIATION HOUSE
Annunciation House shelters families for free who were detained and separated by ICE on the El Paso/Juarez border.-
IMMIGRANT JUSTICE
The National Immigrant Justice Center provides free legal services to immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. -
AMERICAN GATEWAYS
American Gateways provides community outreach and free legal and social services to immigrants in the Central Texas area. -
TEXAS CIVIL RIGHTS
The Texas Civil Rights Project provides free legal services and is working to reunify all remaining detained children. -
DIOCESAN SERVICES
Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services is a comprehensive free Legal Aid clinic serving immigrants and refugees in El Paso, TX. -
LAS AMERICAS CENTER
Las Americas provides free legal/social services to refugees, asylum seekers and families seeking reunification in El Paso, TX -
SOUTH TEXAS HUMAN RIGHTS
The South Texas Human Rights Center is dedicated to migrant safety on the Texas/México border. -
THE FLORENCE PROJECT
The Florence Project provides free legal and related social services to people detained in Arizona for immigration removal proceedings. AL OTRO LADO
Al Otro Lado is a free U.S. legal services organization serving indigent deportees, migrants and refugees in Tijuana, Mexico..-
TAHIRIH JUSTICE CENTER
The Tahirih Justice center provides free social and legal services to immigrant women seeking asylum in mutiple US locations. -
FAMILIES BELONG TOGETHER
Families Belong Together fundraises for family reunification/activism against the US separation policy. -
DETENTION WATCH
Detention Watch Network is a national advocacy and activist organization that is working to end immigration detention. -
BORDER ANGELS
Border Angels provides free humanitarian and legal services to migrants and refugees on the California/Mexico border. -
GRASSROOTS LEADERSHIP
DE ANDA LAW FIRM
The DeAndaLaw Firm provides free legal services to immigrants and asylum seekers, focusing on family reunification.-
MIGRANT SOLIDARITY
Detained Migrant Solidarity locates lost family, provides translaton, bail funds and legal referrals for detained migrants in El Paso, TX.
Sunday, June 23, 2019
Monday Morning Smile
Mariah Carey fan surprised to get cake with Marie Curie’s face on it
Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2019/06/16/mariah-carey-fan-surprised-get-cake-marie-curies-face-9970513/?ito=article.desktop.share.top.facebook?ito=cbshare
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/
Friday, June 21, 2019
Freddy Mercury
Premiered Jun 20, 2019
Thursday, June 20, 2019
Don't Look Away
Hot takes on AOC saying that the United States government is operating concentration camps:
76 people in a cell designed for 12.
155 people in a cell designed for 35.
41 in a cell for 8.
Don’t look away.
900 people total, or or more than seven times the 125-person capacity of the El Paso Del Norte immigration processing center.
If it weren’t for the white boxes shielding the faces of dozens of men and women stuffed into the overcrowded cell, it would be difficult to count the people in the photograph, since their overlapping limbs make it impossible to see where one body ends and another begins.
Standing room only cells, where people are held for weeks.
Limited access to showers and clean clothes, resulting in those held wearing soiled clothing “for days or weeks.”
People standing on toilets just to find air to breathe. 24 deaths while in ICE custody.
Johana Mediana Léon, 25 years old. Transgender. Passed away four days after release from custody after complaining of chest pains.
Mergensana Amar, 40 years old. Removed from life support after committing suicide in custody
.
Efrain De La Rosa, 40 years old. Committed suicide in custody by self-inflicted strangulation.
Roxana Hernandez, 33 years old. Transgender. Passed away in custody after experiencing cardiac arrest.
300,000-500,000 individuals per year in custody. Acting ICE director Mark Morgan’s response? Plans to increase large scale raids.
Don’t look away.
They’re not “centers.” They’re not “facilities.” They’re not “processing areas.” Let’s call them what they are.
The United States government is operating concentration camps. And we must act.
Memos surfaced by journalist Ken Klippenstein (https://muckrack.com/ken-klippenstein/articles) revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s failure to provide medical care was responsible for suicides and other deaths of detainees.
These followed another report that showed that thousands of detainees are being brutally held in isolation cells just for being transgender or mentally ill.
Two weeks ago, the Trump administration cut funding for classes, recreation and legal aid at detention centers holding minors — which were likened to “summer camps” by a senior ICE official last year. And there was the revelation that months after being torn from their parents’ arms, 37 children were locked in vans for up to 39 hours (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/botched-family-reunifications-left-migrant-children-waiting-vans-overnight-n1013336) in the parking lot of a detention center outside Port Isabel, Texas. In the last year, at least seven migrant children have died in federal custody.
Don’t look away.
It’s certainly been helpful for the Trump Administration that nobody has called them concentration camps until this week, when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came under great fire for doing so.
It may well be a testament to the media machine that is the Trump administration. Look away! He wore an ill-fitting tuxedo to meet the Queen! Look away! He won’t acknowledge that the Central Park Five are exonerated! Look away! He fired pollsters for giving him numbers that he didn’t like!
Don’t look away.
It’s helpful to the President that the media covers these human rights abuses intermittently instead of as what they actually are: proof of a racist administration, unchecked by the law. It’s helpful that there’s so much else to look at right now. But more than anything else, it’s helpful that the places where these people are being tortured and left to die are hidden. They’re locked away from the eyes of journalists and concerned members of the public. They’re misleadingly named.
That’s what a concentration camp is. And the immediate outrage to AOC calling them that is the right response. Hearing that the government is running concentration camps is something one should feel scrupulous towards. A concentration camp isn’t the same as a death camp. We don’t have those yet. But when Hitler ran his, they started as the former, extending to the latter.
Don’t look away.
Hannah Arendt, imprisoned by the Gestapo and interned in a French camp, wrote about the levels of concentration camps. Extermination camps were the most extreme; others were just about getting “undesirable elements … out of the way.” All had one thing in common: “The human masses sealed off in them are treated as if they no longer existed, as if what happened to them were no longer of interest to anybody, as if they were already dead.”
Is that not what we were doing?
I hesitate to speak for my own ancestry, for my family members killed at Neuengamme camp along with more than 43,000 others. But I can’t hesitate long enough to sway my thinking away from confirming what AOC already said.
It’s easy to think of the Holocaust only in terms of the final outcome. But there was a beginning.
Don’t look away. It started with fear mongering. It started with ghettoization. It started with hidden camps. Then, the pogroms. Then, the extermination camps.
Mass detention isn’t new. But this president has made it a centerpiece of his rhetoric and his agenda. He’s perfected the extreme language that dehumanizes immigrants. At a rally in Florida last month, Trump was bemoaning migrants’ legal protections when someone in the audience suggested they should be shot. The president laughed and made a joke.
Through overcrowding and dehumanization, concentration camps became self-fulfilling prophecies. The culture of abuse leads to frustration and violence, thus “justifying” their incarceration after the fact. Other citizens become desensitized to the dehumanization of a group of people and thus implicitly give approval for concentration camps by our lack of pushback.
Do you see it?
It’s happening now.
Don’t look away.
~ Joshua-Rush ~
Here is a link to a report where the above info is quoted: https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/Mga/2019/oig-19-46-may19-mgmtalert.pdf
Here is a link to a report where the above info is quoted: https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/Mga/2019/oig-19-46-may19-mgmtalert.pdf
Sunday, June 16, 2019
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
The SCOTUS Women
Women of the Supreme Court just did what far too many elected officials have failed to do: they stood up to Trump’s MAGA regime and called b...
-
I think I'm missing something. Razoo Bouncers not guilty of murder. Levon Jones, 26, of Statesboro, Ga., died after being pinned to th...
-
Harrah's New Orleans Hotel I can identify all but one of the flags flying, which depict the city of New Orleans and Louisiana's...