One of the most insidious tricks of the patriarchy is the endowment of power bestowed on the highest rings of subordinate powers. This #metoo/#timesup movement has shaken up a lot in the last year, that needed to be loosened from recesses of our collective minds, but, there is tricky ground left to be dug up.
The maddening irony of watching numerous men lose their titles and livelihoods in the months past, in both private and public sectors, without due process of investigation or criminal proceedings - while a known, self-admitted sexual predator stands atop us all with title and job in tact, leaves a terrible, acidic burn in the guts of survivors who STILL remain silent. I don't argue about whether those men deserved to be stripped of their power after being exposed as abusers, but thinking in the longterm, I could not look away from the inherent blindspots and potential consequences of the methods used.
The trouble about the fervent rash of calling for the heads this way, is that we set a Salem-witch-hunt precedent of how to handle this matter, that would inevitably create the potential pendulum revenge swing-back that would possibly hurt victims even more in the long run. And before you come for me, understand I'm taking about employing systems of justice for all, that ensures they keep working for our specific concerns, because that is how, checks, balances, and the law...should work, granted, in an ideal world. Further, I wondered, in such a climate where we were not leaning on such protocols, who else could take advantage of it, because as much good as this has done for survivors to see power stripped from those men who abused it, it unavoidably would be exploited for other power game purposes too, by both men and women. It could become a tool used for activities unintended.
Now some call for and praise relief for that same unused due process to be applied to Kavanaugh, a man whose rulings, if he gets the job (after years of successive promotions in the judicial system) will MAKE laws and role back civil rights rulings we need to remain an evolving democracy, long after sex-predator in chief is gone. We didn't call for such investigations in many instances before, so how do we think this will go over now?! There is a potential backlash for that inconsistency. Also, behind, beside, or in font of each of any of these men, is often a woman. There were women who stood by Cosby, one of the few who has actually been investigated, charged, tried, and sentenced because of his accusers stepping forward. But even if an FBI investigation is granted because of Dr. Ford's brave accounting at the hearings, are we still looking at the full here? Are we able to hold the whole truth? I don't think so, because we still have many people out there who are not being called out, and who continue to question survivors and choose 'sides' according to political belief and not objective, observable, investigated inconsistencies! And most importantly missing is the questions, "What if you, what if I, what if we, remain silent because it is another woman whose power would be at risk or negatively unleashed for the telling? What if it is a woman who abused, or allowed, condoned, or repressed the cry of abuse? And are men or boys included in this cry?"
The #metoo movement, for all of the very necessary empowerment it has created for us, worries me deeply and personally in that it is mainly the bellow of taking down men (mostly white men), but is still yet to make space for survivors who stand silent under the boot of a woman.
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| The viral photo of 2 year old Honduran girl crying while her mother was searched at the Mexico border in McAllen Texas. She was not taken from her parents at the border. © John Moore/GETTY |
Of course we are all immensely relieved that an Executive Order was signed this week...which prevents future family separations from occuring. Thank God! BUT, I will not express gratitude or offer backpatting for crazymaking.
If you manufacture chaos in your nation, then sweep in to reverse it, that is a gross abuse on the psyche your people. Period. Not to speak of the FACT that the very serious psycho-emotional and social damage done to these families and children cannot be reversed with an EO. So no, you will not be normalized with a Thank You DJT. Now you are to be critically and strategically examined, and swiftly dismissed with our collective focus and with the full democratic legal scope available to us like never before.
You bet your ass #ThisIsAmerica, and this is also the World…and the World expects better, because America’s long decree to the World is that it will grow up to do better. This man is the burden of #ThePeople who must fight like hell to keep our emotional stamina up and never to accept or normalize ANYTHING he does, because he does not care about this country, he does not care about the law, he does not care about this world, he does not care about #ThePeople — aside from the inconvenience we may be to him, in any given moment.
So,
…let us become very inconvenient.
But we have to be focused. The mere fact that all this whiplash inducing immoral madness came to such a head in the same week as Juneteenth and World Refugee Day makes reality dip into head-burning surreality.
The spin cycle of chaos and distraction is indefatigable and they are making emotional puppets of us all.
What is supremely important going forward in this, is understanding how the withdrawal from the UN Council on Human Rights affects this situation,and other social justice concerns that may not be in the headlines today, or remain in the headlines tomorrow. This withdrawal positions the US to begin shaping isolationist policies free of international law pressures...especially with regard to the children it now houses in cages and tender-age tent cities.
PLEASE NOTE — the US is the ONLY country which has not ratified the 1989 UN Convention of the Rights of the Child...
a convention swiftly and widely voted on by a total now of 196 countries since it was created. It is why America(despite admonishnishment over the years from various human rights commissions and NGOs domestically and internationally) gets away with imprisoning more youth than any nation on earth;
- why it is still legal within several States in the US to have child brides;
- why asylum seeking children…both accompanied and unaccompanied have been treated the way they have;
- why young people are saddled with a lifetime of stress inducing debt just for going to school;
- why meals in schools can include high sugar servings and other ingredients known to cause ill health in brain development, etc.;
- why universal care or oversight in foster care is administratively stressed, under-resourced, and difficult to standardize across the country;
- why children can be knowingly exposed to high levels of lead in their drinking water with little done to correct this;
- why kids can be targeted consumers for big pharma drugs;
- why the threat of gun violence does little in the debate of reforming gun laws, even though this affects increasing numbers of children across the country.
The list goes on, all definitively describing the endangerment of the welfare of children.
And though I list these things…it is not off topic, for this growing culture of endangerment is what was immediately and most horrifically inherited by these poor children ripped from their asylum-seeking families and are now lost in the system across the country. And though it is within every sovereigns legal right to guard its borders, it is also a domestic and international human legislated right to seek asylum. Yes, it is US Law, - safeguarded by our constitution — and upheld by SCOTUS in 1886 in Wong Wing v US.* It is the law that these families be granted due process/hearings, even if their cases result in deportation. It is also their right to not be held stateless in detention for an undetermined period, especially when cleared as innocent civilians and non-threatening to the State - an important distinction that is repeatedly dismissed at our borders and entry points and in detention centers across the country. How is it right to criminalize human beings who are fleeing for their lives?!
And given the rampant issues that were already present in how cases are handled, the backlog paired with a scarcity of legal counsel and translators, the additional challenge of assigning separate 'Alien numbers' to the parents and children will make reuniting these families -in some cases- next to impossible. This practically defines endangerment, as many of the 2300+ children have been wrecklessly set on an unthinkable course of long-term risks and actions against their well-being by this terrifying no-tolerance policy.
It is clear that the presumption of safety means being a white American — meaning having white privilege, right?
Many native Americans, non-white immigrants and black Americans have used this moment to voice personal or collective historical accounts of this happening before though. Children being ripped from families is not new in the founding historical record of this country. But given the poor congressional response to safeguarding white kids from gun danger in recent years for instance,can we really expect that children of asylum-seekers/asylees will ever be prioritized? Point is, why is America withholding itself from international scrutiny and jurisprudent accountability where universal child protections are concerned?
Power when unchecked will eventually cease to discriminate. No precedent set by this administration should ever go unchecked. Everyone can be ‘othered’.
My mother who’s life work has been in the international legal arm of Human Rights advocacy has never failed to refer to the Convention on the Rights of the Child consistently and frequently for years. I have absorbed it as my own personal outrage and a marker of what leadership will or will not stretch to care about regarding its citizens, let alone immigrants and refugees. I highly recommend reading it for a broader grasp of our governments activities regarding children.
This is also why the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) concern of Trump even threatening that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) destroy records of abuse in detention centers and by border patrol officers matters even more sharply now too. Because many children and families remain there right now, needing our sober witnessing and acute aid.
Sure the world is watching, but the rule of law along with shifting economic realities among allied states, have precluded the success of global pressure to shift how America conducts itself...for years now. As a major economic contributor to many of these organisations it is very tricky -for ALL of us- for America to pull out of any of them, and it is believed that more withdrawals are imminent.
And one has to ask….what would it mean to be isolated in a wealthy well-armed nation that once proclaimed itself with the role and responsibility of policing Human Rights conduct and policy around the world?
Who would come to our aid? Who could? (These are not rhetorical questions…I just have no idea…)
It is my most earnest interest that we increase our understanding of how international law works and its governing bodies; the inefficiencies and successes. And of course, we need to be better informed of our own laws. ***[Edit - June 25th] Because if our very own president is calling for the dismissal of legal proceedings at the border, on twitter no less, which is patently unconstitutional, then he can call for a lot of other changes too. A number of federal lawsuits will be filed against this administration by the families, and rightly so! But are we confident our current SCOTUS will uphold the rights we’ve come to take for granted? With midterms coming up, we should vote with this in mind.*** It has never mattered more, because given this extreme moral crisis within this land of Hope, we may very well be looking at the beginnings of the remapping of World alliances as we know it.
We all need to grow up quick and wrap our heads around deeper research, and continue to work however we can, as health and wellness practitioners, legal professionals, teachers, mothers, artists, cooks, fathers, entrepreneurs, construction workers, writers, curators, small business owners, engineers, farmers, yogis, digital creators, advocates and activists, designers, basket weavers, whoever...
we all need to mix in more history and global + civic studies into our work. The times, and this madman who has waged war against facts, critical thinking and general well-being demands it.
we all need to mix in more history and global + civic studies into our work. The times, and this madman who has waged war against facts, critical thinking and general well-being demands it.
Something spiritual about this all really…
I’ve long believed that it was his destiny to be in that office,
...perhaps to awaken us to our own.
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay
Excerpt from HOME, read below by poet Warsan Shire
