SIGN: Stephen Miller must be fired for separating children from families

Matt Hildreth<moveon-help@list.moveon.org>

6/23/2018 10:44 AM

To  A  

• Quick reply all
• Reply
• Forward
• Delete
• Actions

Demand the White House fire Stephen Miller for his cruel, racist policies which have caused immeasurable trauma to thousands of children and their families.

Children do not belong in cages, nor should they be separated from their families. Senior White House Policy Advisor Stephen Miller should be fired immediately for creating the inhumane and blatantly racist policy to take away children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Dear MoveOn member,

Senior White House official Stephen Miller is the engineer of the "zero tolerance" policy that's tearing families apart. He should be fired immediately.¹

Although public pressure has forced Trump to modify the policy for now, families—including children—can be indefinitely detained in what are essentially prisons. There are also no guarantees that the families torn apart will ever be reunited.²

Stephen Miller's policies are so objectionable that a Republican member of Congress said, "the president should fire Stephen Miller now. This is a human rights mess. It is on the president to clean it up and fire the people responsible for making it."³

Democrat Rep. Pramila Jayapal separately said of Miller, "I don’t think that most Americans understand that a 33-year-old individual with connections to white supremacists is actually crafting policies that are going to literally destroy our country and what we stand for."⁴

Sign the petition and tell the White House to fire Stephen Miller for his disastrous and inhumane policy of separating children from parents at the border.

Recently, The New York Times reported that "Mr. Miller was instrumental in Mr. Trump's decision to ratchet up the zero tolerance policy."⁵ Last year, The Guardian reported Stephen Miller was also the policy architect behind the Muslim travel ban.⁶ The New Yorker reported that he was responsible for ending temporary protected status for Haitian, Salvadoran, and Honduran immigrants already living in the U.S.⁷
Miller's policies look like a page out of the white nationalist playbook—and that's because Miller has long identified with members of that movement. He even helped white nationalist Richard Spencer raise money for an immigration debate at Duke University.⁸

Stephen Miller's white nationalist policies have no place in America—let alone the White House. Children don't belong in cages, and families belong together.

Click here to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to your friends.

Thank you!

–Matt Hildreth, America's Voice

Sources:

1. "The Outrage Over Family Separation Is Exactly What Stephen Miller Wants," The Atlantic, June 19, 2018
https://act.moveon.org/go/41796?t=18&akid=210001%2E38417624%2EkxNrSz

2. "Trump's order could mean families will be together in detention purgatory indefinitely. But where will they stay?" NBC News, June 21, 2018
https://act.moveon.org/go/42134?t=20&akid=210001%2E38417624%2EkxNrSz

3. "White House aide Miller targeted in backlash over family separations," Politico, June 21, 2018
https://act.moveon.org/go/42135?t=22&akid=210001%2E38417624%2EkxNrSz

4. Ibid.

5. "How Trump Came to Enforce a Practice of Separating Migrant Families," The New York Times, June 16, 2018
https://act.moveon.org/go/41797?t=24&akid=210001%2E38417624%2EkxNrSz

6. "Meet Stephen Miller, architect of first travel ban, whose words may haunt him," The Guardian, March 15, 2017
https://act.moveon.org/go/41798?t=26&akid=210001%2E38417624%2EkxNrSz

7. "The Battle Inside the Trump Administration Over T.P.S.," The New Yorker, May 11, 2018
https://act.moveon.org/go/41799?t=28&akid=210001%2E38417624%2EkxNrSz

8. "Stephen Miller’s brash path from Duke campus to Trump White House," The Raleigh News & Observer, August 2, 2017
http://act.moveon.org/go/41800?t=30&akid=210001%2E38417624%2EkxNrSz

You're receiving this petition because we thought it might interest you. It was created on MoveOn.org, where anyone can start their own online petitions. You can start your own petition here.

Want to support our work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day by day and year by year, to resist Trump's agenda, contain the damage, defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation's pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must never give up on. And to do it we need your ongoing support, now more than ever. Will you stand with us?

Yes, I'll chip in $5 a month.

No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.

Contributions to MoveOn.org Civic Action are not tax deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes. This email was sent to Alfred Johnson on June 23rd, 2018. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.

“Although we are very diverse, we all treat each other with respect… and because of this, our crew is a great place to work.” Coalition of Immokalee Workers

“Although we are very diverse, we all treat each other with respect… and because of this, our crew is a great place to work.”

Coalition of Immokalee Workers<workers@ciw-online.org>

6/23/2018 12:54 PM

• Quick reply all
• Reply
• Forward
• Delete
• Actions

Dear friends, To say that these are troubling times is an acute understatement. It seems that every day we slide further down the slope toward a deeply dysfunctional new world, one in which the political norms and social advances once considered irreversible are dismantled, one by one, before our very eyes. But troubling times often bring out the best in people of good conscience and good will.  Even as our civil and human rights are endangered on a national level, action taken by individuals and communities are fortifying and expanding those same rights on a local level. In the face of painful day-to-day degradations to our society, many of us ask ourselves: What can I do? How can I help stem the tide? Becoming a Fair Food Sustainer is something you can do right now to defend and protect the rights of some of the most vulnerable people in our country today, the very communities who find themselves most under attack across the nation.  Far too often – and for far too long – those who belong to communities marginalized by society face an uphill battle at work. And yet, when they report any abuse, those workers (across many industries) find they have nowhere to turn and no access to justice, which has long been locked away from them by powerful cultural and legal barriers with centuries-deep roots. It is certainly important to reject the dehumanization of women, people of color, immigrants, indigenous activists, members of the LGBTQ community, or anyone else. But it is not enough. We must actively build the world we want to see – one rooted in mutual respect and equal rights for everyone, regardless of who you are, where you came from, or whom you love. The Fair Food Program is one of the few movements that is not only defending its progress over the past decade, but is continuing to gain ground: this very summer, we are ready to extend the Program’s protections from the East Coast into Texas. Against all odds, the Fair Food Program’s powerful set of tools is reshaping the landscape of American agriculture. With each resolved complaint, each in-depth audit, each interactive education session on the farm, what was once a grossly uneven and dangerous terrain is being transformed. In 2016, one Haitian farmworker reported a field supervisor who he believed was discriminating against Haitians. After the Fair Food Standards Council worked with the grower’s staff to resolve the complaint, the worker expressed his relief: "Thank you for helping get this enormous weight off my chest. I feel like a tractor-trailer has been lifted off me. The work is difficult, but it is fine when we all get along. I was tired of going to work thinking 'what is going to happen today’?" Similarly, one transgender worker spoke at length about the respect that she and others on her crew receive: “Although we are very diverse, we all treat each other with respect... and because of this, our crew is a great place to work." That these words are used to describe work in U.S. agriculture today – an industry rooted centuries ago in the myth of white supremacy, an industry where today modern-day slavery and sexual assault still haunt the fields – is nothing short of astounding. It also speaks volumes about the power and potential of the Program, and consumers like you, without whom it would not succeed. By growing the Fair Food Program, we can begin to build the future we believe in, and resist the pressure to slide backwards into the world of first- and second-class citizenship we have worked so hard to leave behind. Protections for basic civil and human rights are needed now more than ever – and we have a proven model to provide that protection to some of this country's poorest workers through the Fair Food Program.  But it cannot grow without your help as a Fair Food Sustainer. Sign up today! But it cannot grow without your help as a Fair Food Sustainer. Sign up today! Coalition of Immokalee Workers (239) 657 8311 | workers@ciw-online.org | www.ciw-online.org Connect with us  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌

Coalition of Immokalee Workers | 110 S 2nd St, Immokalee, FL 34142 Unsubscribe alfredjohnson34@comcast.net About our service provider Sent by workers@ciw-online.org in collaboration with Try it free today

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European Youth -Otto Dix

As The 100^th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European Youth -Otto Dix  

By Seth Garth

A few years ago, starting in August 2104 the 100^th anniversary of what would become World War I, I started a series about the cultural effects of the slaughter which mowed down the flower of the European youth including an amazing number of artists, poets and other cultural figures. I had my say there in a general sense but now as we are only a few months away from the 100^th anniversary of, mercifully, the armistice which effectively ended that bloodbath I want to do a retrospective of artistic works by those who survived the war and how those war visions got translated into their works with some commentary if the spirit moves me but this is their show-no question they earned a retrospective

Searching 10,000 Years For A Hopi Warrior Dream-Once Again With The Late Native American Artist And Poet T.C. Cannon In Mind

Searching 10,000 Years For A Hopi Warrior Dream-Once Again With The Late Native American Artist And Poet T.C

Cannon In Mind 

 

      

By Ronan Saint John

Gerald Scott was beset by ancient dreams of late, maybe not going back 10,000 warrior years like he liked to pretend, but maybe twenty years back (still you will know that he had ancient dreams, 10,000 year dreams when you bring a word like beset, his word, into the equation this early on). For back then, back in his youth he had dreamed the dream of 10,000 year warriors, along with his friends, Jack Lennon and James Lawson (not Jim or Jimmy not since childhood and mother’s call) when he first went west, went via some covered wagon dream as he and they, along with Sarah Mays (now Sarah Scott although she will when mad at Gerald revert to Mays but that is another story which she can tell at her leisure) landed in Joshua Tree out in the California high desert. The pack of them had just graduated from their respective colleges and as youth might do back then, now too, they decided to travel before settling down to whatever they would settle down to although college debt-bound these days probably not likely and rather work, work as a damn Starbuck’s barista if necessary to get the damn thing down before Social Security benefits come into play.

I won’t name the colleges, all four, since that too does not matter to our story and they can tell one and all about their four years at their leisure as well except that Gerald had taken a course in Native American history at his school. Had done so to fulfill an elective requirement at first but got so into what the real history of those many tribes were compared to the baloney he had been force-fed when he was a kid in school, on television and in the cinema when those benighted indigenous peoples were called Indians buying into the standard lie that these were the lost tribes of the Northwest Passage and Christopher Columbus’ misdirected signals to lay claim to the Americas (a name also reeking of illegitimacy but I will stop on this road for guys like Seth Garth and Frank Jackman of American Left History blog can run the rack on those injustices far better than I can). And so the trip with a few dollars, a few knapsacks, a few sleeping bags and a beat up but serviceable Toyota Camry purchased on the cheap from Sarah’s brother who was heading into the Army.      

I could probably spend a good portion of what I have to say running circles around how this quartet finally got to the high desert out in Joshua Tree but guys like Jack Kerouac, who influenced my father in his time to head out to California in the 1960s when he was young himself, Benny Gold, Lester Lawrence and a million other literary travelers have beaten the paths out to the west already. Like I say this is about a 10,000 year vision not some ill-begotten travelogue with AAA ratings. I do have to mention the last leg, the last leg before sunny and hot California desert because the route they travelled was through the states that are square, as the writer Thomas Wolfe put when he was noting something very different about the folk out there, the usurpers, those who stand on somebody else’s land and memory. They had done a circuitous route around the four states where Native Americans still had some existence, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona. At Gerald’s urging they stopped along the way at every reservation area they came across, especially the Hopi reservation which joins those four states together.

Gerald had told the other three that he had had a strange dream one night when they were outside Grand Island, Nebraska about a dance in which they, the three men, were participating in someplace in the West in some canyon where the night fire was flicking off the canyon walls and that flickering was driving the men to more fervent dancing. Beyond that Gerald did not, could not, find meaning in what that dream portended. Except he thought it had meant something about his growing affinity for those long-lost warrior kings who were crucified by the trail of tears the white man, he and his people, had brought upon some other people’s land. And so the search for what that all meant. Since nobody was in a hurry to get home or get to ocean California which meant at some point turning back East and whatever they were going to do lives, everybody consented to the route.             

That route would indeed portend something because along the way they wound up in Gallup, New Mexico during August and were just in time for the annual Intertribal gatherings at Red River Junction. They camped just outside the state park there on Friday and the next day spend the day learning about Native American tribal lore from the various tribes gathered at the site. One of the things that caught Gerald’s attention, as it did the others including Sarah, was the mesmerizing effect of the tribal dancing. Dancing that when it counted back in the day prepared the warriors to confront whatever enemy of the day was to be fought-other tribes or the encroaching white man with his womenfolk and youngsters. The rhythm, the warrior beat filled their heads, although this was not spoken of until later, until after they reached Joshua Tree, with their own warrior dreams, maybe pipe dreams is a better way to put the situation.      

Back at the campsite that night as the sun was setting and the heat of the dusty day was settling down when they came to their site they, Gerald first from the way I heard the story, noticed a medium-sized camper with many logos, or what looked like logos on it, a fire going and a few what looked like older men sitting around a big drum with sticks playing to a methodical beat and chanting something that he could not understand (and never did, then or later). They decided to get closer which none of the men around the drum objected to. When the men took a break one of the younger men waved the four devotees over and asked how they liked it, asked if they had gone to the Intertribal. Yes, on both counts. He introduced himself as Jack Two Feathers and asked their names, where they were from, and why they were there. Gerald explained the Native American interest part.

Then Jack Two Feathers mentioned that it was the tradition of his tribe, the Hopi, to enhance their drumming, enhance their connection with their ancestors, and, laughingly, just to get high to use peyote buttons. The Hopis had had trouble with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and other law enforcement agencies over the use of the substance which they, the Hopis, claimed was part of their religious experience and thus protected under the white man’s United States Constitution. They would lose that argument in the United States Supreme Court but among the young, and some of the older fearless men they still carried out the peyote tradition.

Jack Two Feathers asked them if they had ever tried peyote and Gerald mentioned that his father had told him that he had as a proper 1960s young hippie type, but he had not. None of the others had either. They all agreed, once Jack Two Feathers calmed them down about the effects of the substance, to try some once he told them that it would increase their spiritual well-being to see what it was all about. Jack Two Feathers passed out some stuff that looked like mushrooms or something and told them to chew the stuff well. After about an hour, and after Jack Two Feathers had rejoined the older men around the drum who were ready to continue their drumming ceremony, the buttons began to kick in.

Nothing particularly dramatic happened that night except they were mesmerized by the beat of the drum, mesmerized by some younger Hopis who started to dance to the beat of the drums and would go into a fever pitch, and they did not come down from their highs to finally go to sleep until almost dawn. Packing up the next afternoon to head toward Joshua Tree via the Arizona desert and the Grand Canyon Jack Two Feathers came by their laden car and passed a small packet of peyote buttons to Gerald saying that maybe some time they too would see the face of sorrow, the faces of warrior-kings who had roamed at will in these their lands before the white man’s greed took it all away and left nothing good behind. Maybe even have a spiritual journey out of the experiences as well.               

Fast forward to Joshua Tree a couple of weeks later and a couple of late night until dawn peyote button rounds flames flickering against the grey, beige, red clay canyon walls, the three men bare-chested while some others met drummed and Gerald and the others finally found out what Jack Two-Feathers meant, felt that 10,000 year ancient warrior dream and would be forever changed by the experience. Gerald laughed as they started heading home about whether he should tell his father what happened. Nah, he would never believe the tale.