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Tell Congress: Condemn the Trump Administration’s separation of families
Fact: The Trump Administration’s new policy of systematically ripping children from the arms of migrant mothers and fathers at the U.S. border—as punishment for seeking asylum in the U.S—is a moral crisis. There are babies as young as 18 months old being taken away from their parents at the border.
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We rallied and marched over the weekend, and now we need to keep the pressure on. The national Indivisible team has a great new resource, including call scripts. There are also local organizations fighting this issue head on. Give them your time and money.
- Grassroots Leadership is fighting for the rights of detainees in Williamson County
- The Austin Sanctuary Network (of which Indivisible Austin is a member) supports asylum members here in Austin
- RAICES welcomes volunteers and provides free and low-cost legal services to underserved immigrant children, families, and refugees in Texas
Hold a postcard party to block Trump’s awful judicial nominees
Trump’s time in office will be relatively short (knock on wood). But we will be feeling the effects of his judiciary picks for generations.
From Indivisible East Bay:
During President Obama’s terms, the Senate Republicans rejected his nominees for the federal courts at all levels. Their most egregious action was to ignore Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland for the U.S. Supreme Court. Senate Republicans refused to even hold hearings to consider Garland’s nomination.
As a result of this program of obstruction, there are now many vacancies throughout the federal court system, and Trump and the Senate Republicans are ready to pack the court with very conservative, right-wing judges. We believe this situation is cause for alarm.
Indivisible East Bay has been doggedly tracking these nominees, and they have downloadable scripts that are perfect for postcards or calls to Cornyn or Cruz—both of whom are on the Judiciary Committee.
More from Indivisible East Bay >>
Learn about “red flag” laws in advance of interim hearings on June 25
After three days of closed-door roundtable meetings earlier this month with only invited parties (including the Texas state chapter of the NRA), Greg Abbott released his 40-point plan to address school safety. Big surprise, it’s light on any actual commonsense gun safety reforms.
However, there is one idea under consideration that would (temporarily) keep guns out of the hands of people at risk for violence. Among the recommendations is to study “red flag” laws that would allow a judge to temporarily seize a person’s gun if they were determined to be an imminent threat. These are also known as “extreme risk protection orders,” and Speaker Straus issued an interim charge for a House committee to study this issue and others.
Learn about “red flag” laws from Everytown for Gun Safety>>
Get detailed info on state extreme risk protection order laws already in place>>
In response to @GregAbbott_TX recommendation to look into a "red flag" law, @GinaForAustin says we don't need to study it, we need to implement it. @KXAN_News #txlege pic.twitter.com/0Q8fc4GSK2
— Phil Prazan (@PhilPrazan) May 31, 2018
Events
- Wednesday, Jun. 6, 7-10 PM, Alamo Drafthouse Mueller – Austin Black Pride, HRC Austin, & aGLIFF present a screening of Jewel’s Catch One documentary, plus Q&A with director and subject (Facebook event; Drafthouse tickets)
- Thursday, Jun. 7, 12-1 PM, Impact Hub Austin – Austin Justice Coalition invites folks to learn more about getting involved at the What Now? lunch meetup (Facebook event; Eventbrite)
Action Spotlight:
National Day of Action for Children in Austin
PHOTO: United We Dream Austin
In record heat, we stood with our allies to fight against Trump’s new family-separation policy. We heard from policymakers and advocates working to protect migrants, but more importantly we heard directly from several refugees and asylees like Sedrick Murhula who have fought through our broken immigration system to win their cases.
Sedrick Murhula, a former refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo says he and his siblings were separated from his parents and doesn’t want the same fate for undocumented immigrant children.@fox7austin pic.twitter.com/0VmP40PxmW
— Natalie Martinez (@NatalieOnFOX7) June 1, 2018
The event began with a rally at Republic Square Park, and then culminated with a march to the “Mavericks Conference” where Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, and Mike McCaul joined nine other speakers (only one of whom is female, not that we’re counting) at a $200-per-ticket sock hop for young conservatives.
Protesters rally in downtown Austin against family border separations >> (Statesman)
More photos from the Statesman >>
Q&A with Cat Yuracka of the Resistance Choir of South Central Texas
The Resistance Choir of South Central Texas was the brainchild of TX21 Indivisible activist Cat Yuracka, who in April 2017 pulled together like-minded, “more enthusiastic than talented” activists to partake in the joy of communal singing. Since then, the Choir has brought traditional and contemporary protest songs, songs of social justice and “revolutionary snark” to meetings, marches, rallies, protests, candidate forums, parades, private parties, and one ill-conceived Special Session of the Texas Legislature.
Congress Critter of the Week: Big Lyin’ John Cornyn
The Trump administration’s policy of tearing children from parents of families seeking asylum is a barbaric and punitive deterrent.
In the normal course of a democratic republic like ours, citizens can object to a policy like this by contacting their elected representatives. This is not the normal course of things, and in Texas we rarely have representatives who represent us.
When Texans come out in droves to protest and register their objections to yanking toddlers away from their mothers, all John Cornyn can manage is to lie, taking a swipe at Democrats, instead of doing anything about the problem.
Assuming that the Senator is attempting to refer to something that occurred, instead of just firing off a nonsensical attack (surely that can’t be the case), none of the immigration bills that failed on the senate floor were focused on this issue. That’s because this wasn’t an issue at the time.
Senate Ds uniformly voted against DACA relief and a bipartisan legislative fix for this https://t.co/aOsA4IScpu
— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) May 31, 2018
This evil had a specific, recent starting point, with Attorney General Sessions declaring that the Justice Department would prosecute asylum seekers and use that as a justification for tearing their children away from them, ultimately doing irreparable harm to many.
This isn’t a failure of the Democrats or even the result of a specific bad law. Solving this doesn’t require a legislative solution that will never actually show up but will provide a fig leaf for the Senator to pretend like he cares. This is an evil policy choice by the administration, and we need representatives like Cornyn to find the courage to stop lying and actually do the right thing, by telling Trump and Sessions to make a better choice.
Moment of Zen
June is #PrideMonth, in honor of 1969’s Stonewall riots. To kick off a festive and joyous month, please enjoy Becky McCabe and Jessa Gillaspie, who both proposed to one another on the same day at the Memphis Zoo:
Becky McCabe got down on one knee to propose to her girlfriend, Jessa Gillaspie. Jessa shrieked and immediately reached for her bag to pull out… another ring. She had been planning to propose to Becky on the same day. https://t.co/urukVZdALH pic.twitter.com/i4Jqpoal5K
— CNN International (@cnni) June 3, 2018
Indivisible Austin Needs Your Help
A few weeks ago, our storage locker was broken into. We lost almost everything we use to work events, from our folding table and pop up tent to protect us from the sun, to printed materials and signs, to the cart that we used to lug everything around.
All in all, it was more than $700 worth of supplies, and now the insurance company is giving us the runaround.
Can you be one of the people to help us recover by making a gift so we can get new supplies and equipment?