The ill-considered ban on Muslim refugees and visa applicants set in motion by President Trump had an “escape clause” concerning non-Muslim minorities who were being persecuted. Only Christians were mentioned, but the Middle East has a host of religious groups with a long history.
Source: The Guardian Unlimited
On the morning after Donald Trump’s so-called Muslim ban went into effect – preventing all Syrians from entering the US, halting refugee admissions for 120 days and banning the citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days – I received an affecting email featuring the photographs and names of Jewish men, women and children who died in Nazi concentration camps because “the US turned me away at the border in 1939”.
Now, America is repeating its mistakes of the past. But our fellow citizens did not stand by idly as this happened. On Saturday, a large crowd of protesters had gathered outside Terminal Four at John F Kennedy international airport, and similar demonstrations were in progress at airports across the country.
Source: Truthout
A moment of stinging clarity is now upon us. Today, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to set in motion the process of building a wall along the US-Mexico border, stripping federal funding from sanctuary cities, increasing the size of US Border Patrol forces and increasing deportations. In response, we must plunge even more urgently into the hard local work of building sanctuary.
A year ago, my team at #Not1More Deportation and I drafted this reflection on the nature of sanctuary:
Source: The Intercept
We already know that the Trump administration plans to deregulate markets, wage all-out war on “radical Islamic terrorism,” trash climate science and unleash a fossil-fuel frenzy. It’s a vision that can be counted on to generate a tsunami of crises and shocks: economic shocks, as market bubbles burst; security shocks, as blowback from foreign belligerence comes home; weather shocks, as our climate is further destabilized; and industrial shocks, as oil pipelines spill and rigs collapse, which they tend to do, especially when enjoying light-touch regulation.
What is really left to be negotiated, when Israel has doubled its illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem? When Gaza has been under lock and key for over 10 years, suffering from war, polluted water and malnourishment?
As Donald Trump settles into the Oval Office this week, say goodbye to the one-worlders of the Obama-Clinton years and say hello to a new era of the one-percenters. America’s oligarchs will profit handsomely from the administration’s infrastructure program, its reconfigured trade deals, and its accelerated emphasis on resource extraction.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019