Thursday, June 21, 2018
Crowd Size Matters: Marching for Human Rights
New family separations MAY have ended at the border for now, but whole family detentions are on the horizon, and meanwhile, thousands of children remain separated from their parents with no clear plan for reuniting them. Family separation of this kind can have lifelong, debilitating impacts on children, leading to night terrors, developmental delays, and attachment issues with dire consequences for emotional health. Many in the human rights community have equated the deliberate infliction of this distress with torture under international law.
So, as tempting as it may be to ease the pressure on the Administration, don't go there. This is the exactly the time to double down -- to make sure that families are reunited as soon as possible, to make sure that family jail cells aren't the next border terror, and to pressure the administration to process asylum applications in a timely way. The deliberate and calculated effort to discourage such applications is another violation of international (and domestic) law.
The folks who organized the Women's March and the Families Belong Together group have announced two events where you can make a difference just by showing up. On June 28, the Women's March has called for a day of civil disobedience to end family detention. More info on this Washington, D.C. event will be posted here. Then turn around on June 30 and do it again. Families Belong Together is leading a march that Saturday -- you can come to D.C., or find a march near where you live using the map here.
As we all know, crowd size matters a lot to this administration! Marching for basic human rights at the U.S. border is one of the most important things we can all do next week.
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/human_rights/2018/06/crowd-size-matters-marching-for-human-rights.html