Teanynene

by Caitlyn Siehl

Hi I’m Catifex and I want you to make your mouse’s work easier!

- This is a step by step on getting a therapist

- Need to find a therapist by location? Psychologytoday lets you search by city or zip code in the USA, Canada, or UK. 

The controversial Hobby Lobby decision elevated religious belief over legal compliance – this may be good news for Quakers, Amish, Mennonites and others who’ve historically faced punishing reprisals for withholding some of their tax to avoid funding the military.

In particular, Justice Scalia’s dicta sets out a logic for conscientious objection to compliance with US law where the issue is related to religious faith. Sarah Ruden, a Quaker, writes in Salon about her belief that she will now be able to field a legal challenge to full tax-payments on the basis of Scalia’s argument.

by Maya Angelou

Both of the top two men have run for president before, neither won, and yet, it’s the women who keep confronting that nagging question: Are you electable? It’s nothing more than a vestigial remnant of the sexism that has dominated the ages and still has a toehold in a millennium that is now crying out for female leadership, particularly in post-Trump America. Last month, a national Ipsos/Daily Beast poll found that while 74 of respondents said they were “personally comfortable” with having a female president, only a third thought their neighbors would be comfortable with a woman running the country. That’s internalized sexism.

A new study from the United Way claims that 43% of American households are in a status called “asset limited, income constrained, employed” (ALICE), which denotes employed people who can’t afford housing, food, childcare, healthcare, transportation, and a cellphone – the basics of modern living.

Umair Haque (previously) connects this to the idea of America as the world’s first poor rich country, a country that is awash in wealth, yet so unequal that nearly half its residents sink deeper into debt every month – and most Americans die in debt.

As Haque says, if you work hard all your life and die with no assets, no savings, and debt, that’s not employment, it’s serfdom. America’s former middle class have now hit the limits of their ability to survive with stagnating wages by taking on debt secured by their meager assets – the family home, pensions and so on. Now, Americans are both kinds of poor: asset-poor and wage-poor. Americans aren’t poor because they don’t work hard enough: they’re poor no matter how hard they work.

And unlike poor people in countries like Pakistan or Nigeria, American poor people live in a country where things like childcare, medicine, rent and food are very, very expensive. American poor people are poorer than the poor people in poor countries.

One of the more fascinating and horrible details in Reuters’ thoroughly fascinating and horrible long-form report on Trump’s cruel border policies is this nugget: ICE hacked the risk-assessment tool it used to decide whom to imprison so that it recommended that everyone should be detained.

This gave ICE a kind of empirical facewash for its racist and inhumane policies: they could claim that the computer forced them to imprison people by identifying them as high-risk. The policy let ICE triple its detention rate, imprisoning 43,000 people.

Most kids moved to another Border Patrol station, a “temporary site with roll-out mattresses, showers, medical facilities and air conditioning.”

The federal government today says it is relocating most of the 300 separated migrant children who  were being housed at a Texas Border Patrol station in very dangerous conditions that amounted to child abuse.

The decision to move the child detainees follows an Associated Press report on the abusive conditions under which they were held.  

Thirty children remain at the facility, AP reports.

it’s unfathomable to me that someone would see we have actual nazi death camps in our country, and think the solution is writing to the politicians who allowed it to happen.

i have yet to see a post on any social media that has meaningfully helpful suggestions for how to get involved, so:

this article offers a number of suggestions including getting involved with your local chapter of Sanctuary Not Deportation, which connects faith groups to offer sanctuary to immigrants fleeing ICE. it also has a comprehensive list of immigrant-lead organizations to get involved with or donate to, as well as a link to crowdfund for detainee’s phone bills, which allows them to contact their families, legal counsel, and inform the outside world of the realities they are facing in detention.

here is a link for finding detention centers near you. there are many rallies directly outside of these camps you can participate in, and physically going to them is crucial in liberation efforts.

posting bond for detained immigrants is still one of the best ways to get people out of the death camps, even though ICE is increasingly unwilling to participate. the linked article has a list of both federal and state-by-state bail funds/organizations.

host a refugee if you have the room. Room For Refugees is still trying to build a network in the US. keeping people out of ICE’s grip and preventing detention in the first place is the best thong we can do because these camps are becoming more and more impenetrable.

help the legal organizations helping immigrants near you; if you’re anywhere close to NYC the New Sanctuary Coalition needs volunteers/donations, and if you’re on the border get involved with Texas Civil Rights Project.

on top of free legal aid, the NSC specifically also organizes rapid responses to ICE raids, which is one of the most importang things you can do – there are many local networks already in place, but here is how to organize a rapid response network if your city doesn’t have one.

one of the easiest things we can all do is learn the rights of immigrants in this country, and how to react to ICE raids. spread this information to everyone you know and keep the toolkit in easy access on your phone.

the only government policy that can make an immediate and tangible impact is municipal policy; push your local politicians to support or build sanctuary city initiatives – here is a toolkit for local political action.

finally, get involved with local antifa and leftist orgs! follow their social media to get updates on calls to action and protests happening near you. i cannot stress enough how important it is to be aware of efforts in your own city. antifa international’s tumblr is one page you can follow, but please research the orgs specifically in your area that are fighting the rise of fascism. the torch network has a list of chapters in several cities around the US, but again this is just a place to start.

i encourage everyone to find at least ONE thing from this list you can do, beyond donating. i know we are all stressed and have our time/energy zapped by capitalism, but if we do nothing, nothing will change. and please share these links wherever you can – copy and paste this post or at least share the first article i linked.