We went to a potluck tonight and time and food with friends was a welcome respite from the worst of the news of the day.
To dear friends of ours in Minnesota: we are so sorry.
I debated to the very end throwing responsible disease management to the wind and joining the local No Kings protest. I badly wanted to be able to tell my grandkids I had, to set an example of standing up for democracy, of the right to peaceably assemble to petition one’s government.
But once again in the end, having done blindness, kidney failure, and cerebral vasculitis in autoimmune reactions to summer suns, I just couldn’t make my husband worry like that. And I wanted to see those grandkids grow up.
But color-wise I was dressed the part because that at least I could do.
Someone else there had on white stripes against red, her pants blue, and I knew without asking. The refugees in that family were only two generations ago.
We caught each other’s eye but didn’t say anything: not in someone else’s home while two older people were there who already know where we stand and who break our hearts.
The kicker being that one of them emigrated here, many years ago, after falling in love with an American.
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We had a concert today (recorder orchestra). One of our members wore a rhinestone US flag brooch. Upside down.
Hey, have you tried the mangoes from Trader Joe’s? We have a quintet that meets weekly. The lady whose house we meet at cooks dinner for us. One member has been bringing mangoes for dessert. They’re really yummy! They come in a 4 pack, plastic container. Tide you over till your tree produces fruit.
Comment by Debby 06.14.25 @ 11:32 pm… yeah, sun-responsive autoimmune stuff: nope, thank you for staying home with enthusiasm and remaining alive longer! (I mean, in addition to the relational things, there is *voting* in the years ahead, hopefully!) I had polymorphic light eruption after the May protest on the areas of skin that I’d only put one thin layer of sunscreen on, but 1. that is all and not apparently harmful and 2. it is very manageable and 3. it also gave me the information that this particular set of skin symptoms, which I’ve gotten before, is definitely sun (instead of “so I had heat, sun, and stress, which thing was it?”), which is useful knowledge! Yesterday, we were protesting in the rain (still in sunscreen, though), which alternated between a steady “normal” rain and a drizzle, and that and the ambient temps kept me at the temperatures my body needs to be at (I hadn’t expected, after May 1, to be able to protest again until it cools down again in the fall, but! ONE day here with the highs below 73F that I need to be able to go outside for more than 10 minutes without my body doing bad things, and it was *this* one!).
Everyone got pretty wet – there were a lot of ponchos out but ponchos still only cover part of you – but it was a good crowd in more ways than one. We do need more noise from people to the red-media-bubble people, though – the lie machines (“we’re capturing criminals, the worst of the worst” vs. “stop focusing on criminals, they take too much time, start doing Home Depot parking lot raids so we can meet quotas”) are running overtime and it looks like normal people aren’t looking at the ICE spreadsheets or reading transcripts or comparing claims between Trump vs. Miller or reading judicial orders (either he could bring Garcia back at any time after the Supreme Court ordered him to, or he couldn’t; it was not “I can at any time” and then “oh, I can’t, it’s El Salvadore’s decision now and I can’t do anything about it” and then finally “I didn’t decide that, that was the Justice Department’s call to make” when it was an *order by the Supreme Court* and it was *months* before).
And then the fact that those quotas preclude 1. any type of reasonable review of immigration status and 2. humane detention conditions; I’m sure they’re going to use that latter thing to say they need more money – like they used “but ICE agents are in inhumane conditions in Dijbouti because they were required to *not* drop their load of immigrants in South Sudan!” as a reason judges are sooo unreasonable and they should be allowed to drop buckets of immigrants into a famine-stricken semi-war-zone “no-travel” warning for US citizens country… instead of just *bringing those people back here* which the judge left open as an option.
But look, no, you do not need buckets more money, you just need to stop arresting people who are showing up for their immigration hearings and have done everything in accordance with the law to maintain their “in process asylum claim” legal status; stop arresting people who are working and paying taxes and not committing crimes; arrest the Serious Criminals you said you were going to and let the refugees go, because we *do* already have enough resources to process the fraction who are convicted criminals, particularly if you rehire the staff DOGE fired; this is not actually very complicated! (also *don’t* revoke the refugee status of the Afghan Christians who provided our troops with translation services and then needed to flee Afghanistan when we pulled out from that country, just because they came over during Biden’s term) People with criminal records should still have humane living conditions and should still get due process, but they’re a small enough percentage of detainees [check out the ICE data spreadsheet!] that it’d be zero problem to keep holding them until proper legal decisions have been made in every case *if* they quit flooding the system by hitting their quotas for bodies by grabbing people when they come to do their legal-status-maintenance check-ins and snapping up law-abiding immigrants and refugees and foster kids and construction and farm and car wash and landscaping and roofing and meatpacking workers. But no. Miller’s orders to ICE haven’t changed yet from “grab people whether or not you have any warrant for them” and “get creative” and “anything that puts handcuffs on wrists is worth looking into.” Which is probably, in addition to quotas, due to the fact that leaving law-abiding residents alone wouldn’t work for their blue-area provocation and power play purposes, but look, no, we’re not willing to let people be dropped in concentration camps in foreign countries with no due process, I think it is reasonable for people who remember the Holocaust to refuse to comply with these illegal and immoral actions by ICE & co.
Anyway. A branch of my family tree got pruned by the Nazis; my mom was an immigrant to the US (albeit as pasty-white as anyone); I’m a Christian who takes seriously the “love your neighbor” and “I was a stranger and you invited me in” parts of what Jesus said and the “be kind to the refugees among you” parts of the OT [there are so, so many curses in there on all those who oppress or take advantage of immigrants/aliens/refugees/the poor/orphans/widows!]; I have opinions.
Comment by KC 06.15.25 @ 8:50 amI’m so glad you took care of you. We joined about 1700 to protest here. Lots of honking cars and smiles from a wide range of people. All together. It felt good.
Comment by DebbieR 06.15.25 @ 11:58 amI’m glad you took care of yourself. I SO wanted to attend one of the protests, but our son had just had surgery the previous day, so I needed to be home to monitor him, and dispense pain meds, as needed.
Comment by Nancy 06.23.25 @ 12:19 pmLeave a comment
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