We have an opportunity, during the rest of the month, to make a statement, and maybe to do more than that. The events that have been scheduled, for this Saturday, Dec. 15, and for the time from about Dec. 20 through the beginning of next year, have been getting some attention. I am getting calls from national press outlets. I am getting calls from people all over the country, saying they are buying tickets, getting in their cars, planning to stick around for a while.
People are coming here to look straight into the face of this terrible mistake, this atrocious confluence of events, this nightmare on the border. And our eyes will shine light on this terrible darkness. The glare of our witness will make plain to see what this place is, however it came to be. Our eyes are our weapons, and it takes courage to wield them. To see, not a summer camp for teenagers, as they would have us believe, but a tent prison in the Chihuahuan desert. Not a place of comfort, but a place that enforces separation, not a place of kindness, but a place that requires its charges to be grateful for its denial of human affection. A place where the only acts of independence and joy are kicks that send soccer balls over the fences, where the children cannot follow.
Four months, five months, six months, three months, they call out, like convicts marking on the wall, counting off their sentences. But a convict knows his sentence, and these children don’t. Each day, or no day yet, could be the day of their freedom. It depends on forces, untrustworthy forces, like ICE, that could be using them to lure their families into a trap, and like the administrators of BCFS, who tell themselves they are protecting these children. Protecting them from their families and friends. Believing racist fantasies, that their families are the danger, and not the tent prison that, day after day after desert day, chips away at their hearts.
Come and see. Nothing could be more subversive than seeing”.
If you think you can go, or to learn more, go to the Facebook page: Witness: Tornillo, or Christmas Tornillo
Thanks, my first ever diary, first time I felt like I had to do everything I can think of to get the word out, as I can’t go myself and I can’t stand thinking about the children imprisoned.