Election Day 2018

We are less than 12 hours from the polls opening on Election Day 2018. This is my 6th general election in FoCo and I am thrilled to say that for the first time I have solid D candidates up down the ballot and I can feel excellent about voting a straight Blue ticket.

I've voted R in the past (though I confess it's been a while) but this time and for the foreseeable future I won't be doing it. I haven't seen or heard from a single Republican candidate or representative from dog catcher (ok, we don't vote for that) to governor who has given me any indication that he'll do anything other than march in lockstep right behind Trump and that's not the kind of community, state or country I want. I disagree with most of his policies and just as importantly he's a pretty awful person. What does it say when you would not want your son to grow up anything like the president and you would not want your daughter to bring anyone remotely like him home.

I also hope none of my D friends waste their vote for governor on Libertarian Ted (industrial hemp) Metz. Third party votes gave us Trump. Kemp would be as embarrassing for Georgia as Trump has been for America. For my right leaning friends, I'd encourage you to vote for him. Hemp not Kemp, I say.

So, down the line,
Abrams for Governor.
Amico. Lt Governor
Barrow. Sec of State.
Bordeaux. US House
Smith. State Senate.
Tucker. State House.

I'll be at the polls bright and early with Claire, voting in her first election. She turned 18 on Saturday. Seems like just yesterday my mother in law and I were welcoming Claire into the world and fussing at each other over the 2000 Bush v Gore election. Oh for the simple days...
Peace and good night all.
PS. I've become a fan of deleting comments I don't like. I'm all for free speech but I'm tired of arguing and I don't owe anyone a platform for stuff I don't agree with.
PPS. I love the ability to block the original poster of crap people share. That way I don't ever have to see the nonsense again, but I still get to see pics of your kids and puppies.

Thoughts on the Tree of Life

I attended a memorial service last night at Congregation Dor Tamid in Alpharetta for the Jews murdered in their sanctuary on Saturday at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Seated in the row in front of me was a Lebanese Muslim (coincidentally my doctor’s cousin) and Jewish lady who is a member of Dor Tamid. At the altar with the rabbi were imams, priests, Baptist and Methodist preachers and a Mormon Bishop. The crowd of a couple of hundred people were similarly diverse their faiths, races and national backgrounds.

It was beautiful service and I think it represented to best of what we as Americans can be. It’s sad that it takes something like this to bring us together. I told the lady sitting next to me how nice it was to meet her. She said the same and mentioned how terrible the reason we were meeting was.

For some reason, after events like the shooting on Saturday, I’ve often felt led to attend worship services with the targeted community. After the shootings at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando my family and I visited Central Congregational UCC, an open and affirming church with an openly gay senior pastor. After the shootings at Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston, we visited Big Bethel AME on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta.

Of course, the problem is that it has generally taken enormous tragedy to get me out of my Sunday morning comfort zone; my nice suburban church with familiar hymns and a sanctuary full of people who look and live pretty much just like me.

My new friend from Dor Tamid invited me to come back any time, and I plan to do so, along with intentionally visiting some places of worship that will make me a little more uncomfortable than I am used to being on Sunday morning.

Peace and Amen

Montgomery. Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

Jenny and I took a trip to Montgomery on Saturday. While we were there we visited the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. The museum covers the history of the African slave trade in America and the memorial is honor and memory of the over 4,400 African Americans lynched by white mobs from 1877 to 1950. The museum and memorial were both powerful reminders of our history and the work yet to be done.

Here are a few impressions that stayed in my mind.

·      The power of art to convey information and feeling.

o   There was a powerful data visualization showing the movement of the slave population in the United States from the early 1800s when there were approximately 650,000 African slaves to immediately prior to the Civil War when there were nearly 4 million.

o   An animated watercolor showing what life was like for African slaves and the pain of family separation.

o   Jars of dirt from the ground where lynchings occurred memorializing the individual victims by name.

o   A wall showed all the signs that were used during the Jim Crow era to segregate and marginalize African-Americans.

o   Interactive maps showed the numbers and names of lynchings from individual counties.

Lest anyone think this is ancient history, a sign at the museum reminds us that school segregation is still written into the Alabama state constitution and ballot initiatives to remove the language failed in 2004 and 2012. While it’s clearly unconstitutional and unenforceable, the symbolism is undeniable.

By far The National Memorial for Peace and Justice presented the most memorable images.

·      Small plaques, about 100 of them, told brief tweet-length stories of the lynchings. People murdered for “hanging around in a white neighborhood”, protesting low wages, having a white man arrested for assaulting his wife and drinking from a white man’s well.  

And finally, most powerfully, hanging coffin-shaped boxes of rusting steel, first at eye level, then hanging above you as you descend into the memorial. There are 800 boxes, one for each county with a recorded lynching. The names of the victims are etched in the boxes, often simply stating “unknown”. Some boxes have one name, some dozens. In one county 23 people were lynched in a single day.

I learned about the museum and memorial after reading Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson earlier this year. Stevenson is an attorney who founded the Equal Justice Initiative and who represents death row inmates and works to abolish the death penalty. Excellent, compelling book and well worth the read.

I should also note this is not a "black museum". The crowd was 90-95% African American. Everyone should visit and all schools within 250 miles should make it a required field trip (that makes sure Forsyth county is there). 

I’ll leave you with pictures from the visit that say more than I ever could.

You're ugly and your mother dresses you funny.

Serious question. If you’re a politics nerd like me, has a negative campaign ad ever changed your mind in favor of the candidate who ran the ad? Simply, do they work?

Scientific American says they are more memorable but research is inconclusive as to whether they changes minds. Journalist's Resource says “such ads may work to both ‘shrink and polarize the electorate’.”

Sadly, the Democratic primary run off for the Georgia 7^th has turned ugly over the last three weeks. Until that time, I admired the race for how high road and issue focused it was. But as next Tuesday’s runoff approaches, the knives have come out. David argued that Carolyn had served on a budget committee during the great recession and had to make some tough decisions about which programs to cut. Which of course means she didn’t care about education. Carolyn argued that David had not voted prior to running for office. Which of course means he does not care about all the awful things Trump has said and done.

The flyers that have been arriving in the mail over the last week or so over the last week or so have skewed negative. And it’s the typical nonsense that you see. The slightly out of focus black and white frame capture of the other candidate making them look sinister.  The prior public service taken completely out of context. The postcard covered with pictures of Trump and some of his more vile quotes.

I gotta say, though, this is negative campaigning on a modest, Democratic primary. It does not even come close to the mean stupidity we’ve see from our Republican gubernatorial candidates. No deportation trucks or blowing shit up.

This diminishes both candidates. And more importantly, from a campaign perspective, was anybody’s mind changed? Are you more or less likely to show up for the runoff, which will likely be very low turnout and decided by a small number of votes? For myself, I’m just a little bit less enthusiastic about showing up.  I will no doubt. And after the run off, I’ll support the winner, knock on doors and vote for them in November. But I’ll be a little less excited.

Honor the Streak

Today is about keeping up the streak. As of today I have 11 consecutive days of blogging. I started out with the idea of crappy words, and quickly evolved to stories. I realized that stories are easier to write and more compelling than some of the dry textbook like blogs I’ve written in the past.

The stories of the people at Stewart have rolled off my tongue is going out of my fingertips as I’ve written each day.

This is something we talk about at work all the time, but it’s finally hit home. The facts are important, but the stories bring the facts to life.

I’ve also realized how realize what it’s like to be fully self motivated by something. I want to write another piece, another blog, another story, because of the personal satisfaction. Seeing the clicks or the views on social media or Blogger are nice, but it’s about telling the story.

And now I am sitting here at church hearing the story of grace and mercy, to illustrate the definition. Guess I better pay attention. 

Day 12 in the can. We’ll see what’s next.

A Stewart Grandfather

The last family I met that day at Stewart was an older lady in a wheelchair (we'll call her Ruth). Ruth arrived at about 11 AM, with her daughter, and several of her grandchildren. They were there to visit Ruth’s husband Javier. 

Their story is a little more complicated. Javier is originally from Honduras. He has been in the country legally for over 60 years. About five years ago he was arrested and sentenced to 48 months in federal prison. Ruth did not go into the details about his crime, other than to acknowledge that he had done something wrong.

After he completed his federal prison sentence, he was transferred to ICE custody and placed in the Stewart pending deportation hearings. Ruth was not optimistic that he would win his case and expected that he would be deported back to Honduras. She was planning to sell her house and move to Honduras to be with him.

Ruth and Javier have seven kids, 17 grandchildren, and their first two great grandchildren on the way. Javier has been in the United States legally for over 60 years.

Based on Ruth's story there’s no doubt but that he committed a crime and paid the penalty. But after 60 years, isn’t it time to treat someone like a full-fledged citizen without the threat of being deported? Any action taken at this point would have a huge impact on his 25 family members, the two on the way, plus, I am sure many friends and extended family.

Like I said, it’s complicated. Yes, he is federal felon. He served 48 months in prison. Most federal inmates are there on drug charges (nearly half). And he’s done his time. At nearly 80 years old, it’s hard to imagine he presents much of a threat to society.

One other note on the needless hoops these families must jump through. One of Javier‘s granddaughters, a 16-year-old girl, was wearing torn jeans, much like many kids and even some adults wear these days. It’s part of the style. It wasn’t anything that jumped out at me when I saw the family come in. Either of my girls could have worn them to school. However, the guards decided that her torn jeans represented “see-through clothes” in the context of the Stewart dress code. They would not allow her back to see her grandfather.

Fortunately, our host from El Refugio was able to go to the guest house and get her a pair of sweatpants. Had it not been for Maria, the family would probably have been forced to go to back to Columbus to get clothes for the girl or she would have missed the chance to visit. 

And Ruth is in a wheelchair that doesn’t fit through the metal detector. Not one single guard got up and helped her and her chair through. I just don’t get it.

I have some sympathy for the guards there. Lumpkin is a small (tiny, population 1,091) town in the middle of nowhere. The Stewart complex is several times teh size of the small, mostly shuttered downtown area. They don’t have a grocery store or any other retailers. And I doubt CoreCivic pays these folks much money at all. Their priority is to keeps costs down and make money off the system. But on the other hand, like the rest of us, the guards have a chance to make life a little less hard for people in a bad situation. Why not do it?

Two more families

The next people I met at Stewart were Kelly and Jimmy. Kelly and her husband Juan had been together over a decade and their young son Jimmy was there with Kelly to visit his dad.

John had been in ICE custody since August 2017. She did not offer any details about how he came to be there and I didn’t ask. John had been in a detention facility near their home in Charleston until recently, when he was transferred to Stewart. Detainees are often transferred around to maintain bed occupancy commitments to the private contractors (usually CoreCivic and GEO Group). No consideration is given to where their families are located.

Marie, our host from El Refugio said that it’s not uncommon for families to drive through the night from hundreds of miles away to visit detainees over the weekend. Detainees are allowed one visitor per week, and since the visitation week runs from Sunday to Saturday they can get in two visits over one weekend. Visitation hours run from 8 to 8 Friday through Sunday and there are five windows for family/friend visitation. This means visits are allowed for up to 65 detainee each day during the weekend. With nearly 2,000 men in custody, weekends are scheduled out months in advance.

Kelly and Jimmy made the five hour drive down from Charleston, but for a moment feared they would not be able to meet with John because Kelly could not find his “A number”. Detainees are assigned an A# that is required for visits, letters and for looking up detainees in the ICE database. Kelly could not find the A# and the guards refused to look it up in their system. She was afraid she had made a five hour trip for nothing. Fortunately, Jimmy was able to find the number in the car and they were able to visit Juan.

Shortly after I arrived, sisters Annie and Emma came in to visit Candace’s partner of 12 years and four kids, Mateo. They traveled down from North Georgia Thursday morning with Emma and Meteo’s four children. They had to wait several hours to see Mateo, all the while Emma was in great pain from surgery two days before. She had been released from the hospital on Wednesday and they made the five hour drive Thursday because it was the only day Annie could get off work to drive her sister and the kids. Wife, two days post op, sister, and four kids in a hot, crowded waiting room, nothing to pass the time, no snacks for the kids, and a five hour drive back to north Georgia to look forward to.

And worst of all, Mateo was “lost” to his family for a month. His wife said on several occasions that his location was wrong in the ICE system. So for a month, his family had no idea where to find him. When she reported this to the guard at the front desk she said that was an ICE issue. Nothing for her to do.

I can’t imagine how panicked Emma was for her adult husband Mateo. Now try to imagine you’re a parent or a young child in that same situation. Seriously. Get your empathy on and take 30 seconds to ponder that before you continue…

By the time I left at 3pm, Emma and the kids were still waiting to see Mateo and had the five hour drive ahead of them. I’m looking for the clean closing here, but there isn’t one.

Next up, the story of a grandfather in ICE custody.

Peace and amen.

If it quacks like a duck it’s a prison

The official term for locations people are held awaiting immigration hearings is “detention centers” (e.g. Stewart Detention Center and Atlanta City Detention Center) and the people are referred to as “detainee”. But make no mistake, these are prisons, in many cases holding people with minor charges and on in some cases no charges at all pending against them. Crossing the border illegally the first time is misdemeanor; crossing the border at a checkpoint seeking asylum is not a crime at all. But like Alexandro’s son Ricky, who I wrote about a few days ago, many are held in these prison like conditions. Ricky was one of the lucky ones. His dad was able to get him out in 72 days.

On the short end, detainees will stay they four to five months awaiting their immigration hearings. On the longer end it can be 18 months or more.

I’ve had occasion two visit two jails in my life: first, the Chatham County Jail in Savannah, GA and the second, the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Neither were the Mayberry jail and Stewart felt much more like the latter.

No cameras, phones or any recording devices are allowed even on the grounds. I took a few snapshots from the car window as I was coming on the grounds, but these are not permitted. The school entrance looking picture on the ICE website is actually inside two layers of fencing and razor wire. I’ve added pictures approaching Stewart and in the parking area below.

After you pass through the razor wire fencing you enter the waiting area. It’s a small room with roughly a dozen chairs. You’re not allowed to bring a book or anything else to pass the time while you wait. Charity groups at one point brought coloring books and crayons for the guards to keep at the desk, but the guards removed them. I’d guess there were 5-6 children under 12 waiting to see their fathers. I’ve made the comment before that sometimes it’s just hard to be mean. To leave little kids in a hot crowded waiting room for hours and not allow them or their parents any way to keep the kids busy is just mean, and it’s got to make life more miserable for the guards, the parents and the other visitors, not to mention the kids.

For the detainees, I am sure it feels exactly like a prison. Aman said he gets one to two days a week out in the yard, for an hour or so a day. Other than that he has no exposure to natural light. All the detainee areas are inside the facility, with no access to natural daylight. Lights are never turned off, even during sleeping hours. Many of the detainees are required to work for as little as $4 per day. Remember, many of these detainees violated no laws and many more are accused only of misdemeanors.

Words matter. For a long time immigrant advocates have insisted on referring to the ICE facilities as “detention centers” and the immigrants as “detainees”, largely to avoid the stigma of calling them prisoners. But prisoners living in prisons is exactly what they are. And to call them that is not a reflection on them, it’s a reflection on America and each of us for allowing it to happen.

Happy Birthday, America

Happy Birthday, America

This is a complicated year for me. I love America and I am proud to be an American, AND, I am not very proud of the actions of my country right now.

It’s like being a parent, right? Most of us have said or heard the words, I love you unconditionally, but I’m not very happy with your behavior right now. Specifically, I’m not happy with:

o   Our racist, man-child president,

o   Family separation,

o   Mass incarceration,

o   Private prisons,

o   Mass shootings,

o   Taking away healthcare,

o   Muslim bans,

o   Attacking our allies and embracing despots.

I’ll stop there. All that said, American, I love you unconditionally, and I remain ever optimistic. I’m optimistic because I see the next generation coming up behind me. They are passionate, open minded, diverse, and more exposed to “other” than any generation before.

We are going through a valley right now, and I know our best days are ahead.

So Happy Independence Day, and God Bless America.

Amen.