Child Separation Rally & March in Winston-Salem, North Carolina

I spent the morning working on the computer, and then headed down to local rally against the child separation and other atrocities happening on the Mexico border.  The rally here in Winston-Salem was at this area I refer to as "dog poop park," a rectangular chunk of grass on 4th Street near Trade.  It's near the center of downtown, but there are no shade trees, no playground, just a chunk of grass.  So that's where a lot of dogs end up pooping.  People are good about picking up after their dogs, though. 

With the huge national outrage about the children being separated under the Trump policy, and the fact that we now have child and adult concentration camps in the U.S., I really had no idea what kind of turnout would be there.   And yes, the "tent cities" and "detention centers" are, BY DEFINITION, concentration camps, and I will always refer to them that way. 

It's 91 degrees and humid today, hot even by NC standards, so I bought a bottle of water, and sat on a bench where I could hear the speakers.  I'd say the crowd was probably 400-600 people.  Honestly, I was expecting more in a city of 241,000 people.  The crowd was pretty mixed racially, which was good to see.  There were quite a few upscale white people, many several people of all ages, and some Latinos.  The activists speaking talked about the things activists usually talk about.  The subjects covered by them ranged across the current issues.

When they started to march West on 4th street, I headed the other direction.  I walked one block East to the corner of Liberty and 4th.  I stopped on the corner and gave the finger to the Jim Crowe era, Confederate soldier statue there.  A 60-something, upscale couple in a really nice SUV was confused by my actions. My middle finger didn't accomplish anything, except to express my thoughts towards the elitist, racist, 300+ year reign or intimidation, terrorism, enslavement, physical brutality, and murder that built the American South.  As we know well these days, plenty of that mindset survives even now. 

We'll see what happens on the child separation issue, the immigration issues, and the overall issue of whether The United States of America will become the brutal, oppressive, totalitarian dictatorship that Donald Trump, his "Base," and Congressional Republican are working hard to create right now, or if the other 310 million of us will uphold the principles that America was built on.  It could go either way right now.  Time will tell. 

Remember folks, totalitarianism is government of the cowards, by the cowards, and for the cowards.  And it's a CHOICE.  Personally, I'm a fan of democracy. 

As for me now... back to work...

What summer camp costs $775 PER DAY PER KID? Our new Child "tent city" concentration camps

This classy, luxurious, three bedroom suite at Trump Tower Las Vegas has amazing views of the lighted city in the desert, and great amenities.  According to the Trump Hotel website, suites at this hotel start at $165 per night plus taxes and all that.  I didn't see specific prices for the 3 bedroom suites, but I'm guessing you could rent one for less than $775 a night.

I know money is not the highest priority in our current intentionally created crisis that has kids and parents in asylum seeking families now spread all over the U.S.  The vast majority of Americans, as seen in the uproar this week, want these families reunited and treated as well as possible as their cases for political asylum are considered.

By now, you've no doubt seen the "tent city" in Tornillo, Texas where a large number of kids are being housed away from their parents.  The tents do have air conditioning, which is good, but it's still a camp for kids.  Detention center.  Internment camp.  Concentration camp.  Call it what you will, that tent city, and others like it, are being set up in a hurry.  And according to this CNBC article today, it costs $775 of your tax dollars,  per day, per child.  I heard the initial report of this on MSNBC, but here's the business news channel sharing that information, which came straight from the Department of Health & Human Services.

So...  you see where I'm going with this.  For what the authorities (and private contractors) are spending to house these children in an insanely hot part of Texas, they could put six of these kids in this luxurious suite on the 62nd floor of Trump Tower Las Vegas, and they would still make an insane profit.  I doubt the kids would mind sharing a bed after the floor mats and mylar blankets.  And yes, there are for profit prison companies involved in detaining these immigrants.  This part of this horrific story is still evolving and coming to light.  We still don't know exactly who is profiting from this tragedy, and how much they're making.

I'm not trying to downplay the terrible human cost of these current policies, and it didn't stop with the Executive Order last night.  We know 2,600 kids are away from their parents, allover the U.S. now.  We don't know where kids detained the next few days will end up, and whether they will be able to stay with their parents.  I'm just shining a light on the financial side of this story, which is yet another reason to find much better ways of handling our immigration issues.

And just for the record, I lived for a year in Carlsbad, New Mexico as a kid, and I spent a lot of time with my dad, his friends, and my Boy Scout troop out in the desert there.  It's a brutal and deadly environment.  A person can EASILY die in a day or two out there.  People don't make a journey like this unless they have a really good reason.

We can do better than this people.  We're Americans. 

The weather report for Tornillo says it will hit 103 degrees today, and will be over 102 degrees for the next week.  The kids probably won't be playing much soccer today.

What would George Washington do?

The song "One Tin Soldier," with footage from the 1971 independent film, Billy Jack, in which the song was used.

Found this quote yesterday while doing some research on what's going on this week:
"I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong."
-George Washington
 May 28th 1788 in a letter to Francis Van der Kamp

Love lies bleeding...

This song, by Newport Beach, California singer/songwriter extraordinaire Kerry Getz, is about a vampire.  I've met a lot of people in the entertainment and action sports industries over the years, and I believe Kerry Getz is the single most talented person I've ever met.  She's a major triple threat in her world, incredible at singing, guitar playing, and songwriting.  In this song, I think she captures the soul of what it would be like to be a vampire, driven nightly by the darkest forces on Earth. 

Sparked by the horrific news of the child separations happening to immigrants on our Mexico border, I started on a huge drawing to address the issue the day before yesterday.  The theme of it was how it is possible for a country founded on personal freedoms (yes, I know there were hypocrisies then and now) to "suddenly" have our president and A.G. Session implement a policy that's something right out of Nazi Germany and similar authoritarian states.  This morning, it became clear to me that I could do more for this situation by blogging and decided not to finish the drawing.

I listened to a bunch of music to try and get into the mindset of how evil can take over a whole country.  It didn't happen suddenly, what's happening now has been in the works for decades.  We've seen much of it, piece by piece, and largely ignored it.  We, as Americans, were not "eternally vigilant" against the corrupt forces that our founding fathers warned us of. 

So now we have immigrant families being separated, we have children in concentration camps, as a matter of U.S. policy.  We also have "baby jails" now, euphemistically called "tender age shelters."  For those wondering, the term "concentration camp" was used because those camps housed "cocentrations" of certain parts of the overall population.  In Nazi controlled Germany, that started with the homeless (which is now forgotten) then went on to include the Jews, intellectuals, gays, political prisoners, Gypsies, and others.  When a prison-like facility is housing a concentration of children, it becomes a child concentration camp.  The prisoners don't have to be killed for that term to be applicable.  In the worst cases in history, that come later. 

Is this who we are as Americans?
Unfortunately, right now, it IS who we are.  We let things slip this far.  But we don't have to continue to be a country that allows atrocities like this continue.  Average, and not so average, Americans are waking up, standing up, and raising Hell about this new policy by President Trump, A.G. Sessions, and their cohorts.  This fight is just getting going.

I will be writing a series of blog posts about how we got to this point, why immigrants from Meixco and Central America are considered "illegal" but folks like Melania Trump were not, and how societies slip into the Dark Side that Yoda warned us of years ago. 

But for now, I'd like you to listen to Kerry's song above.  She wrote this incredible song about a vampire for her own reasons 20-some years ago.  But she captured what it must be like to be driven by the darkest forces in the world.  We can't appeal to the conscience of people who no longer listen to their conscience.  Right now, many "vampires" are in positions of great political and business power in many power in this country, and many of them are networked with each other.

 If you've ever watched a vampire movie, you know that doesn't end well.  I think this song captures the mentality of the people who find a way to rationalize horrific atrocities.  This mentality of great darkness is what we are up against right now.  If we get a sense of this mentality, I think we'll have a better idea of how to bring the United States of America back to the principles it was founded on, and what most of us believe it stands for.

More thoughts to come soon...

For those of you who want to hear more of Kerry's music, here are a couple of my favorites, both covers of songs you probably have heard before:

Kerry Getz sings "Landslide" and "Walk Away Renee."