Originally posted by Starlight
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I do have to admit, however, that I went to a #KeepFamiliesTogether rally last night with my wife. I am hesitant to go to such things because it is unclear to me how many people actually want to do something, and how many people are just salving their conscience by going and waving a sign and then walking away self-satisfied. I was very impressed by a 15-year old boy who got up and called out that exact dynamic. He explicitly asked, "What are you doing here? Do you think your signs and your being here are going to change anything? They're not! You have to take the next step. The real question is, what are you going to do when you walk away from here? If you do nothing, then you're wasting your time being here."
Anyway, I digress. I brought up the session because I have taken to listening to people who are clearly partisan on an issue with my "bias radar" on full alert. So, as the speakers made various claims, I searched on my phone for any kind of corroboration or refutation of the points being made. I found folks being about 95% accurate, and what was inaccurate was largely hyperbole, not flat out falsehood. I had no idea of the degree to which psychotropic drugs are being used on children in detention (not to mention older people in senior living/care situations). I had no idea we currently have almost 12,000 immigrant children in detention. Some come from over the border. Some come from within the country.
One young man's story I read was heartbreaking. A good kid, freshman in high school, and the cops pulled the driver of a car he was in over for speeding. They asked him for papers because he was of Hispanic descent. He had no such papers (I don't know too many High School freshmen who do, except their school ID). That absence was enough for him to be arrested and turned over to ICE. That was when he learned that his mother had brought him over illegally as a baby, and he was not a citizen. He has been held in detention center after detention center, increasingly angry and frustrated with his situation. Like most other kids his age, that eventually led to him acting out. Now he is in a juvenile detention center with some of the hardest juvenile cases out there, and no indication of when/if he will ever get out. A young man widely acclaimed as a "good kid" is being systematically turned into a hardened young man.
These are the kinds of things that should not be happening.
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