You grow up learning about WWII and you wonder what you would have done if you had been in Germany as the Nazis come to power. Especially if you were a white skinned, blonde-haired, blue-eyed non-Jewish (thus privileged) kid. What would you do to stop the rise to power? What would you do when they started rounding people up and sending them to camps. And later, would you help people escape? Would you flee the country? Would you turn people in? How would you balance fear and your moral compass. Would you break unjust laws? Would you convince yourself that you were just following orders and obeying the law, or would you risk your freedom, your life, your family?
We’re not in the latter stage yet. But we do have concentration camps. The government is rounding up people. The conditions in the camps, even for children, are appalling. What can we do?
Turns out it is hard to do anything.
You try to do more within the system. But it seems like the system doesn’t care. It doesn’t respond.
(So many people give up. They do less. They stop protesting. Things are getting worse, but they don’t realize how much faster things would have gotten worse without those protests, calls, letters, canvassing.)
(note the date on this tweet)
But still, you try to do more within the system. It still seems like the system doesn’t care. It still seems like doesn’t respond to your individual efforts. It only responds to group efforts.
You can’t ignore injustices. You can’t ignore atrocities. Because if you ignore things, if you don’t do things, there is no group.
But it’s not just you. Each person does their bit. It’s the group effort that makes things happen.
You can’t do it alone, but if enough people do it alone, you have a group.
And if the group is large enough, it can’t be ignored.
Do something to fight US concentration camps — make it so we can’t be ignored.
Children’s lives and well-being depend on us speaking out and doing something.
Grumpy Rumblings (of the formerly untenured) 
June 26, 2019 at 5:02 am
Highlights magazine
June 26, 2019 at 5:53 am
So much this. Ever since I read the Diary of Anne Frank back in middle school, I wondered what I would have done if I’d been in Europe in the 1930’s, 1940’s. Even as a pre-teen/teen, I knew that what people *think* they’d do in a hypothetical situation doesn’t match what they actually do in reality. There’s a way in which I feel like I’ve been preparing for these times for decades, and I’m finally being tested . . . and I don’t think my test scores are very good, sadly. I call, I write. But the disconnect between my own beautiful life here and the atrocious horrors several states away makes it hard to figure out ways to be more effective.
Thanks for the reminders.
June 26, 2019 at 5:55 am
Calling and writing matters.
(But if you want to kick it up a notch, check out the shame link on protesting Bank of America who is funding the prison camps.)
June 26, 2019 at 8:15 am
It’s… interesting to me that the interior facilities, which have the longest history of housing families, like the Berks County Residential Center, are sitting mostly empty while we’re using taxpayer monies to pay somebody $775/child/day to put them in tent cities without toothbrushes and soap.
The best possible interpretation of this is that people don’t want these facilities and will protest them, and we need a LOT of sunshine as disinfectant.
June 26, 2019 at 8:17 am
It’s no doubt a combination of that and corruption (it’s private companies getting that $/child/day) and just straight-up evil power othering.
June 26, 2019 at 9:54 am
Thank you.
RAICES chosen.
June 26, 2019 at 10:02 am
It is a great organization! Thank you!
June 26, 2019 at 10:33 am
Thank you for sharing this. After your link love on the weekend, I posted some similar actions people can take on my Facebook. I rarely post on FB at all and when I do, it is just a picture of the baby or vacation. A couple people re-shared and at least one commented that they donated and called. (Of course, I called and donated myself too, but it is important to share more broadly.)
So, know that your blog posts have an impact. I likely would have donated anyway, but I likely wouldn’t have shared more broadly without the nudge.
June 26, 2019 at 10:52 am
Thank you so much! Those Facebook posts had an impact too! Getting that ground-swelling of support is so important. And donating to the organizations that are helping people and bringing light to these camps helps, as does telling your congresspeople that this is a massive priority and it is not ok.
One would think when it is about child abuse/neglect that it wouldn’t be necessary, that this would dominate the headlines and lawmakers’ consciousness like Katrina… but apparently it’s more important to some news organizations that someone spat on Eric Trump. And then there’s narratives that I suspect are coming from Russian bots that people like Chuck Todd are selling that at least one of my colleagues has picked up and made her own about how these aren’t actually concentration camps–there aren’t really abuses because we’re not yet gassing people. Or the hate we got from a minority of people driving by at a protest on Monday that local clergy people had put together (we didn’t know about the protest until we drove by– then we stopped and joined them; they had extra signs). (Most people were supportive, but a few cry out talking points about punishing the children to punish the parents.) You’ve likely seen what they’re saying because twitter bots say the same thing. They have organized hate into repeatable soundbites that are reemphasized until people think they’re true because they can repeat them back.
If we get the word out and pictures and reputable news stories, then these lies and the hate will have less weight and people will be less likely to pressure their congresspeople into doing hateful things.
June 26, 2019 at 2:10 pm
Unrelated to concentration camps, but here’s a MomsDemand donation announcement: