From Rebecca Solnit:
It will not be enough until the breaking of children and families stops, but it is an astonishing amount. The nation is in an uproar. This is a winnable issue, and more than that this reaction can be the beginning of the end of the Trump administration. They are chaotic, unstable, incompetent, and only our inaction lets them continue (only our inaction let them take power). But the action has begun. May it rise and grow and swell and sweep them out. It can. We can.
Today Secretary Nielsen was hounded out of a restaurant, and President Trump was shouted at by a woman (with a simple fuck you) and protested to his face by members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. A flight attendant, in the Houston Chronicle, has pledged and recruited his coworkers to cooperate with no more flights of children subjected to extreme rendition. There should be no respite and no safe place for those who support it, especially the politicians. More than a dozen governors have announced plans to withdraw their national guard troops. Seventy-five former US attorneys from both parties told Sessions how wrong he is. All Democratic senators have stood up against the separation of families and supported a bill that is waiting for one Republican to stop endorsing baby killing. A dozen cowardly Republican senators have signed a letter with no teeth, but at least they are nervous about being on the wrong side of history. But there the cowards are, and the nation and world is turning on them.
Faith leaders of nearly every group--rabbis, bishops, Buddhist teachers, hundreds of groups in public letters--have spoken out. Sessions' own denomination is censuring him. Direct actions and protests are underway around the country. A horde of journalists is keeping us informed. New York State has filed a class action lawsuit. Last weekend elected officials insisted on entering the shelters to see for themselves, including a dozen congresspeople from NY and NJ and Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon. John Lewis has been outspoken. There are hundreds of actions being organized, from El Paso to Reno, from the capital to California. The United Nations has condemned this behavior. It will make them global pariahs.
If you're in a district or state with a politician who's not strongly and clearly against torturing babies and children, pay their office a visit. Organize a protest at ICE. Call everyone. See what your church (or mosque or synagogue or zendo) is doing or get it to do something. Donate. Call. Make noise. Make more noise. If you are near or can get to the border, support the undocumented there and make it clear we are watching and we are with them. Make plans to keep it up as long as necessary. Review the guidelines on nonviolent direct action and, as Dahlia Lithwick reminds me, read Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail." Google employees got their corporation to drop a Pentagon project they thought was evil; there are many pressure points and many ways to apply pressure. There may be no obvious immediate results, but kept up we can win this uncivil war they insist upon fomenting.
My friend Erica Chenoweth wrote: "From 1900 to 2006, nonviolent campaigns worldwide were twice as likely to succeed outright as violent insurgencies. And theres more. This trend has been increasing over timein the last fifty years civil resistance has become increasingly frequent and effective, whereas violent insurgencies have become increasingly rare and unsuccessful. This is true even in extremely repressive, authoritarian conditions where we might expect nonviolent resistance to fail.
"Researchers used to say that no government could survive if five percent of its population mobilized against it. But our data reveal that the threshold is probably lower. In fact, no campaigns failed once theyd achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5% of the populationand lots of them succeeded with far less than that [5]. Now, 3.5% is nothing to sneeze at. In the U.S. today, this means almost 11 million people.
"But get this: Every single campaign that did surpass that 3.5% threshold was a nonviolent one. In fact, campaigns that relied solely on nonviolent methods were on average four times larger than the average violent campaign. And they were often much more representative in terms of gender, age, race, political party, class, and urban-rural distinctions."
The power is ours. For the sake of those children and so many more vulnerable people here and around the world, we, the eleven million, need to use that power.
Do it in faith. Do it knowing that the consequences will not be foreseeable. Do it knowing that all these look like nothing beforehand. Winston Churchill: "During that war we repeatedly asked ourselves the question, "How are we going to win?" and no one was able ever to answer it with much precision, until at the end, quite suddenly, quite unexpectedly, our terrible foe collapsed before us." Do it remembering that we did not know the Berlin Wall would fall, that #metoo would erupt and a thousand patriarchs would fall, that Nelson Mandela would not die in prison, that marriage equality would proceed like wildfire around the world, that Ireland would vote for abortion by a landslide last month.
Do it because it's right, because you too are writing history by what you do and do not do, do it because it's how to live honorably, but do it with an eye to effect. Do it for them, those kids we heard weeping, destroyed. Do it because we are not separate from them. Do it and don't stop and never ever surrende