Saturday, June 30, 2018

A Little Bit Right

Did he think we weren’t going to care? Did Trump believe Americans wouldn’t care that he was separating children from their parents? If he thought about it at all I’m sure he thought, Why should Americans care what happened to immigrant babies?He’d been able to get away with everything else. I’m sure he thought he’d get away with this too.
Thank God he was wrong. We did care. It wasn’t just Amy Goodman and Rachel Maddow and other leftists. Women and men on both sides of the aisle demanded this barbaric practice stop. When he ended it, close to 2,500 children had been separated. No more parents would lose their kids at the border but no immediate plans were made to reunite those who’d already been separated. And they didn’t know who the some of the children’s parents were. When they took these children from their parents, they didn’t care if they were ever reunited.
As this unfolded, frequently I thought of the play Robert Schenkkan wrote in a response to Trump’s election,Building the Fall. The play begins two years following Trump’s inauguration. Trump’s policies have resulted in the mass round up of millions of illegal aliens whose numbers have overflowed into private prisons and camps reminiscent of other interments—the Japanese, the Germans. I didn’t want to do the play because I thought it was too far-fetched. I thought the play would shake things up, ignite conversation but I never believed any part of it was possible. I agreed to do it because I wanted to add my energy to the resistance.
Trump’s roundup was a pittance of the numbers Schenkkan imagined. But it happened, Trump started rounding up people at southern border, many who are assylm seekers not illegals. If they hadn’t separated parents from children, would be have noticed. Would we have cared? Could the numbers have grown to exponentionally  if families had remained intact.
Just asking …

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