Julia Hamilton, Morgantown
Asking yourself a question, that’s how resistance begins. And then ask that question to someone else.
What would you do if someone pulled you from the ones you loved most in this world? What if you could hear your child screaming in another room, but couldn’t reach them?
Recently, I called our senators to urge them to sign the Keep Families Together Act. A staffer in Sen. Shelley Moore Capito’s Charleston office, openly mocked my concern about family separation.
To be mocked by a paid staffer, over something as evil as intentionally traumatizing children, was a chilling moment — almost as chilling as watching Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Attorney General Jeff Sessions justify the inhumane practice with biblical passages.
Shining city on a hill? I wonder if those shining lights are just beams from the guard towers.
Some say the recent executive order ended this separation policy. Yet there are still hundreds of children separated from their families with no plan to reunite them.
Consider the executive order allows for detaining the whole family, indefinitely, in private prisons. As Americans we need to demand that our representatives create humane and compassionate policies to help vulnerable families fleeing from danger to our country for salvation and a future for their children.
The late U.S. Judge Billings Learned Hand once said, “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.”
Who are we, as Americans, if we sit idly by and allow our government to enact inhumane practices like these?
Who are we, as role models, if we preach kindness and empathy but turn off our TVs in discomfort when we hear them talk about putting siblings in separate rooms to keep them from hugging each other? Who are we, as people, if we do nothing?
