This land is your land.
Woody Guthrie got the last word Wednesday afternoon at David McKinley’s Morgantown office in Seneca Center.
Around 20 members of Morgantown Working Families, an advocacy group that promotes progressive candidates and causes, gathered to protest President Trump’s immigration policies — which, says the group, amount to “immoral treatment” of both adults and children seeking asylum.
“We don’t know how we got to the point where indiscriminate raids and putting children in cages became the new normal,” said Ace Parsi, a local activist who helped organize the protest.
McKinley is an incumbent Republican who represents West Virginia’s 1st congressional district in Washington.
The group also chided the Mountain State’s two senators on Capitol Hill, Democrat Joe Manchin and Republican Shelley Moore Capito.
All three lawmakers, the group says, have failed their constituents by not publicly opposing current practices at the Southern border. Parsi is Iranian-born and came to the U.S. at the age of 8 with his mother and father, who fled the Iraq-Iran War in the 1980s.
“They’re not criminals,” he said, of his parents. “They’re just people. They wanted a better life.”
Sing out
The protestors sang Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” which, depending on who you ask, is either a New Deal paean of American geography and infrastructure, or a Marxist toe-tapper celebrating socialism.
Such sonic duality owes itself to the political passions stoked by the Oklahoma troubadour during his performing career. Stephanie Zucker, however, said there shouldn’t be any question about the motivation of the Morgantown Working Families appearance at McKinley’s office.
That’s because children and others have died in recent days trying to cross the border, said Zucker, who became the West Virginia organizer for the national Working Families organization after an unsuccessful bid for state senate.
Other kids currently languishing in sketchily kept detention centers have been separated from their parents for months, she said.
“Our immigrant policies do need revamped,” she said. “Of course, we don’t want to let bad people in. But we don’t want to put kids in cages either. No matter how you feel about immigration, Americans don’t do that.”
Wrong address?
The group had intended to present single sheets of white paper carrying the message, ‘CRUELTY HAS NO HOME HERE,” to McKinley’s staff, but the office was temporarily closed, said Amanda Hyman, his communication director. One staffer is out on an emergency medical leave, she said, and another representative was taking a meeting outside of the office when the Working Families turned out, she said. The office is still open and doing its work, Hyman said.
In the meantime, Wednesday’s protest comes on the heels of a particularly contentious weekend in Washington related in part to immigration and general criticism of the Trump White House. Ire and infighting in the House were the strong reactions to the president’s tweet directed to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.
The four freshmen lawmakers, all Democrats and women of color, have been harsh critics of the administration.
In a tweet officially denounced as “racist,” Trump suggested that the quartet should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” incorrectly suggesting that all four are immigrants. “Then come back and show us how it is done,” he added. Of the four, only Omar, who became a naturalized U.S. citizen 20 years ago, was born outside of the U.S., in Somalia.
Rhetoric and rancor
McKinley meanwhile, made a call for congressional civility — while offering criticism with a partisan hue.
“Since the day he was sworn in, President Trump has been under relentless pressure from Democrats and the media,” the congressman said, in a statement.
“It appears this pressure must have gotten the best of him with his inarticulate and counterproductive response over the weekend,” he continued. “We can highlight the extreme positions of the Democrats without resorting to comments like these. Both sides should tone down the rhetoric.”
