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Many of the career agents & lawyers I deal with in my work share these sentiments.
They believe did not sign up for this. Many have got kids and are deeply disturbed by it.
What’s interesting about this to me is they deal directly w/ affected humans & feel conflicted.
They believe did not sign up for this. Many have got kids and are deeply disturbed by it.
What’s interesting about this to me is they deal directly w/ affected humans & feel conflicted.
A question that kept coming up last week at #AILAAC19 is what we as immigrants’ rights advocates and humans of conscience should do with these folks, in light of the situation and the other humans being locked in cages and dying.
There is no consensus. Many of us noted that there were probably a lot of “good people” who felt compelled or led by inertia into working with oppressive, genocidal regimes. Did the silence of their friends, family, neighbors, and professional colleagues enable others’ suffering?
Isn’t everyone deserving of love, compassion, and the opportunity to heal and reinvent themselves? Why write off these government apparatchiks currently standing by and doing nothing, risking moving them closer toward the darkness, instead of away from it. See, e.g., Sarah Fabian
Aren’t many of us pre-wired to empathize more with the professional counterpart we interact with frequently than the migrant “strangers” whose suffering and death we see new, alarming reports about daily? Should we be checking that instinct by channeling how migrants must feel?
At what point do we say, “You have to pick a side. There’s no more ‘doing more good from the inside’ in this regime. Your Good Human presence only puts a patina of regularity on top a heaping, smoldering, growing pile of malevolence that is literally killing people.”?
I imagine @bowenjamil, @scottshuchart, and @BuddJenn, among others, have thoughts on this question.
I can tell you that after many deep and thoughtful, and, at times, painful talks with my colleagues, I am no closer to an answer.
Which is sort of the danger of normalization.
I can tell you that after many deep and thoughtful, and, at times, painful talks with my colleagues, I am no closer to an answer.
Which is sort of the danger of normalization.
I guess what I walked away with was this: As moral actors and humans with at least the illusion of agency, it is necessary for each of us, individually, to make a decision about what line could be crossed that would cause us to say, “No more.”
How many DHS/DOJ folks know?
How many DHS/DOJ folks know?
If you work in the govt & you’ve hit your line in the sand, for fuck’s sake, say something.
Don’t just go away quietly. Don’t let the horrors you saw go unspoken. Say something.
It’s hard and scary and part of the reason you went into govt is you’re risk averse and stable.
Don’t just go away quietly. Don’t let the horrors you saw go unspoken. Say something.
It’s hard and scary and part of the reason you went into govt is you’re risk averse and stable.
But that also means you’ve played a role, however tiny, in creating this. Your silence and dedication to your mission trumped your moral duty as a human to interfere with and prevent the horrific abuses we’re seeing. It’s not all your fault. But it’s not not your fault, either.
Quit or don’t. But say something.
