This is what freedom looks like. Happy July 4!!
On June 30, we joined five or six hundred protesters for a Families Belong Together march on trump’s Palm Beach hideaway, Mar de Lago. On our way across town to the march with our friends Estis and Marcio, our phones suddenly started blaring. An amber alert:
A Florida Amber Alert has been issued for three children out of Volusia County.
- Three kids missing out of New Smyrna Beach
- Kids may be in the company of grandmother
- Anyone with info to call 386-424-2220 or 911
Law enforcement is searching for 3-year-old Akeem Dorset, 8-year-old Makylah Brown, and 10-year-old Aaliyah Brown. Officials said the kids were last seen in the area of the 800 block of Oleander Street in New Smyrna Beach.
Officials believe the kids are in the company of their grandmother, 65-year-old Venita Porter-Carter. They may be traveling in a 2010, white Suzuki Grand Vitara with the Florida tag number 632RKB.
The actual alert said “multiple children.” I didn’t think much about it until we were at the rally before the march when an immigration attorney – herself an immigrant – spoke. She noted that on her way to the rally this morning, she’d heard an amber alert about multiple children and thought it was “ironic” and somehow fitting since this rally and march were about stopping the trump policy of separating children from their familiar at the border.
As soon as I heard her say it, I realized she had recognized the synchronicity and Rob and I had missed it!
The rally and the march across the bridge to Palm Beach were a wonderful mix of old and young and everything in between. Several politicians attended – Representative Lois Frankel, the mayor and West Palm Beach and the former mayor. A rabbi gave an outstanding speech in both English and Spanish and later on, in our way across the bridge, I heard him speaking both French and Creole to several Haitian women.
Due to construction on the bridge, with traffic reduced to a single lane, we were allowed into Palm Beach only in groups of 40. A woman in front of us had brought her two young daughters and for a while as we crossed the bridge, they were directly in front of us. One of the girls, who was 5 or 6, remarked, “Trump is as bright orange Cheeto!”
On our way in, we passed the “service entrance” to trump’s palace.
Here’s the palace. Rather phallic.
His place straddles both sides of the road.
There was a strip of grass just beyond the curb and two men on trump’s property told us to stay off the grass because it was “private property.”
The con man wasn’t home.
With the exception of Native Americans, each of us…every single one of us…..is in this country because at some point in Time our ancestors came here as immigrants. The subsequent decimation and utter inhumane treatment of the Native Americans by our ancestors were atrocious…..the stealing of their people, the stealing of their land, the murders and and raping and torture and slavery of their wives and children, and the ultimate existence of the beautiful Native American way of life….the peoples who nurtured and actually worshiped Nature and even the animals they had to kill in order to eat and survive were destroyed by the invading Whites, never again to be restored.Devastating wars began, one after another after another with the loss of many hundreds of thousands of lives…..wars perpetrated by white humans. War after war after war after war went on relentlessly. And now I feel that we are in yet another war; that we are going backward instead of going forward. Can there be no final end to the carnage of war? In my opinion. white humans should turn around and take a good, long, honest look in the mirror and find some manner of living together as a planetary family. Is this a pipe dream? Probably. It is, however, MY dream.
Beautifully said, CJ!
I attended our rally (we didn’t have a march) last Saturday. It was poignant and even a little overwhelming to be there yet again, protesting against the awfulness that is our current government. Families belong together!