I'm Standing Up

My platform is small.  The number of people who will actually read this silly blog is small.  However, unlike many I DO have this small platform.  For some time now I've been inching closer and closer to the realization we are running concentration camps at our Southwestern borders.  We call them 'detention camps', and we don't deliberately exterminate anyone.  However, if, let's say, children die in our custody; well, that's just their bad luck isn't it?

We've allowed an economic and race issue to overwhelm our societal moral compass.  Well, hey, it's REALLY about border security not economics and race, you say?  OK, I accept your premise.  Now, how do you justify the conditions in the camps?

The President and the Vice-President tell us that everything in the camps is just fine.  Well, it's not.  People are being held without adequate sanitary facilities.  People are being held packed into locked rooms so tightly that everyone in them can't even lay down to sleep.  Even if they could, there's no bedding.  People are being held without access to shower facilities for weeks.  Then, there's the children.  How are they about border security?  How is denying children basic living conditions ever OK?  And that's on top of separating them from their adult caretakers.

Well, obviously, "these people" (let's be sure and make them 'other' - not 'us') should just stay in their own countries.  My question is this:  How terrible must their living conditions be in their own countries to risk themselves and their children to come here.  In this day of instant access, do you think these immigrants seeking asylum don't know about the camps?  I guess even these deplorable camps are preferable to starvation, rape, torture and death, so they must not be so bad.  If you don't think so, then you haven't used your 'instant access' to hear or read about the facts.  Here's your chance:

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/elections/2019/07/16/migrant-detention-centers-described-2019-us-government-accounts/1694638001/

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/border-patrols-oversight-sick-migrant-children/593224/

Did you just skip over those links?  OK - fine.  Don't read about the camps.  Pretend not to know about them.  Here's another consideration.  Are we a religious nation or not?  We tell the world we are.   Most of us believe in God.  Most of us identify with the ethics espoused by the big three (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) when asked.  I am a Christian.  More specifically, I'm a Methodist.  My brand of Christianity speaks out against injustice by action.  This is my action since UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) isn't being allowed into the camps to bring relief even though they have been involved in humanitarian crisis around the world since post WWII.

I refuse to be silent and by my silence endorse the conditions at detention camps.  Stand up.  Tell your friends.  Ask your Congress person why they are letting this happen.  Stand up in your church and ask why are we letting this happen.  If you believe all the media is corrupt and with an 'agenda', well, here's some media it's pretty hard for a Christian to dispute:

"For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink.  I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.

They also answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

He will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'
(Matthew 25:42-45 - New International Version)

If you choose to do nothing because after all, you're only one voice and can't make a difference, then, so be it.  I don't believe that.  I stand with Edmund Burke:  "Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little."