A Call For Protest

I received this message in my email this morning:

“This is what is on my mind these days.  Yesterday was quite an experience.

The press reported “several hundred” people were at this interfaith vigil in Sheridan.  My first impression at being part of this was, “we are free to do this”  My second realization was that this freedom can so easily and swiftly be taken away.  This was a positive peaceful experience, but landed hard on my mind in the middle of the night and even more today.  It’s all so wrong.

A little of what was officially announced at the 2-hour vigil at the Sheridan federal prison yesterday:

123 men were moved to the federal prison in Sheridan in mid-May. They came from more than 16 countries including India, Nepal, Peru, Russia, Honduras, Guatemala, Armenia, China and Brazil.  More than half of them are from India.  All were seeking asylum.  Along with hundreds of others waiting at the southern border they were removed and sent to prisons across the US.  In Oregon, 300 pro-bono attorneys are waiting to serve these people, but as of yesterday had not been allowed access.  Details of individual stories (especially men who are separated from families) aren’t known yet.

A letter from a public defender stated detainees at Sheridan are locked in triple-bunked cells for up to 23 hours per day, meals are small or of low nutritional quality, medical care is lacking, phone calls are expensive or unavailable and language barriers persist. 

These people may not know where they are, may not have a common language with their cell mates, and have no contact with the outside world. This is happening in a small rural town more 50 miles from Portland.”

Parents separated from children.  Fathers separated from their families. And our president says it is a United States law.

One of the posters, in the crowd last evening in Sheridan Organ, quoted the message of welcome on the Statue of Liberty:  “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”   Then the question was asked:  Is this no longer true?

8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God(Mic. 6)

What is happening in our nation is so against what God’s requires of us.

Those people, present at that silent protest, of the opposite of what God asks,  were witnessing the way God wants all of us to act against the injustice and unkind behavior mandated by our president (not capitalize on purpose).   Who is using human lives to get what he wants.  I would call it blackmail!  But even worse, it is inhumane and evil.

As a matter of fact separating children from their parents, and fathers from their wive and children, runs parallel to what Hitler did by separating families in Germany.  

And yet, government leaders use the Bible, as permission, to do so.  I believe that Hitler did something quite similar.  Only he called God’s call for justice  “dangerous.”

The question I have to ask is:  When will the murderous torture begin?    

It is time for our population to begin to rise up in, a not so silent, protest.  It is time to invade our politicians with point blank messages of revulsion.   Demanding an immediate halt to the illegal rule of power our president is taking.

What is happening in our nation today is un-American and rapes the dignity of our country’s core values.

My prayer is that God will invade this mislead government with a powerful invasion of policy; radically adjusting its intentions and politically based protection of “the party.”

Won’t you pray along with me?