Tell Them They Can't Hug

This was an order that Antar Davidson could not follow.

Davidson was -- until last week -- an employee of a privately-operated detention center in Tucson, where I lived from 1990 to 1994. As a trilingual person, he had a lot to offer children, and he did, until he no longer could.

Please listen carefully to his story. In it, he explains how he noticed the shift in policy not from the news, but from the number and demeanor of the children in his care and the behavior of his supervisors. Please take five minutes to listen to his story; it is not easy, especially for any person who has been a parent or a sibling or a child. But it is important.
The claims of "whataboutism" defenders of fascist and policies and tendencies fall away when exposed to the first-hand testimony of this young man, who put family values ahead of conformity. Read more about Davidson's experience in an LA Times article by journalist Molly Hennessy-Fiske. She posted the story from McAllen, Texas, which was my other former home along the US-Mexico border.

Antar Davidson is my newest hero. We need more genuine Americans like him.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Balún: Sleep While Dancing

Image
Photo by way of PopGun I had not heard of the Puerto Rico-Brooklyn band until yesterday, when I caught this interview on the NPR program Studio 360 (which gave credit to Latino USA for the original story). The interview centers on the construction of the band's signature "dreambow" rhythms, particularly in the band's new song El Espanta . Angélica Negrón describes what she sees as the therapeutic value of this approach. I found it both enjoyable and instructive to listened to that song a few times before returning to the interview. The video of Balún's La Nueva Ciudad is an example of what the artists mean by dreambow, and is a perfect example of Negrón's expression "sleep while dancing." The lyrics describe a progressively more complicated metaphorical connection between the narrator and the stars, as her head, throat, and legs represent a telescope. The chorus laments a growing distance from a human subject. The longer video "Full Episode&q
Read more

Shanay-timpishka

Image
I started my Sunday with this discussion between journalist Guy Raz and volcanologist Andrés Ruzo, whose childhood conversations at home led him to an amazing discovery in the Amazon Basin of Peru. (Because it contains have of the basin, Brazil is the best-known of the Amazon countries, but several upstream neighbors also have vast tracts of the basin and its forests.) I recommend listening to the audio and then watching Dr. Ruzo's full TED Talk , given in 2014 in Rio de Janeiro. His story begins with curiosity, legend, and history. It provides insight into indigenous knowledge, geothermal science, ecology, and the concept of ecotourism. It even touches on coffee! And from the TED Radio summary, I learn of Dr. Ruzo's coffee connection. In addition to growing up in Peru, part of his childhood was near volcanoes in Nicaragua, which means he is not far removed from coffeelands. Andrés Ruzo has written his story in The Boiling River
Read more

Before the Flood

Image
I really did not want to see Before the Flood , even though I teach several courses that relate directly to it. I pictured myself viewing it like a kid (or me) at a scary movie, watching through little gaps between my fingers as I try to shield my eyes from the screen. I have watched An Inconvenient Truth  and its sequel a few times, and even with Al Gore's dry presentation, I found it nervous-making, at least. Melting Arctic ice. Some parts of the film actually are pretty frightening. So when I heard that a real film-maker had produced something very convincing about climate change, I knew that I had to see it and would want to avoid it, at the same time. Given the dramatic potential of climate change, I feared being sucked into an experience that would manipulate audience emotions with dramatic music and images of peril. Thankfully, this film does none of that, and I managed to watch it three times in a ten-day period, without being scarred. DiCaprio documents his travels as the
Read more