There was a time when I thought we, meaning people in general, shared a definition of what it means to be human. I also believed that understanding came with a set of ideals about how we treat our fellow humans.
Now I know better.
Now I know some segments of humanity cherry pick their required traits of humanity. And now I know it allows them to behave in terrible, inhumane ways.
The administration’s manufactured crisis at our southern border is the latest manifestation of such practices.
Crowded camps, family separations, rejected asylum claims, and deaths, of children, the elderly, the sick, fill the pages of newspapers and our social media feeds. Yet, even in the face of the inhumanity of it all, our administration keeps up their dehumanizing practices in hopes we will tire of it or begin to look away.
Last week, in an effort to raise the visibility on an issue U.S. Customs and Border Protection could easily address, providing flu vaccinations for migrant children (three of whom have died of flu related symptoms), Doctors for Camp Closure, Families Belong Together, and Never Again Action protested at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Chula Vista[1], while wearing the uniforms of their profession, scrubs and white coats, leaving no doubt about who they were.[2]
Where this protest stood apart from the many others protesting the inhumane treatment of our fellow humans, is that after a month of urging the government to vaccinate immigrants in custody and formally offering to set up a pilot program to do just that, the medical professionals came prepared with a mobile clinic and the ability to inoculate 120 children against the flu[4].
Their arguments, relying on scientific evidence of causal links between cramped conditions and disease spread, were dismissed out of hand by officials on site. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson argued holds in that location are less than 72 hours (though government records show this is often not the case) and they couldn’t just let “a random group of radical political activists show up and start injecting people with drugs.”
The disingenuous sleight-of-hand is nauseating, insincere, and disorienting.
Don’t look away.
Footnotes:
[2] NVA #19: Wearing of symbols.
[3] NVA#195: Seeking Imprisonment, NVA#137: Refusal of an assemblage or meeting to disperse, a variation of NVA#162: Sit-In, and NVA#172: Nonviolent Obstruction
[4] NVA#179: Alternative social institutions
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