Timna Axel on Facebook: "'m on the Greyhound bus and we've pulled over in Ohio. Border patrol (CBP) is asking each person on our bus if they're citizens. They are checking passports in their computer system - not any of the White people's. They pulled two people off the bus. This feels really fucked up."

Demanding papers is unconstitutional. Targeting non-whites is fascist.

September 16, 2018

Border Patrol is pulling (non-white) people off buses as far north as Ohio, and demanding proof of citizenship.

If you’ve ever watched The Hunt for Red October, you’ll recall that the Russian defectors discuss freedom in terms of a a lack of need for papers to travel:

Capt. Vasili Borodin: I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pickup truck… maybe even a “recreational vehicle.” And drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?

Captain Ramius: I suppose.

Borodin: No papers?

Ramius: No papers, state to state.

That’s all it takes to distinguish a free state from an oppressive one. “No papers.”

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On Puerto Rico, and the value of human life

September 14, 2018 1 Comment

In case you’ve missed this, the President of the United States decided to dodge blame for nearly 3,000 deaths in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico by claiming those people “did not die”.

Donald J. Trump on Twitter:

I wish this was a joke, someone’s satirical take on Trump’s indifference to human lives. But no, the reality is, this is entry into a new and more dangerous stage of fascism. This is where the killing begins, if it hasn’t already.

The following is one reaction that’s been making the rounds on Facebook, republished here. It’s long, but important:

In case you wonder why I mostly just rage against fascists in public rants these days, it’s because of Trump’s tweets this morning. It’s because I assumed this was coming, and I knew what it would mean.

They’re going to start killing people. And I might be one of them.

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The virulent spread of denaturalization

September 10, 2018

It was literally just a few days ago news broke that the denial of passports to U.S.-born citizens had begun. That was supposedly due to birth certificate “fraud” involving midwives who operate in Texas near the Mexican border.

But here’s the thing about fascism: It isn’t ever satisfied. I assumed they’d start coming for people born in hospitals, or people born further north, at some point.

I just didn’t assume it would spread this quickly:

Born and raised in Kansas, Gwyneth Barbara didn’t expect this kind of hassle.

Barbara had been issued a U.S. passport before, but this time around, Barbara was told her birth certificate wasn’t good enough to prove her citizenship.

“It’s like they’re retroactively declaring that I was never a citizen,” Barbara said.

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U.S. born citizens are citizens. At least, they’re supposed to be.

September 8, 2018 1 Comment

It’s finally come to this: The United States government is denying passports to U.S. citizens with official birth certificates. The supposed justification is birth certificate fraud (just like how non-existent “voter fraud” is the justification for the GOP’s constant onslaught of voter suppression laws).

Obviously, I agree with Jennifer Wright of Harper’s Bazaar and her take on this:

Taking away people’s passports and citizenship is a precursor to genocide.

It’s what happened to Jews in Germany in 1938 when their passports were declared invalid. That is what is beginning to happen here, now, to Hispanic citizens along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Oh, is it bad to compare the GOP to Nazis? Well, if members of the GOP do not like being compared to Nazis, they should consider not behaving exactly like Nazis.

I advocate reading the entire piece, and then calling your Senators and yelling at them to fix this (especially if they are Republicans).

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Is the U.S. denying passports to U.S. citizens now?

August 30, 2018

Kudos to the Washington Post for breaking the horrific news that the State Department is denying passports to U.S. citizens with official birth certificates:

The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown on their citizenship.

It sounds like they aren’t automatically denying passport applications, but they are telling applicants that official birth records are no longer valid to establish citizenship. And given that official birth certificates have been valid for establishing citizenship for decades, who has alternate records? What would valid alternate records even look like, if people had known to keep them?

Let’s not forget that the United States elected a President who still disputes the validity of the birth certificate of the first African-American President of the United States.

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