Immigration

Series Highlights Harms of

Immigration Policies, How

Communities Are Fighting Back

    NEW YORK – (ACLU) -- 2/22/2025 – The American Civil Liberties Union has launched a new storytelling series documenting the harms of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda and how communities are fighting back. The multimedia series uplifts the voices of people nationwide – family members of undocumented people, teachers, activists, and more – and elevates the need for balanced and humane immigration policies. The project comes just thirty days after President Trump took office and reiterated his pledge to enact the largest mass deportation program in U.S. history. 

    For weeks, the ACLU has collected stories anonymously from community members across the country to illustrate how peoples’ lives have been impacted by these policies, shaped their daily experiences, their sense of security, and the well-being of their families. “My community is being broken into two parts and we are looking [to] friends, co-workers, and more because we are all going back in time; it’s messing with people’s perceptions of humans and who we are and how far we have come to protect our rights,” one individual shared, while others have highlighted the sense of fear they feel for themselves and their families.

    The blog, photo, and video series will continue to run in the weeks and months ahead with the goal of humanizing immigration issues. The ACLU’s investment in telling human interest stories aims to counter the Trump administration’s widespread effort to amplify misleading and damaging stories painting immigrants with one dehumanizing brush.

    The project also comes on the heels of several legal actions from the ACLU and partners challenging Trump’s unlawful immigration policies. In just four weeks, the organization has filed five lawsuits against measures that would tear apart communities nationwide, from eliminating birthright citizenship, to fast-tracking deportations without due process.

    “As the ACLU and its 54 affiliates nationwide combat the Trump administration’s harmful policies in the courts, in Congress, and in our communities, we know that our fight isn’t just about policy – it's about people,” said Anu Joshi, National Campaigns Director for Immigration at the ACLU. “The individuals and stories at the center of this series are a powerful reminder of what’s at stake in the fight for immigrants’ rights.”

    The full storytelling series is available here: https://www.aclu.org/campaigns-initiatives/documenting-stories-of-cruelty-fear-and-resilience

Commentary

The Politics of Immorality

 By Steve Rensberry

    

    (RP NEWS) - Nonsense criticisms of things like DEI and 'woke ideology' never cease to amaze me, especially when words like "immorality" are thrown in, as was done in the recent attempted DEI purge of government offices and communications. Freedom of thought and association, the general welfare, are they not important anymore? What gives them the right to decide, certainly not merely winning an election.

    Here's a list of 10 things I'd consider far more immoral than any of the leftist bugaboos that authoritarians like to demonize:

    1. Politicians and other authority figures deciding for us what's moral and immoral, no experts needed and based on a very limited viewpoint, instead of respecting the entire panorama of beliefs, views and interests in the country.

    2. Politician's who think they were elected to dominate instead of serve. No one is above the Constitution, as interpreted by a legislature elected by the people, least of all an uncompromising authoritarian president.

    3. Cutting or threatening to cut the social safety net for millions and millions of people, unilaterally and with little or zero input from those affected.

    4. Failing to provide essential healthcare for all citizens in one of the most advanced nations in the world.

    5. Colluding with Russia privately to divide up Ukraine.

    6. Sticking your nose in other people's reproductive decisions.

    7. Looking the other way and refusing to care about migrants, immigrants, LGBT citizens, and other minority groups who are being unfairly demonized, bolstered by lies, by this administration and other groups. 

    8. Failing to serve ALL citizens and instead serving the interests of only a select number or party. 

   9. Deliberately violating the Constitution in an act of lawfare to bring unwarranted cases before sympathetic judges.

   10. Governing society insensitively and brutally, like a dictator, or deliberately governing in a way designed to shock and dominate rather than find common ground. 

    We are all citizens of the same country and deserve equal respect from our president. EQUAL respect, and EQUAL respect for our values. He took an oath and needs to uphold it. Does he want us to respect his values? Then he needs to respect ours.

     Just my humble human-being-living-in-the-same-twilight-zone-as-everyone-else opinion, of course. It's just wrong to hurt people, and especially wrong to take glee in it, which is what we appear to be witnessing. . -- 2/20/2025

We The People

Supporters of Democracy Make Their

 Voices Heard in Edwardsville

 

By Steve Rensberry
Commentary

     

 

    EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. -- 2/16/25 -- I am proud to have exercised my First Amendment Rights at a local pro-democracy action group protest on Feb. 14 in Edwardsville, along with many other local residents. This is no time to be silent. 

 

    Lining the sidewalk near the library downtown, pro-democracy demonstrators held up signs for more than an hour, in a highly visible area. Many motorists were honking their car horns in support.

    This is what democracy is all about, and what the freedoms outlined in the Consitution are all about, and what having a backbone and the courage to fight for what's right is all about. 

   

    If you're not angry at the cruel and unnecessary "reforms" the current administraton is forcing upon us, illegally so, affecting disabled people, veterans and good people all over the country, you're not paying attention. 

 

   More protests are planned accross the country, and locally, on (Not My) Presidents Day.

 

 

 

 

Disinformation

Prayer Breakfasts

Stoke Disinformation, Lies

Don’t Despair, Share. Share the truth

By Steve Rensberry

    Edwardsville Ill. -- (RP News) -- 2/9/25 -- The organization Americans United for the Separation of Church and State has strongly criticized two Christian Nationalist focused prayer breakfasts at the nation's capitol on Feb. 6, one held in the Capitol building itself and the other in a non-governmental location and organized by the shadowly group "The Family."

    Announced at the second breakfast was the formation of a task force to fight supposed "anti-Christian bias" -- a presumption AU argues is build on lies and misinformation. 

   Andrew Seidel with AU writes:  "Christian Nationalism is an entire identity based on disinformation, as I’ve explained elsewhere. So it’s little surprise that Trump’s anti-Christian bias task force — which we believe will misuse religious freedom to justify bigotry and discrimination — is similarly based on disinformation.

    "Supporters of Americans United understand that when an institution lives only by lies, truth is revolutionary. Trump’s task force is a new institution built on lies and disinformation. One of the best ways to fight back against it is to share. Don’t despair, share. Share the truth."  Read the entire article here.