Yay Tom!

What do I want in housewares/towelsfor Xmas from my SIL?

You can't go wrong with more washcloths for the bathroom--I need to stop by Kohl's or Target and pick up a bunch to replace the really ancient ones I currently have.

Our friend Jim Corbett (quaker) and some nuns went to prison for their part in the Sanctuary movement, smuggling refugees through the US. The progressive social justice aspect of Catholicism was pretty strong down there.

Yeah, there were a lot of Catholics in Sanctuary when I was involved. I need to remind myself to think of those people rather than the mainstream.

But it's hard. Those people are, in my experience, so much the exception. While the mainstream are, while maybe not actively (or consciously) hostile to women or immigrants, unthinkingly acquiesing to a lot of seriously fucked up shit. I left the church because at core I don't buy it. And before that I spent a lot of time thinking and convincing and arguing - and my path was Presby to UCC. I just have a lot of trouble with the idea of being and proclaiming to be part of a church that has so much wrong - and more to the point, does and advocates so much wrong - without walking away. I don't get it.

I don't have that core belief, and so maybe I won't ever get it. But it's really hard to fathom.

Massachusetts school bans students from saying "Meep." [link]

I got two matches from speed dating!

Scola = AWESOME.

Go Tom!

Murray says the warning was needed because students didn't heed his "reasonable request" to stop the meeping.

Murry should have asked Dr Bunsen Honeydew for better ways to handle this.

Go Scola!

brenda, you were in Sanctuary too?? OMG! My dad drove a lot of people through NM! I remember when the feds were really cracking down having a family meeting discussing the possibilities (dad goes to jail, etc.)

We've got some amazing crayon drawings from one group which was heartbreakingly, all kids. Close family had been disappeared in Guatemala and parent were worried the kids would too as leverage and sent them through Sanctuary. The thing is, they are so classic Guatemalan art, it's incredible.

Dad gets called on federal juries from time to time. Down there, they are often immigration cases. He always has to disclose Sanctuary and the prosecution runs screaming from him. It's funny.

What blows my mind is that for every transport, at 5 pm the night before, either my dad or the priest running ___ House in El Paso (I'm forgetting the name) sent a certified letter to the El Paso INS field office, informing them of their actions (though obviously not the details.) It was part of the principle of the org. They weren't denying that they were breaking the law. It was an honesty thing.

Thank god I didn't know that until later. Preteen me might've freaked out even more than I did on transport days.

___ House in El Paso (I'm forgetting the name) sent a certified letter to the El Paso INS field office, informing them of their actions (though obviously not the details.) It was part of the principle of the org. They weren't denying that they were breaking the law. It was an honesty thing.

Pretty sure I know where you're talking about, though the place we worked with most was in Brownsville. When I first got involved, I was living in a place in Georgia and we made bus trips every few months to that area to bring people up and give them some basic language and culture skills (and start their INS proceedings, for whatever good that was. Mostly we connected them with the Canadian gov.) Later, when I was back in Milwaukee, it was more about counseling and being a voice to hear who gave a shit.

Man, we should talk more. I'm so out of touch with that world these days and I feel bad about it.

Mostly we connected them with the Canadian gov

Yeah, pretty much all the transports dad did were en route to Canada, where they could get political refugee status. US wouldn't recognize them as political refugees. Goddamn Regan and Ollie North and all that shit. El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala. Keep in mind, I was only "involved" because my dad was doing this and I was a kid, though I supported it.

ok, I've got to google, because I can picture the storefront in El Paso, but am still drawing a blank.