Hurt Locker

[angrychair]

We, collectively as a country, are more worried about our 401k than a guy with a name they can't pronounce being sent to a country they couldn't find on a map with a gun to their head.
When we started sending people, any people, no matter the reasoning, to foreign torture prisons and active war zones like South Sudan and who knows where else, we all lost a piece of our humanity. Don't worry though because our Supreme Court literally said it was legal and ok.

That we still go to work and do all our normal daily tasks and watch TV and go out and eat dinner while a guy from Guatemala, that just came here to pick tomatoes, is being flown to South Sudan and dropped off in a country he has never been, can't speak the language, no money, no passport and no way to contact anyone. In a place experiencing war and ethnic cleansing.
Meanwhile we are going through our days as if none of that is happening with our money, in our country's name.

That is the part I can't understand. We, as a country, seem pretty casual about the whole thing: "oh, we are sending more innocent people to be tortured and murdered in a country they have no connection? Oh well, let's go see a movie"

That we are not literally living in the streets in protests, burning it to the fucking ground if necessary, shows that we, as a country, have lost all context of what is right and what is wrong. We, collectively, have lost the plot. We are not willing to do the hard stuff for the ideals of a country we pretend to love.
Hopefully that will change before we lose all our humanity to a wannabe dictator that looks like an inside out sweet potato.

[Ocelot II]

1. What are you personally doing besides complaining on a message board?

I've volunteered to work with the ACLU on immigration and other issues. I'm in the streets whenever there's a demonstration or rally. There's not much one single person can do but collectively we can do a lot. So let's do it.

[angrychair]

2. Missing the point

I am not scolding individuals, many doing great things with their talents, like you are.
The point is that we, the collective "we" of this country, is doing very little. Nothing at all actually. The collective "we" as a nation, are essentially doing nothing while we send innocent people off to be tortured and murdered on a regular basis.

There should be actual millions of people in the streets, no matter what letter is after your name, fighting to stop this but there is not.

Unfortunately, organizations like the ACLU are becoming less relevant as the courts, specifically SCOTUS, has already ruled this can continue.
Relief from the courts is becoming less and less likely. SCOTUS has become little more than a rubber stamp, they exist only to stop or neuter lower court rulings.
We need only look to the modern French era for advice on how to protest.
We need to make protest uncomfortable. We need to make protest inconvenience people. We need to bloke up roads somewhere with a thousand tractors.
Because if we don't, protesting will become illegal too

[Ocelot II]

4. How's this for starters?

https://www.mobilize.us/mobilize/event/803953/

[angrychair]

5. Its a start

I've seen ads for it and looked into it a little. Its a worthwhile effort and appreciated.
Still doesn't address my larger points.

What is happening right now, snatching people off the street and sending them off to places you only see in your nightmares, should be enough to mobilize people.

Part of me believes there is no possibility of a better outcome. If stuff like this doesn't motivate people by the millions then I honestly don't know what would.

[Ocelot II]

6. You have to start somewhere, first by informing people.

A lot of people just don't pay attention to anything outside their own small world - their families and their jobs. They have to be made aware before they will be motivated to do anything. If all you ever see is Fox "News," or if you don't pay attention to the news at all, you won't know about any of this. So we have to break through the lack of information and the misinformation first. Each of these demonstrations is larger than the last. Once you get to 3.5%, change starts to happen. That's the goal right now. So sign up and get involved and tell everyone you know.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. "lost all context of what is right and what is wrong"

Yes that's the nutshell. The great holier-than-thou Conservative Christians where the sum of individual happiness makes up the whole, and if you're on the losing end of all that well too bad. Our principles have been sold.