Thoughts and Interesting Stories---Jeff Clark

 Sent to Senators Tillis and Budd of NC this morning: My uncle was a police detective in Philadelphia before he retired. He showed his face and his badge to all he talked to on the job; he gave his name and business card to the public he served. This is what law enforcement officials have done in this country as policy until now; what if anything has changed?   The violent thugs serving in ICE are not law enforcement. They do not protect and serve; they attack and refuse to identify themselves. They are a paramilitary force responsible only to President Trump and his minions, who reflexively desecrate the memory of their victims. All dishonor themselves daily, all lack integrity. Immigration is a serious issue. Using brutal thugs to deal with it is like using a chainsaw to remove an appendix. The appendix may need to come out but using a chainsaw is a silly solution that kills people. It is painful to think of all the children incarcerated by ICE. It is unthinkable to all...

I stopped feeling funny when Trump was first elected in November, 2016. While I knew that some folk really wanted him to destroy our nation's freedom, it felt as if he had conned (with so much help from Fox News and other Republican sources) many of our voters.  I still tell jokes and make folk laugh but there has been a difference inside. My wife has noticed it. In a week our classes will start for the Spring semester at my university and I will be more occupied. Right now images of ICE agents seizing a five-year old child to use as bait to seize his parents, of ICE agents holding cans of pepper spray close to observers' faces and firing point blank into their eyes to terrorize them into not filming the agents, of the ICE agent pointing his gun at Renee Good's head and killing her with no justification---only anger, well, they are running non-stop through my head. I know, I know, I know as a white male that police brutality is a fact of life for much of our country, that I...

Nothing has tested our values as a nation in the US as when we decide who can be a citizen. Aside from Native Americans all of us came from elsewhere. Often the decision as to who to bestow privileges upon has been explicitly racist, with the previous generation of immigrants wanting to exclude the next one. It is unpleasant and so we often delegate such decisions to our government and try not to think about it. A humane approach would be to identify who could benefit most from admission and become productive citizens, but bigotry has often triumphed. Social justice has been important to our children, making my wife and I quite proud. My son led pro-immigrant rallies in university and very early on pointed out to me the brutality of ICE during the first Trump administration. This time around ICE has been the defacto armed thugs suppressing freedoms of citizens and non-citizens alike. Masked and without badge or judicial warrant they have been terrorizing city after city, killing and in...

Five years ago I watched in horror as the mob that Trump called to a rally obeyed him and attacked the Capitol, killing police officers, desecrating the building, while Trump withheld forces from dislodging them as they sought to kill Pelosi and Pence. Last November I watched in horror as voters reelected Trump knowing that he had attempted a coup on January 6, 2021.