For the twenty-sixth month

We have been silently circumambulating the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement building once a month for two years and two months now. We know that our silent protest is irrelevant to the power structure, but we keep showing up because it deepens our own commitment to change. 

I want to say a little more about Innovation Law Lab, which is doing the work we all wish we could do. How do they do that, you might ask? They do it with crowd funding support. They do it by going out to live in the small towns in the desert of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona where secret detention centers, some holding thousands of refugees and asylum-seekers, have been built. They live in those little towns, surrounded by Border Patrol guards and right-wing citizens who hate them. They live in those small towns so that they can visit their clients in the detention centers, clients who may be two, ten, or fifteen years old; clients who may be transgender people, mothers separated from their children, fathers whose farms have been commandeered by corporate forces or devastated by drought. They meet with actual detainees and give them hope. They create technological means of gaining access to documents that can free people. They free people and find them sponsors and homes where they can recover from trauma and ground themselves to develop new lives. They are doing the work we all wish we could do, but we don't have the skills to do. I am so grateful for them.

I am struggling with migraines and some heart irregularities caused by migraine medication. After the ICE walk I was in the Emergency Room for hours on Thursday, Sue with me. We have established that at the moment I do not have atrial fibrillation; but I do have some troubling arrhythmia and blood pressure variation. I'm working with it. I had to wait till Friday to post this because I couldn't tolerate a screen on Thursday. I'm a bit better now, but I won't be able to respond to comments today.