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Families & The Federal Budget Immigration

#5Actions Round Up for the Week! June 29, 2018 edition

June 29, 2018
Karen Showalter's picture
Karen Showalter
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It's been a week, friends. As we head into the weekend, our urgent message to you is that we are powerful, and our voices matter.

This week we're speaking out about immigration, and celebrating some inspiring wins. We're also sharing helpful ways to support immigrants in your community, and a reminder to reach out to your elected officials about family separation. Please read, share, and flex those parent powers!

1. Join us to say #FamiliesBelongTogether this Saturday June 30!

MomsRising members and staff are on the ground at #FamiliesBelongTogether events across the country on Saturday June 30. Please join us, and/or find an event near you on the MomsRising website!

  • Nationwide: Events in states and cities across the country. Find out more.
  • DC: Family Separation Protest at the White House, 11:00 AM. Rally in support of Families Together at Lafayette Square. RSVP here.
  • NC: Families Belong Together Rally Raleigh. March starts at City Plaza, downtown Raleigh, and will end at Bicentennial Plaza, where a rally will take place (directly across the street from the NC General Assembly). RSVP here.
  • FL: Families Belong Together Rally Orlando, 2:00 PM. Rally in support of Families Together at Orlando City Hall.
  • WA: Families Belong Together - SeaTac, 11:00 AM. A powerful day of action in solidarity with rallies happening across Washington and the nation. In Seatac, leaders will be launching a week of action to send a powerful message to Congress and the President: families belong together. RSVP here.
  • WA: Families Belong Together - Spokane, 1:00 PM. Join Spokane community leaders, immigration advocates, and families to send a powerful message to our nation's leaders: families belong together. RSVP here.
  • NH: Concord NH #FamiliesBelongTogether Rally, 12:00 PM. We're rallying in Concord to tell Donald Trump and his administration to stop separating kids from their parents! RSVP here.
  • NH: Families Belong Together Rally - Manchester, 11:00 AM. Attend our #FamiliesBelongTogether rally in Manchester, NH to protest Donald Trump's decision to separate kids from their families at the border and keep kids in detention centers across the country. RSVP here.
  • NH: Families Belong Together Protest - Littleton, 10:00 AM. Join us to protest the traumatized containment of immigrant children & the separation of them from their families! RSVP here.

ALSO: MomsRising is creating massive chains of “Keep Families Together” ONEsies at events this summer. Donate one for $10, five for $50, or 25 for $250 -- whatever you can afford! Don't want to fund a onesie, but still want to support our work on immigration with a donation? Donate here instead! Thank you!

 

2. Tell Congress: No Tax Cuts for Billionaires and Mega-Corporations!

BACKGROUND: Last week we marked the six month anniversary of the passage of the disastrous Trump-GOP Tax Plan. Who have the winners been? Millionaires, billionaires, and mega-corporations. Who have the losers been? Me, you, America’s working families, and our economy. But, there is still time to fix this terrible policy. And we need YOU! ***SIGN our letter to the U.S. Congress calling on them to repeal the tax cuts for millionaires, billionaires, and wealthy corporations and instead pass tax policies that boost working families!

 

3. Celebrate!

Let's celebrate some of the incredible victories you've helped make possible this week! The Senate passed a strong bipartisan Farm Bill that supports SNAP, Massachusetts passed paid family leave, and we helped defeat the very-bad Border Security and Immigration Reform Act in the U.S. House of Representatives. Never forget: we are powerful.

4. Visit your Elected Officials to Talk about Family Separation and Detention

Lawmakers depend on contact from their constituents to gauge what people in their districts care about, which is why you dropping by in-person will make a strong impression. This is a critical time for them to hear from you about the need to stand up for immigrant children and families. Download the MomsRising’s Keep Marching toolkit for guidance on planning a meeting with your elected officials (pages 9 to 11). Some potential talking points:
  • Ask your lawmakers to speak out against the Trump administration’s intentional policy of detaining asylum-seeking families if they’ve not already, and thank them if they have been vocal.
  • Call on Congress to stop funding family detention and for them to demand that the administration ends this policy right away.
  • Ask them to visit the United States border to experience first-hand what is happening to asylum seeking families.
  • Ask them to also visit the courtrooms where children sit before an immigration judge, by themselves, without a lawyer, to understand the obstacles and trauma that children in the immigration system face.
You don’t need to be a policy expert to visit the offices of your elected officials. Check out some helpful additional resources and talking points on the MomsRising blog.

5. Volunteer to Help Immigrants in Your Community

Family separation doesn’t just happen at the United States border, immigrant families in every state have been torn apart. Additionally, with thousands of children separated from their parents at the border, children from asylum-seeking families were sent across the country and need support. You can support lawyers and advocates on the front lines by volunteering with:

Many cities and states have local organizations that provide legal support to immigrants. Do an online search for “free legal help for immigrants in (your state)” to discover your local organizations, and donate and volunteer to support their efforts. For lawyers who are in direct contact with families, Women’s Refugee Commission has resources to support families experiencing separation, in both English and Spanish.

 

Thank you for all you do, and #KeepMarching!

P.S. You can still download MomsRising Pride Month signs here.

The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of MomsRising.org.

MomsRising.org strongly encourages our readers to post comments in response to blog posts. We value diversity of opinions and perspectives. Our goals for this space are to be educational, thought-provoking, and respectful. So we actively moderate comments and we reserve the right to edit or remove comments that undermine these goals. Thanks!