How to help the migrants and our country, right now

TEXAS

-       STOP DEATH AND MISTREATMENT

o   South Texas Human Rights Center
http://southtexashumanrights.org/
A community-based center, this humanitarian organization seeks to end death and suffering on the Texas-Mexico border. It engages in different community initiatives to attain this goal.

o   Diocesan Migrant & Refugee Services is the largest provider of free and low cost immigration services in West Texas and says it’s the only organization in El Paso serving unaccompanied children.

o   Circle of Health International has staffed a clinic caring for refugees and asylum seekers immediately upon their their release. Their McAllen, Texas, clinic is currently seeing up to 100 patients a day.

o   The El Paso-based Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center provides legal representation to immigrants who might not be able to afford it otherwise. It’s accepting volunteers and donations.

-       LEGAL SERVICES

o   RAICES https://www.raicestexas.org/ The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that promotes justice by providing free and low-cost legal services to underserved immigrant children, families and refugees in Central and South Texas. RAICES is the largest immigration non-profit in Texas with offices in Austin, Corpus, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio.

o   Casa de Proyecto Libertad
http://www.proyectolibertad.net/
Provides legal defense and advocacy for immigrant families in the Rio Grande Valley, supporting community organizing for immigrant human rights. The organization gives quality, low-cost legal services for immigrants, and is always looking for volunteers.

o   ProBAR (The South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project), based in Harlingen, Texas, provides free legal services to detained asylum-seekers. It recruits, trains, and coordinates the activities of volunteer lawyers, law students, and legal assistants. (It is a joint project of the American Bar Association, the State Bar of Texas, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and is supported by the Texas Access to Justice Foundation.)

o   The Texas Civil Rights Project is seeking “volunteers who speak Spanish, Mam, Q’eqchi’ or K’iche’ and have paralegal or legal assistant experience.”

o   CARA—a consortium of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, the American Immigration Council, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association—provides legal services at family detention centers.

ARIZONA

-       STOP DEATH AND MISTREATMENT

o   No More Deaths/No Más Muertes
http://nomoredeaths.org/
A humanitarian organization based in southern Arizona, it works to end death and suffering in U.S.-Mexico borderlands. It encourages a humane immigrant policy and seeks for volunteers for its programs and services. Its website also provides up-to-date information about migrant deaths in the border; note that this is currently not available as the website is offline.

-       LEGAL

o   The Florence Project is an Arizona project offering free legal services to men, women, and unaccompanied children in immigration custody.

-        

-       IMMIGRANT RIGHTS

o   Coalición de Derechos Humanos
http://www.derechoshumanosaz.net/
Grassroots organization that promotes human and civil rights of immigrants, fighting border militarization and migrant abuses. Derechos Humanos acts to influence public policy and opinion on immigration. Its bilingual website has useful resources for immigrants and advocates, such as 'Know Your Rights' cards, an abuse report hotline, and updated information on Arizona migrant deaths.

CALIFORNIA

-       STOP DEATH AND MISTREATMENT

o   Ángeles del Desierto/The Desert Angels
http://losangelesdeldesierto.org/
A binational humanitarian group, located in San Diego, CA, that conducts search & rescue operations, with the sole purpose of saving lives and rescuing bodies. The organization also helps with Mexican repatriations and by leaving essential supplies along paths.

-       IMMIGRANT RIGHTS

o   American Friends Service Committee San Diego
http://www.afsc.org/office/san-diego-ca
AFSC San Diego supports immigrant-led organizations by developing "human rights committees" and working to include immigrant voices in policy debates. It is also in charge of the AFSC San Diego U.S.-Mexico Border Program which seeks to protect the human rights and self-determination of migrants and border communities.

o   Many migrants cleared to enter the U.S. by the Department of Homeland Security are turning to a migrant shelter run by the San Diego Rapid Response Network for help. The coalition provides these families with basic supplies, legal services, and information about the rights of asylum seekers, as well as travel and limited financial assistance to help them reach loved ones in other U.S. cities. You can help fund the group's recently opened migrant family shelter by donating to this GoFundMe campaign. 

ACROSS THE BORDER

-       STOP DEATH AND MISTREATMENT

o   Coalición de Derechos Humanos CDH (described below in Immigrant Rights section) has a Missing Migrant Project which includes specific attention to the recovery of remains. https://derechoshumanosaz.net/resources/disappeared-report/

o   Humane Borders/Fronteras Compasivas
http://www.humaneborders.org/
Offers humanitarian assistance through the deployment of water stations on routes commonly used by migrants, with the sole goal of preventing deaths. It also develops informational resources about migrant deaths, and accepts volunteers.

o   Colibri Center for Human Rights
http://colibricenter.org/
Holds a comprehensive database of missing persons last seen crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, using the information to match families with unidentified remains and advocate for the continuing human rights crisis on the border. 

o   The Sanctuary Caravan is a group supporters, including faith, labor, and community leaders, accompanying migrant children and their families at the border. You can get involved by housing a migrant family, volunteering, fundraising, joining upcoming events, or donating. 

-       IMMIGRANT RIGHTS:

o   Border Network for Human Rights
http://bnhr.org/
BNHR is an immigration reform and human rights advocacy group. It is a grassroots organizer with a large membership and capabilities, currently focusing on the nation-wide push for a just immigration reform. The organization also releases useful reports, including annual documentations of abuses in the border. 

o   Southern Border Communities Coalition
http://soboco.org/
Bringing together 60 organizations from California to Texas, Southern Border Communities Coalition looks to ensure fair and accountable border enforcement, humane and rational immigration policy, and a positive quality of life for border communities. Its website has up-do-date border accountability information, including a section documenting Border Patrol murders since 2010.

o   Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project works to prevent the deportation of asylum-seeking families fleeing violence. The group accepts donations and asks people to sign up for volunteer opportunities here.

-        

MEXICO

-       LEGAL SERVICES

o   Centro de los Derechos del Migrante
http://www.cdmigrante.org/
Binational organization based in Mexico City that educates, empowers, and advocates for immigrants, while also providing transnational legal representation and advice. CDM focuses on the rights of Mexico-based migrant workers who must constantly move between their homes and the United States.

-       IMMIGRANT RIGHTS

o   Save the Children, an organization that protects and supports children around the world, has set up child-friendly spaces in Tijuana. Save the Children creates these spaces in emergency situations in an effort to provide children with a safe, playful environment that's stocked with toys and crafts. You can help support migrant children's needs by donating here. 

-        

CONGRESS

TPS, DED, DACA preservation: https://www.afsc.org/blogs/news-and-commentary/congress-considering-legislation-to-protect-tps-ded-and-daca

American Friends Service: https://www.afsc.org/blogs/news-and-commentary/5-ways-to-take-action-against-family-separation

-        

I rode my bike into the CVS

Prologue: 

A few weeks ago, I switched OBGyns and went to my new dude. He wrote me a prescription for birth control because I take hormonal birth control in pill form because I'm a woman who doesn't want any more children and who doesn't want an IUD and this is how society solves that problem.

Anyway.

A couple days later, I get a call from my pharmacy. A life-saving call.

"Hi, we noticed your doctor prescribed Ortho tri cyclen lo for you. Is that correct?"

... ... ...

"Oh my GOD, NO. Change it, CHANGE IT. That is how I got twins the last time. They switched me to lo."

They laugh. Everyone loves the twin joke that is actually not a joke at all but truth-to-life facts what happened for real.

We hang up.

I live my life. I had two weeks left before EMERGENCY FILL YOUR PRESCRIPTION time, which is when I like to fill it. I'm deadline oriented, guys, okay?


Present Day:

Okay, so today it was definitely EMERGENCY FILL YOUR PRESCRIPTION time. I called the pharmacy to make sure they still have my order.

They've never heard of the prescription. No record of it. No idea what I was talking about at all. Even though they called me about it literally two weeks ago.

I called the doctor's office. I got a great woman on the other end of the line who was incensed for me even though I wasn't even mad yet.

"We FILLED that through ESCRIPT on APRIL 26th at TWELVE FIFTY NINE PEE EM" she half shouted at me. "YOU TELL THEM THAT."

I called the pharmacy back. I told them. I really did!

They still had never heard of this. Couldn't find it in their system. I told them about the previous mistake, low to regular, and they checked their mistake order files. Nothing.

I call the doctor's back. I get the same woman. She has the people who resend orders resend the order.

By this time, I'd wasted nearly an hour going back and forth and explaining my situation to each new person and the twin not-a-joke joke was getting really old to me.

I decided to kill two birds with one stone and cycle to the pharmacy which is three miles away. I threw my credit card in my pocket and put my phone in the holder with Runkeeper on cycle mode.

I had forgotten one thing. The bike belongs to my husband and it's one of those new-fangled electric bikes. I didn't have a bike lock, and I'd have just left it if it was mine, but it was not mine. And if it got stolen, I would not only not have a way home other than walking (and the girls would be getting out of school soon), but I'd have to explain to my husband that I rode his bike to the pharmacy and left it outside while I argued with the pharmacist tech for an hour and let it get stolen. No thanks.

So, what was I going to do?

I decided to try to go through the drive thru pharmacy window. But I wasn't sure about it. Can a bicycle go through the drive thru? I didn't think it could. But then again, why not? I was on wheels. Wasn't that the requirement? I didn't know, but I got in line behind a very old woman who took about 20 minutes to fill her scrip and sign.

Finally, I walk my bike up.

"I'm sorry ma'am but for your own safety, you have to be in a vehicle to use this lane."

Now, I have dealt with this tech before, and he's nice and I like him, and I wasn't mad that I couldn't use the drive thru because, honestly, I was pretty sure I couldn't use the drive thru. I was pretty irritated that he'd let me chill behind that lady for 20 minutes without giving me a heads up. I mean, for my own safety is fine, except what about my safety for the 20 minutes I was sitting between that pristine 1975 Lincoln and the Dodge Ram just behind me. Plus, I was back to my problem of not being able to leave the bike.

"I'll have to ride the bike in!"

The dude didn't make as if to stop me, so I rode my bike in. I probably should have walked it in, but, like I said, I was pretty irritated.

You would hope it would be all badass, like you cruise in gracefully, stop right at the right desk and order your refill, but, alas, I live in real life, and I maybe almost fell, and definitely somehow upended the pile of hand baskets for people who get a billion things in the pharmacy and then pay for them with coupons and change. After that, I threw down the kickstand and asked the same guy who had just seen me at the window for my birth control now that we were both inside.

And

The pharmacy still had no record of this prescription. I talked to the pharmacist tech. It was noon, so the pharmacist was on lunch break. Which meant no answers were coming.

But then

I remembered I had my phone, a phone that actually makes calls when it's not being used as a fitness tracker. I called the doctor's again, had the woman repeat the scrip to me, then I put her on my phone with the pharmacist tech who was really doing a phenomenal job putting up with my shit. He really is a perfectly sweet guy. Hell, maybe he even was concerned with my safety, I don't know.

He listened to them, and I heard him repeat, Low in the bc name. I mouthed NOOOOOOOO at the cool tech, and he thumbs-upped me. He knew what was going on.

He hung up the phone and said, "hey, I remember this now. You're the woman who had twins on Low, and we called them to have them change the prescription, but they never did."

So, he straightened it all out and they're going to text me when it's ready, hopefully before Sunday, and, bonus, there were apparently some unfilled mail-order birth control pills and the tech said he could get those for me too.

"I don't think I can get them before Sunday though," he said.

"I don't mind that, I just need the one before Sunday. I want the rest just as soon as we can get it, since Trump is our president, and who knows how long we'll have access to this stuff."

He laughed.

And now I have a new joke that is actually not a joke at all but truth-to-life facts what happened for real.


FIN.

Finding fake news -- Breitbart (part 2)

When people look to back up their preconceived ideas of society, the internet has made it easy to find a website source stating any viewpoint as fact. How do we discern who is actually trustworthy?

Yesterday, Lyle sent me a flurry of news meant to prove that 3 million illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton, as put forth by Infowars and our President-elect.

I went over his first link yesterday. You can find that story here.

Let's move on to his second piece of evidence:

.@parentwin https://t.co/2B7nUjL5H2

— LyleRuderburg (@BetterGemsToday) November 29, 2016

This is a link to a Breitbart story, entitled Illegal foreign voting in Virginia covered up by Soros-backed Democratic Officials, says report. It's dateline is October 2, 2016.

We're not going to tackle that yet. That's in the days to come. First, we're going to look at Breitbart itself.

And what is Breitbart? Liberals immediately dismiss Breitbart as an alt-right (white supremacist, according to the Associated Press) publication which promotes propaganda and fake news. Is that true?

Side note: You might not like that the AP has labeled alt-right white supremacist. But they're not doing it because they don't like the alt-right. This label is primary sourced. Ben Shapiro, formerly of Fox News (and someone who interviewed me mercilessly over one of my liberal pieces for time) calls the alt-right "not good people," and a whole lot more.

We can start at Breitbart itself. In this piece by Milo Yiannopoulos and Allum Bokhari, Milo's deputy, he combats the idea that the alt-right is synonymous with white supremacists, stating, "one thing stands out above all else: intelligence. Skinheads, by and large, are low-information, low-IQ thugs driven by the thrill of violence and tribal hatred. The alternative right are a much smarter group of people — which perhaps suggests why the Left hates them so much. They’re dangerously bright."

He used this image in the piece:

Milo is a Breitbart writer permanently suspended from Twitter over racist remarks and threats (I'll provide two different takes on that story for you. Breitbart's and The New York Times). Now, you can believe that Milo should still be on Twitter; you can think his "abusive comments" (NYT) were not abusive comments. But the facts show that Twitter executives found enough betrayal of their terms of service to suspend him permanently. That's fact. If you don't like it, that's perfectly reasonable. You can say anything you like about Twitter or discount their decision, but the decision still stands. The decision and the reasoning behind that decision is fact.

Back to the alt-right and white supremacism: Milo cites the alt-right's intellectual beginnings at Richard Spencer and his website, alternativeright.com. At that site, we find Radix, a multi-media endeavor, which lists its mission as being "dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of European people in the United States, and around the world."

White supremacy, by definition is: "the belief, theory, or doctrine that white people are inherently superior to people from all other racial groups, especially black people, and are therefore rightfully the dominant group in any society."
Spencer's mission is fairly close to that definition, but not, I think, close enough that we should objectively close the gap. So, let's move forward.

Richard Spencer is the President and Director of the National Policy Institute. It's tagline is "For our people, our culture, our future" and it self-describes on its site as "an independent organization dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of  people of European descent in the United States, and around the world."

Okay, same goal there. He got a BA in Virginia, an MA in Chicago, and was going for a doctorate at Duke before becoming, as he calls it, a journalist. The posts on the NPI site fall off in 2015, and the last time the Twitter account was used was last month.

On November 19, Spencer spoke at his institute's "Become who we are" event, and led the crowd shouting, "Hail Trump, hail our people, hail our victory." This is public video. Now, you can believe he was talking about the presidential election, the Trump voters, and the election victory. And you can believe that the hand-raising salute reminiscent of Hitler's regime is a coincidence. But that doesn't mean he didn't say those words in that way and use that gesture in that way in clear view of the public. And as he is a renowned alt-right intellectual, by his own account and others, it would perhaps be insulting to him to assume he didn't know what he was recalling in his words and actions. This is a thing that happened. It is primary sourced. It is fact.

Spencer's Twitter account has also been suspended and Twitter released this statement, excerpted here: 

". . . our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others . . . we’ve seen an uptick in the number of accounts violating these policies and have taken enforcement actions against these accounts, ranging from warnings that also require the deletion of Tweets violating our policies to permanent suspension. 

"We know many people believe we have not done enough to curb this type of behavior on Twitter. We agree. We are continuing to invest heavily in improving our tools and enforcement systems to better allow us to identify and take faster action on abuse as it’s happening and prevent repeat offenders..."

The headmaster at Spencer's high school alma mater, St. Mark's School of Texas, released a statement denouncing Spencer: ". . .video footage emerged of this alumnus leading a white nationalist meeting in Washington, D.C., bringing even greater attention to these hateful, divisive, racist, and anti-Semitic views. This has been deeply troubling and terribly upsetting to our whole school community. At St. Mark’s, we reject racism and bigotry in all its forms and expressions."

So, our facts on Spencer, the man Milo held up as a rational intellect of the alt-right, include that he has made white nationalist, white supremacist remarks (as primary sourced), that he runs two white nationalist organizations/websites, and that Twitter kicked his personal and his Radix accounts off their platform for abusive comments.

Quick side-note on Twitter bans versus the First Amendment and censorship issues:

The First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

It applies to our government, not to private companies who have a duty to the safety of their users. Twitter's Terms of Service states: "you may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories."

When you sign up voluntarily for an account on their platform, you agree to their terms and are bound by that contract. Twitter has determined that Milo and Spencer were in violation of their hateful conduct and harassment clauses. Fact.

So, while you might believe that Milo and Spencer have been censored, the fact remains that they agreed to a contract that they then violated. It's fact.

Let's get back to Milo's defense of the alt-right/white supremacist movement (according, again, to the Associated Press).

The next group Milo writes about are the Neoreactionaries. Klint Finley, a reporter for Wired, wrote about it for TechCrunch, and thankfully, we don't need to go just on his word. At the end of his piece, he links tomes of information on the neoreactionaries.

Neoreaction started with Curtis Yarvin, who started as an internet commenter on sites like 2blowhard. The movement continues to be fanned on debate sites like Less Wrong.

Enter Michael Anissimov, a leader in the neoreaction movement, and studier of artificial intelligence.

Anissimov's LinkedIn points us to him being the owner of Zenit Books. This company cannot be found on the internet. It appears to be a shell publisher for Anissimov to publish his works. He calls it his independent publishing and consulting company. Linkedin also says he previously was the Media Director of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a nonprofit focused on artificial intelligence. It studies the mathematic underpinnings of intelligent behavior.

In this video, he says that it is a fundamental premise that people are not equal.

"We almost viscerally react away as if it's not fair or evil that there could be beings that are a lot stronger or smarter, and that makes us unprepared. . .We can't upgrade everyone on the planet slowly or at the same time. So we're going to be looking at a world in the next 50 years with huge power and intellectual disparities. . . 

"We're finding out that there are racial differences and that race is something that truly exists. I think that we will learn to fear diversity. . .Liberalism wants to think that we're all equivalent. It's considered unacceptable to study of human genetic variation, particularly in the area of IQ, which is very important."

Now I picked those quotes, because those are the quotes relevant to connecting Anissmov's work in AI with neoreaction. The entire video was linked above and you can listen to the whole 30 minutes yourself. That said, this is primary sourced. He said this.

Importantly, Neoreactionaries are against Democracy. This can be primary sourced to Assiminov as well.

He wrote on a now defunct website moreright.com that "Demotist systems, that is, systems ruled by the ‘People,’ such as Democracy and Communism, are predictably less financially stable than aristocratic systems. On average, they undergo more recessions and hold more debt. They are more susceptible to market crashes. They waste more resources. Each dollar goes further towards improving standard of living for the average person in an aristocratic system than in a Democratic one."

Neoreactionaries promote monarchies. Remember Yarvin, from above? He proposes turning nation states into corporations. Again, not skewed news media. His ideas, written down, directly.

If Neoreactionaries aren't enough for you, here is Weev, tearing Anissimov apart because violently threatened and harassed libertarian vlogger, Julie Borowski. Not because of the threats, of course, but because this human reaction undercut "the revolutionary ideas" of the movement. Weev then makes a direct offer to neoreactionaries:

"To those proponents of the dying neoreactionary movement that want to reshape society to make it more friendly to high-IQ individuals, and those that have abandoned neoreaction because of those like Anissimov, I want to assure you that you have a home in white nationalism. We have the courage and brutality that neoreaction lacks. We have the kinds of resources you would never have in NRx, because whites of all aptitudes and attitudes are welcome. We have jackboots on the ground who are capable of taking care of any man-children who decide to try to represent the movement. We assure all engineers a very special place in the new order, and we are making heavy investments into new technologies that I think you'd be very happy to participate in.

Get in touch with me if you want to switch pro-white movements. We've got a slack setup. We're building things. It's an exciting time to be pro-white."

Weev, by the way, is a renowned hacker. Here's a Vice piece about his work with the AshleyMadison site a while back. You can google him and find any number of his conquests and exploits. Here's a Wired piece about his conviction which was overturned when he grabbed personal information from 100,000 people via AT&T's unsecured site. Weev is a thing.

So, through Weev, we now have a direct connection between Breitbart and white nationalism, and the alt-right and white nationalism.

And I'm stopping here for the time being, though we are only a quarter of the way through Breitbart.

Trump has said he is distancing himself from these groups, but let us all remember that he appointed Breitbart's Steve Bannon to Chief Strategist, and that his National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, stands in praise of Milo. We'll get into all that later, but for now...

That is fact.