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Into the Unknown: Navigating Chaos Together
It is difficult to know what to do or what to say in these moments. I’m living in a city that is under siege by a federal government determined to prove the worst of immigrants and Latinos. I know that many of you, dear readers, are scattered across cities and towns that are facing similar harm. And the harm is coming from all angles, fed and local, government and residents, in person and online. A constant barrage of people radicalized to believe the worst of us. How do we move forward in this way? When the administration began, I gave some steps I was taking to help maintain my sanity…
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Taking Care: A Duty to Self and to Others
“We’ve been living in a harvest.” Sherrilyn Ifil reminded us of this at the ACLU-IL luncheon. She began her keynote reminding us that we’ve been leaving in the harvest of civil rights and individual liberties thanks to the hard work from so many before us. And because it felt like an abundance we thought it would last forever. She was much more eloquent but it is an analogy that has stuck with me. It stuck because it’s so true; both the hard truth that perhaps we weren’t as vigilant in protecting our rights and the systems as we should have been. And that we are now facing a moment, especially…
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A Survival Framework: The Magic is in the Balance
At this point, I am resigned to the fact that life will continue to be “unprecedented,” with extreme highs and lows. I guess such is life, and we have to figure out how to not just survive it but overcome it and find joy, hope, resiliency–all the good things. Again, I don’t want to come off as polly-anna–things are rough, to say the least, and it’s only day two. But I was an immigration attorney, on the ground, during the first term and I practiced for a long time prior to that. I am old enough to have a plan and also wise enough to know that I don’t know…