These are people playing by the rules. Fleeing autocracies which Republicans have demanded (and sometimes illegally facilitated) covert wars against for decades.
And they're being scammed, trafficked, humiliated and abandoned just to make Tucker Carlson laugh. https://t.co/FXWQSPTcUN
— zeddy (@Zeddary) September 17, 2022
From the Washington Post, “A migrant landed on Martha’s Vineyard. A resident jumped in to help”:
Earlier this month, Eliomar Aguero swam across the border separating the United States and Mexico with seven other people. The 30-year-old had been traveling for two months from Venezuela through 11 other countries by foot, bus and train.
Around the same time, Katrina Lima, 42, a real estate agent on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, was in the thick of her normal routine: running, work, dinners with friends. She was looking forward to the fall, a time when the vacation crowds thin and the island becomes even more luminous.
This week, these two lives intersected in an improbable chapter in America’s bitter debate over immigration. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) chartered two planes to fly a group of migrants from Texas to this small island in Massachusetts, which serves as a summer retreat for the liberal elite…
On Friday morning, Lima helped tick off names as the nearly 50 migrants boarded buses that would take them from the church where they had spent two nights to a ferry bound for the mainland. From there, they would be transported to a military base on Cape Cod.
They now had full bags and new cellphones. Many wore purple long-sleeved shirts from Martha’s Vineyard High School. As the migrants said goodbye to the local volunteers who had provided them with food and shelter, many in the group cried. Watching them leave, Lima cried too.
“You just hope that they land where they’re supposed to,” she said. “And that they encounter good people along the way.”…
Aguero spent his life in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. The economic crisis and political unrest gripping the country pushed nearly the entire population into poverty, including his family. Millions have fled. Aguero, too, began searching for a way out.
There was one, but it was dangerous. Aguero and his wife left Venezuela in July hoping to reach the United States. For weeks, they had nowhere to sleep. At one point, they were sent from Chile back to Colombia. From there, they traveled through all of Central America. Finally, after riding a notoriously dangerous train through Mexico, they reached the Rio Grande…
Aguero and his wife were eventually taken by immigration agents to San Antonio, where they were reunited with Aguero’s 23-year-old brother Rafael, who had begun his journey northward a few weeks earlier. The couple spent 72 hours in a migrant aid center before being put out on the street, where they joined Rafael, who was scraping together cash to buy food by working whatever odd jobs he could find.
A blond-haired woman approached the trio on the streets of San Antonio and introduced herself as “Perla.” She asked if they needed help. She offered them a hotel room while she made plans to take them elsewhere. Days later, Aguero, Maria and Rafael boarded a plane to an unknown destination…
Lima was born in New York to Bolivian immigrant parents. When she was growing up, her family sometimes spent vacations on Martha’s Vineyard. Lima’s elder sister, a chef, later settled there, as did Lima, joining a community of about 20,000 year-round residents. Seven years ago, she began volunteering with the local homeless shelter…
That first night was spent trying to reassure people who didn’t understand where they were, Lima said. She tried to let them know they were in good hands, but also that they were free to go if they wished.
She was back the following morning at 6:30. It didn’t matter that she had to work to do — she wanted to show the migrants that they were welcome. She spent the next 15 hours there, helping manage a stream of volunteers, donors and reporters. She started making an Excel spreadsheet of what people had offered to donate: blankets, spare rooms, books, diapers, legal help, therapy.
In the evening, she pulled up an empty gray foldable chair next to her and invited the migrants to talk about what they’d gone through. She heard about people getting robbed and tricked and watching their friends struggle to survive. So many had started the journey with more people. Some were kidnapped or drowned or died of dehydration.
Since the moment she heard about the arrival of the migrants, Lima had been in a whir of motion. “Then you have moments when you’re hearing the stories,” she said. Those are “moments where your heart stops.”…
Friday morning began with breakfast provided by a nearby golf course. Meanwhile, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) had arranged for voluntary transportation to Joint Base Cape Cod, a military base that is designated as an emergency shelter. The state has said it will provide the migrants with food as well as access to health care and legal help…
The waters now seemed friendlier than they did when Aguero had landed at the airport two days earlier. He still didn’t know exactly where they were going. Some of his fellow migrants had learned from volunteers that they would be staying on a military base. They didn’t know what that would mean, how long they would stay there or how safe they would be. On their long journeys to the United States, military officials had not always been friendly.
Aguero wasn’t nervous about what was next, he said, because he was in America. Even with all the confusion of the past few days, everything would work out.
Yep. If he wanted to make a point there’s Nantucket right next door. But then he’d alienate all his wealthy Wall Street friends.
— Sherry Lind (@sherry_lind) September 16, 2022
sociopaths all the way down https://t.co/n1WNs9ezHg
— bearded guy that yells at school board meetings (@CalmSporting) September 17, 2022
Migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard have been voluntarily taken to Joint Base Cape Cod where they will have access to health care, crisis counseling and legal help. My story: https://t.co/HEapedpzz1 #wcvb
— Sharman Sacchetti (@SharmanTV) September 17, 2022
Joint Base Cape Cod is run by the National Guard. The base includes “a small town usually reserved for housing soldiers and their families. It has provided humanitarian assistance in the past, including when residents from Louisiana stayed there after fleeing Hurricane Katrina in 2005.”
I’ve stayed there with my family for a Wampanoag language immersion camp. It’s very nice. Like a college campus
— 7aFoods (@7aFoods) September 16, 2022
sending these folks directly into the arms of a bunch of high end lawyers just might have been a tactical error
— ??????? (@drexl2517) September 16, 2022
Republicans don’t want to talk about abortion so they’re turning the racism dial up.
— Jort-Michel Connard ?? (@torriangray) September 16, 2022
This November, vote against cruelty.
— Neera Tanden?? (@neeratanden) September 16, 2022
War for Ukraine Day 206: We Must Bear Witness So That Never Again Actually & Finally Means Never Again!
MazeDancer
Some insanity happened at the Trump rally in Ohio, tonight, that no one wants to see but, probably, everyone should.
Trump starts a long litany of looney lies to music. Yes, music. Music plays while he drones through his crazy. And the people in the crowd raise their hand with their index finger pointed and sway.
Jim Jones time.
It’s both wacky and frightening. See for yourself https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1571308887248179200?s=21&t=clqysYPeIrMtW7KgXO-dn
On topic – loved the MA response!
Jackie
Just imagine if we turned Texas, Florida and Arizona BLUE! Democratic governors would actually HELP migrants fleeing from oppression and communism.
Jackie
@MazeDancer: Creepy! And, where’s the Bics?
dmsilev
@MazeDancer: Can’t they all just fuck off and head out to the nearest passing comet or something?
Bill K
Arrest the next bus driver or pilot to pull a stunt like this and it will end very quickly.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I’ve been thinking that the criminal Abbot and DeathSantis are pulling this shit because of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Time for a distraction and diverting the news back onto a topic that they think is a winner for them this fall.
Roe, Roe, Roe the vote!
Honus
@Bill K: hell, arrest Abbot and DeSantis. They have publicly confessed to a crikinnal RICO scheme
Shalimar
@MazeDancer: I thought the even weirder part was Trump’s insistence that J.D. Vance has fallen in love with him. For someone who doesn’t really show any hint of homosexuality, Trump loves to talk about his love affairs with men. Maybe this is what excites Lindsey Graham too.
Sanjeevs
@MazeDancer: Is the raised arm with one finger out the semi-fascist salute?
Mike in NC
Noted before, sociopath Trump bigly enjoyed stripping people of food stamps and kids of school lunches. Republican all the way.
marklar
Total stab in the dark here, but might the one-finger salute be a reference WWG1WGA (Q-Anonsense’s “when we go one we go all”)?
SFAW
Listening to lie after lie spewing from his oral sphincter, I am reminded how much I don’t miss hearing his disgusting, nasal voice.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Shalimar:
Well, “Macho Man” plays at his rallies all the time…
Also, who would’ve ever thought this would happen? That Republicans would actually try to run away from being anti-abortion?
Rubio and Graham tried to change the conversation:
“See see see!? Those Demonrats only care about killing babies, not protecting women’s lives! They refused our reasonable compromise bill”.
It apparently didn’t work because that shit got shelved pronto
SFAW
@marklar:
Fixed
Tenar Arha
The more often this happens this week the more I tend to agree with others that this is the GOP trying to change the subject from the outrageous stories about women being forced into risking their lives against their wills, to stories about living brown refugees whom they can scaremonger about.
@marklar: Sounds very plausible.
frosty
@marklar: Yes, WWG1WGA seems likely to me.
Chetan Murthy
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Well, it was either scary brown people, or trans kids in the wrong bathrooms, right? Maybe they’ve got one of those panics teed up for October ?
Redshift
@MazeDancer: From what I read on Twitter, both the song and the “number one” raised finger are Qanon things. TFG is fully embracing them now. (Some speculation that it’s because so many of his previous shock troops are in jail, but who knows.)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@MazeDancer:
Apparently, he couldn’t fill the entire arena; it was only half full from media reports I’ve read from before the rally started. In an area with roughly 500,000 people (includes surrounding counties), he couldn’t even fill up the Covelli Centre. It’s capacity is 5,900. So 50% would be around 2950
JoyceH
@Honus:
I’ve seen plenty of suggestions for federal laws they’ve broken, but it looks like DeSantis even broke his own state law. The legislature passed something allowing the expenditure of that 12 million to remove illegal aliens from the state – at one of his gloating press conferences, a reporter asked him how that law could cover what he actually did, which was to round up aliens (not illegal, BTW) in Texas. You could see the question caught him off guard, and he was really verbally tap-dancing, claimed they had identified aliens who INTENDED to come to Florida and diverted them elsewhere. Well, I’m pretty darn confident that was a lie. Some of those Venezuelans talked about wanting to join other family members in different locations – but not Florida. I think he made that lie up on the spot. Internet sleuths, FIND PERLA!
HumboldtBlue
Huh
dm
I’ve been inclined to call these folks trafficked to Martha’s Vineyard “new Americans”. They’ve demonstrated courage and resourcefulness. We should be proud to claim them as our own.
What do Republicans have against new Americans, and why?
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): the caravans are back, right on schedule
Chetan Murthy
@Major Major Major Major: And this time, given that Dobbs is so recent, and the harm is ongoing, the normies don’t have the excuse of “it wasn’t such a big deal, and it was a long time ago”. We get to see whether the vast middle of American voters are gonna vote to save their own hides, save their kinfolk’s hides, and save the Republic in the process. Or whether they’re gonna fall for the ol’ “ooga booga brown people under the bed! Boo!”
The Oracle of Solace
In Texas at least, cruelty is what rural voters want, and they vote more reliably than the Texas Democratic Party’s base, which is urban voters and the young. I’m doing my (small) part to warn people of incipient (and insipid) fascism, but I am needing more sleeping aids to get through the nights as election day approaches…
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
They decided to make their own caravans
“Just think of it, war breaks out and nobody turns up.”
Benw
@MazeDancer: Holy shit. I forced myself to watch it. I’m just going full Godwin, but that video could be played right next to Hitler speeches. TFG is much lower energy, but the vibe is exactly the same. What a mess
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
It didn’t seem to work when they tried it in 2018 and then 2020, as I recall. They tried at least twice with the caravans narrative
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): worked a treat in VA in 2021; almost worked in NJ that same year. Gubernatorial elections, I mean.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
It was an off-year election. I’m not sure we can compare 2018 to 2021, etc. Different factors were in play. The overturning of Roe hadn’t happened yet in 2021. Who would’ve thought the pro-choice position would’ve prevailed by a landslide in Kansas a year ago?
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): i’m not here to argue with you, Goku. I’ll just note that everybody had a lotta
explanationsexcuses for why voters in VA returned power to the Nazis who tried to overthrow our Republic literally across the border from their state. Literally just over 10 months previously.All that guff about “thermostatic elections” and shit is just *excuses* for voters who didn’t think the defense of our Republic was important — not compared to dangerous brown people and trans kids in the wrong bathrooms and *bestiality* in National Book Award-winning books (that had been on the curriculum for decades). So yeah, a lot was going on. A lotta chaff thrown in the air to distract the easily-distractable fat and lazy suburbanites.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@dmsilev: As luck might have it, there is a passing comet right now.
TS
@MazeDancer:
Added to what his supporters in Texas & Florida are doing, its becoming part of the USA. They really want a dictator & will do virtually anything to make it happen.
Taken over the courts, now waiting to take over congress & then the Presidency – a country to be run by old white men.
Major Major Major Major
@Chetan Murthy: there really are a lot of vibes-based voters. Most people hold really incoherent beliefs.
The presence of a major issue can minimize the effects of this though. This year there is one, we’ll see.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
Granted on that I guess, but the fact that the Republicans are running away hard from Dobbs shows that it’s apparently a huge weakness for them. They’ve seen what happened in Kansas. A lot of new Democratic voters are being registered in many states. We’ll have to put in the work to victory, but all available evidence points to them running scared. They weren’t running scared last year and believed coming out of the winter that the midterms were going to be a complete cakewalk. Now that’s not so certain
Chetan Murthy
@Major Major Major Major:
This is why I mentioned that not even eleven months prior, that Nazi party had tried to overthrow our Republic. One might imagine that that should be a major issue. But alas, not for these imbeciles.
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Needless to say, I hope you’re right. B/c I really don’t want to start planning for emigration. [oh, whups, I’m not supposed to say that! And I’m not allowed to go drop nuclear bombs on all the rural parts of Texas, either! Oh bother! I guess all I can do is offer up my neck to be slit when the time comes!]
Major Major Major Major
@Chetan Murthy: that’s just not an issue of the sort that drives voting for most people. People vote about things that affect them personally. Jobs, crime, individual rights, taxes, roads… not a few hundred yahoos who failed to stop some ceremony (or whatever they think).
Chetan Murthy
@Major Major Major Major: Like I said: *imbeciles*
We all went to high school here. These are the ones who spent those years ramming their foreheads into brick walls, while I was actually doing the reading in American History class, I guess. *imbeciles
prostratedragon
Five Venezuelan waltzes by Antonio Lauro; Evangelos Assimakopoulos
sab
Worried here in 13th Congressional district of Ohio. The Democratic candidate is a good solid well-informed experienced legislator. Emilia Sykes.
Her opponent does have a law degree from the OSU but she seems to be a Kardasian wannabee. But she has that R after her name, and the redistricting put all of Medina County and most of Stark County into our district. So she has a good chance. Urk
ETA Opponent is Madison Gesiotto Gilbert.
iamr4man
@Bill K: This is exactly what I was thinking, only to add that the busses and planes be confiscated. I just don’t understand why this hasn’t happened.
Geminid
@MazeDancer: The New York Times ran a story yesterday about GOP Senate candidates distancing themselves from trump. The story said that the Vance campaign had not asked for trump to come to Ohio, that trump decided to on his own and then told the Vance campaign.
The story seems to have irritated trump, and at the rally he made a point of tying Vance to himself. The photo heading Politico’s rally article shows Vance speaking, with a frowning trump hovering off Vance’s left shoulder.
Much of trump’s speech was devoted to whining about his persecution by the “weaponized” Justice Department, and he would punctuate his complaints by turning to the seated Vance and say, “and you’re going to do something about that, JD.”
The best part (maybe not for Vance) was when trump pushed back on the idea that Senate candidates did not welcome him. Vance, trump said, “is kissing my ass.”
From Politico.
Geminid
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): There certainly were enough Republicans in that area to have filled the arena if trump (or JD Vance) motivated them, so a half full arena is certainly a fail for the Orange Churl.
What makes it worse is that a substantial chunk of the crowd was out of staters who were attending their 10th, 20th, or even 30th rally. Trumpheads, so to speak.
And it sure was a sad looking crowd! Not to be classist, but those people really put the Lump in Lumpenproletariat.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
We need a billboard along a major highway in Ohio saying, “Hey J.D., what does Trump’s ass taste like?”
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Saw an interview with an immigration lawyer. The immigrants may be eligible for something called a U-visa if it is shown they are victims of a crime (of kidnapping, say). And while it can take years to get a U-visa, MA is one of the best states in the US to apply as by state law you can not be deported while your case is pending.
Geminid
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I’m hoping that the migrants will be able to bring viable civil lawsuits against the people responsible for their treatment. This is not a substitute for criminal prosecution, but lawsuits have a lower standard of proof. The discovery process can be far reaching, and sometimes discovery can disclose criminal actions.This evidence can then be forwarded to prosecutors.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: I think that billboards generally can be a good vehicle for political messaging. They provide exposure, and people usually drive by billboards multiple times, so they provide repetition as well.
If the “kissing my ass” quote is concise enough, radio ads might be a very good way to propagate it. Democrats hated trump from the get go, but now there is a lot of trump fatigue out there among Independents, and some Republicans too. I think just hearing trump’s voice would trigger that fatigue.
Mimi haha
@Tenar Arha: White women forced to risk their lives. They barely care about us, but they don’t care at all about WOC.
Bex
“Americans kneel before God alone”…and that crowd knows who God is.
WaterGirl
@sab: I wondered for a minute about adding Sykes to our thermometer for 4 House races, but I did a bit of googling and it looks like she has plenty of funding.
Let’s hope she can pull it out!
WaterGirl
@Geminid: “Kissing anyone’s ass” makes a person look weak, especially if someone is describing you that way. Repeatedly! (especially if it’s in a simple radio ad)
Chief Oshkosh
@Bill K: Maybe. Alternatively, they become the next recipient of a Goober GoFundMe and retire early with millions. OTOH, the charter flight businesses could be very much in legal hot water, and possibly the owners themselves.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: Yeah, trump implicitly disparaged Vance. Politico quoted only part of trump’s statement. Hopefully it was not so convoluted that the Ryan campaign can’t use it.
Hell, they can just splice “Vance” and “is kissing my ass” together, even if trump did not say it exactly. My attitude on such matters is “Below the belt? What belt?”
AWOL
@Shalimar: Hmmmm. As a young man his bestie was Roy Cohn and they contemplated producing Broadway plays together.
Everyone in NYC in the know knows about Giuliani. He’s been screaming for help for eons. Someone—unlock his closet!
different-church-lady
It infuriates me how MAGAs just assume everyone who lives on The Vineyard must automatically be rich scum with cold hearts.
tokyokie
@different-church-lady: MAGAs decided that was the case after their horrible treatment of Alan Dershowitz.
WaterGirl
@different-church-lady: Those people are just the help. It’s the rich people who summer there who matter. The local workers who make it all happen are just like furniture. Invisible.