There are plans to incarcerate migrant children at Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma, hardly more than an hour from our house.

There is a long history of using this installation for such things. The Obama administration detained children there. Japanese Americans were interned there during World War II. Native Americans were held there in the nineteenth century. Geronimo died while imprisoned there.

I just got home from a rally protesting this latest child internment. It was organized by a group of Japanese Americans based in Oregon, including at least a half-dozen septuagenarians who had lived in internment camps during World War II.

There were more than 200 people there, which seemed like quite a turnout in a small military town far from Oklahoma's few urban centers, especially since the organizers pulled this off with only a week's lead time. There were a number of interesting speakers, including the former internees, tribal leaders speaking on Indigenous issues, and local representatives of Black Lives Matter and multiple immigrant rights groups.

It was inspiring to see people band together peacefully for something constructive, but also a bit dispiriting to realize how unlikely it is that citizen efforts will effect much change. Still, I wanted to do something. More and more, I have the sick feeling that we are in the process of finding out how we would have behaved while the Nazis were coming to power. I feel like I need to say or do something, but I'm not sure what.

Here's a NYT article written by the husband of a friend:

"Stop Repeating History": Plan to Keep Migrant Children at Former Internment Facility Draws Outrage

And here are a couple of pictures I took. You can't really see the scope of it, but the NYT article reports 200 people and that seems about right.

Good for you. I love citizen involvement. I think though your comparison to how folks acted in Nazi Germany is perhaps not apt - you would not have been permitted to protest.

My concern is that it will become apt.

There was an effort to stop the internment survivors from protesting at the gate of Fort Sill, citing a law forbidding protests within a certain distance of a military installation. There is probably some justification for this, out of concern for security, but it is an incursion on our right to protest. In the current climate, it is not inconceivable that the areas where we may not protest could be enlarged.

In any case, the people at Fort Sill decided that septuagenarian concentration camp survivors were not a sufficient security risk to force the issue. They were allowed to protest peacefully and, in fact, held a press conference there.

The larger event that I attended was in a public park in Lawton.

thank you, Mary Anna

One more thing regarding whether the comparison to Nazi Germany is apt--in my original post, I drew a parallel to the period when the Nazis were coming to power. This is not at all the same thing as the period when the Nazis controlled Germany.

There is presumably a moment in a nation's history when its descent into something akin to Nazi Germany might be prevented. It would be terrible to think that a moment like that came and went, and I did nothing.

quote:

There is presumably a moment in a nation's history when its descent into something akin to Nazi Germany might be prevented. It would be terrible to think that a moment like that came and went, and I did nothing.

This, I need to remember this. Thank you for this post, and for attending the protest.

quote:

Originally posted by CHAS:
thank you, Mary Anna

+100

Mary Anna, thank you for being there, and for bearing witness to this. This should not be who we are. It’s unacceptable. But it’s happening. Ugh.

Good on you!

Good on you, Mary Anna. I am so geograhically removed from the area, it makes me feel there's little I can do. It's nice to hear that caring people in the vicinities are taking actions.

Good for you!

I've mentioned it before, I think, but there is an excellent book, "In the Garden of Beasts," that chronicles the US Ambassador to Germany in 1933. The book itself is largely about the family but spends a fair amount of time describing the diplomatic response to Hitler's rise to power (spoiler alert: not much of one) and the generally apathetic view by much of German and European society to what they were initially seeing. I felt there were a lot of parallels to today's situation in the US. It also underscored the role of anti-Semitism by those in power around the world, including in the USA.

The facility at Clint.

https://www.nytimes.com/intera...er-patrol-clint.html

quote:

Originally posted by Nina:
Good for you!

I've mentioned it before, I think, but there is an excellent book, "In the Garden of Beasts," that chronicles the US Ambassador to Germany in 1933. The book itself is largely about the family but spends a fair amount of time describing the diplomatic response to Hitler's rise to power (spoiler alert: not much of one) and the generally apathetic view by much of German and European society to what they were initially seeing. I felt there were a lot of parallels to today's situation in the US. It also underscored the role of anti-Semitism by those in power around the world, including in the USA.

One recently viewed Holocauust survivor's testimony recounts among so much, having gone to a huge amount of trouble and expense to get a validated visa only to have the US Consul refuse it on a pretext - that the affadavit it was based on was no good. (It was just fine.)

It was clearly a matter of his anti-Semitism.