"The function of freedom is to free someone else"-- Toni Morrison
June 19th, also known as Juneteenth, is the day that commemorates the June 19th, 1865 announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas (two years after slavery was abolished more broadly in the United States through the Emancipation Proclamation and six months before the 13th Amendment in December 1865 made slavery unconstitutional.) It is a day to celebrate freedom and also to remember the genocide of enslaved Africans and African Americans by the U.S. government.
In Texas the U.S. department of Homeland Security continues to enforce a policy created by the Trump administration in April 2018 of "zero tolerance" for migration across the U.S./Mexico border. Adults who are found in violation are separated from their children. Nearly 2,000 immigrant children were separated from parents during six weeks in April and May, according to the Department of Homeland Security (Washington Post).
The United States Government has a long history of separating families as a way of controlling populations. Native Americans were separated, endured forced migration, and children were removed from their homes and placed in residential schools. Africans and African-Americans were separated and enslaved. Japanese Americans were separated and placed in internment camps on US soil during WWII. Our contemporary prison system is the largest in the world and it separates more families than any other institution in this country. What is happening with migrant families at the U.S./Mexico border is not new but it is a moral emergency.
One of the ways Charis seeks to help our beloved community members is to connect you with resources and books so that you can make informed choices about what is happening in your family, your neighborhood, your city, your country, your world. It is both a comfort and a tragedy that none of what is happening in our world today is new. It is our duty to know our multifaceted histories. It is our duty to know the stories of our world so that we can act differently.
Juneteenth is a day of celebration and mourning, of memory and action. We hope these books help you and your family learn more about the crisis at the border. We hope they inspire you to action.
Here are some more things you can do:
Support on the ground advocacy organizations:
RAICES: This Texas-based organization offers free and low-cost legal services to immigrant children and families. https://www.raicestexas.org/
Pueblo Sin Fronteras: This organization provides humanitarian aid and shelter to migrants on their way to the U.S. http://www.pueblosinfronteras.org/
Together Rising: This Virginia-based organization is helping provide legal assistance for 60 migrant children who were separated from their parents and are currently detained in Arizona. https://togetherrising.org/
Al Otro Lado: This bi-national organization works providing legal services to deportees and migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, including deportee parents whose children remain in the U.S. https://alotrolado.org/take-action/donate/
The Florence Project: This Arizona-based organization offers free legal services to men, women, and unaccompanied children in immigration custody. https://firrp.org/
Texas Civil Rights Project: This organization has been using legal advocacy and litigation to help families separated at the border. https://texascivilrightsproject.org/
Border Angels: This California-based organization supports San Diego County's immigrant population and focuses on issues related to the U.S.-Mexico border. https://www.borderangels.org/
Neta: This Texas-based grassroots organization helps asylum seekers on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. https://netargv.com/
Hope Border Institute (HOPE) is an independent grassroots community organization working in the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez-Las Cruces region, that seeks to bring the perspective of Catholic social teaching to bear on the social realities unique to our region. Through a robust program of research, reflection, leadership development, advocacy and action, HOPE develops and aligns the border’s community leaders engaged in the work of justice from across the Mexico-US border to deepen solidarity across borders and transform our region. https://www.hopeborder.org/
The Border Network for Human Rights: founded in 1998, is one of the leading human rights advocacy and immigration reform organizations located at the U.S./Mexico Border. BNHR has over 7,000 members in West Texas and Southern New Mexico.http://bnhr.org/
Contact your elected officials. In Georgia your senators are:
Isakson, Johnny - (R - GA) Class III
131 Russell Senate Office Building Washington DC 20510
(202) 224-3643 (770) 661-0999
Contact: www.isakson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/email-me
Perdue, David - (R - GA) Class II
455 Russell Senate Office Building Washington DC 20510
(202) 224-3521 p: (404) 865-0087
f: (404) 816-3435
Contact: www.perdue.senate.gov/connect/email
Keep Loving, Keep Fighting.
Mazie is ready to celebrate liberty. She is ready to celebrate freedom. She is ready to celebrate a great day in American history -- the day her ancestors were no longer slaves. Mazie remembers the struggles and the triumph, as she gets ready to celebrate Juneteenth. This beautiful story by award-winning author and illustrator Floyd Cooper will captivate both children and adults.
A Pura Belpré Author and Illustrator Honor Book!
Email or call for price.
In his signature eloquent prose, backed up by thorough research, Russell Freedman tells the story of Austrian-born Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie. They belonged to Hitler Youth as young children, but began to doubt the Nazi regime. As older students, the Scholls and a few friends formed the White Rose, a campaign of active resistance to Hitler and the Nazis.
In this moving and timely story, a young child describes what it is like to be a migrant as she and her father travel north toward the U.S. border.
Email or call for price.
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
A Booklist Editor's Choice
On the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor comes a harrowing and enlightening look at the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II— from National Book Award finalist Albert Marrin
Email or call for price.
A deceptively simple, imaginative story depicting the complex emotional reality of a girl whose father no longer lives at home.
Email or call for price.
The Wedding Portrait is an essential book for kids about standing up for what's right. Here are stories of direct action from around the world that are bookended by the author's wedding story. He and his bride led their wedding party to a protest, and were captured in a photo by the local newspaper kissing in front of a line of police just before being arrested.
This poetic book is a resounding tribute to Tubman's strength, humility, and devotion. With proper reverence, Weatherford and Nelson do justice to the woman who, long ago, earned over and over the name Moses.
What does it mean to be documented or undocumented? How do these terms work across borders and boundaries, languages and nations?
Countering the chorus of anti-immigrant voices that have grown increasingly loud in the current political moment, No One is Illegal exposes the racism of anti-immigration vigilantes and puts a human face on the immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border to work in the United States.
Email or call for price.
“If justice had a Jericho trumpet, Chamoiseau would be it.”—Junot Díaz
As migrants embark on perilous journeys across oceans and deserts in pursuit of sanctuary and improved living conditions, what is the responsibility of those safely ensconced in the nations they seek to enter?
Email or call for price.
From prizewinning journalist and immigration expert Alfredo Corchado comes the sweeping story of the great Mexican migration from the late 1980s to today.
Email or call for price.
“What makes Trump immune is that he is not a president within the context of a healthy Republican government. He is a cult leader of a movement that has taken over a political party – and he specifically campaigned on a platform of one-man rule. This fact permeates “Can It Happen Here? . . .
"Harsha Walia has played a central role in building some of North America's most innovative, diverse, and effective new movements. That this brilliant organizer and theorist has found time to share her wisdom in this book is a tremendous gift to us all."--Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine
Email or call for price.
Revised and expanded edition of the groundbreaking book which demystifies twenty-one of the most widespread myths and beliefs about immigrants and immigrations.
The United States currently has the largest prison population on the planet. Over the last four decades, structural unemployment, concentrated urban poverty, and mass homelessness have also become permanent features of the political economy. These developments are without historical precedent, but not without historical explanation. In this searing critique, Jordan T.
When in 1492 Christopher Columbus set out for Asia but instead happened upon the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola, his error inaugurated a specifically colonial modernity. This is, Security and Terror contends, the colonial modernity within which we still live.
"Humane yet often horrifying, Tell Me How It Ends offers a compelling, intimate look at a continuing crisis--and its ongoing cost in an age of increasing urgency." --Jeremy Garber, Powell's Books
Email or call for price.
An intimate look at the people ensnared by the US detention and deportation system, the largest in the world
Email or call for price.
No Wall They Can Build scrutinizes the borders that control movement around North America. Drawing on nearly a decade of solidarity work in the desert between Mexico and Arizona, the authors uncover the real goals and costs of US border policy, who benefits from it, and what it will take to change it.
The Carlisle Indian School (1879–1918) was an audacious educational experiment. Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt, the school’s founder and first superintendent, persuaded the federal government that training Native children to accept the white man’s ways and values would be more efficient than fighting deadly battles.
Email or call for price.
A major new exploration of the refugee crisis, focusing on how borders are formed and policed
Email or call for price.
A Mexican-American lawyer exposes corruption in the US asylum procedure and despotism in the Mexican government