Monday, February 25, 2019

Grannies Respond: What We Saw on the US-Mexico Border in McAllen, Texas Motivated Us to Fight On

 
Grannies Respond is a grassroots movement, which formed in spring 2018 in response to the separation of families seeking asylum at the southern border of the United States. As news spread of immigrant children being separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border — at that time a hallmark of the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy — a group of outraged grandmothers in New York state decided it was time to act.

They formed Grannies Respond/Abuelas Responden, and put out a call on social media for others to join them in a six-city, 2,000-mile trip to McAllen, Texas, home of the largest U.S. Customs and Border Protection detention center for undocumented immigrants, where they planned to protest.

The 30 Grannies and their supporters departed from New York City’s Union Square July 31, 2018 in two 15-seat vans and a camper. By the time the Grannies’ caravan reached the border, the group had picked up participants from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Georgia, Kentucky, Alabama, Florida, Oregon, Wisconsin, Illinois, Louisiana; they converged along the route, driving vans, RVs, cars, trucks, busses — anything, really, with wheels and a motor (there was even a motorcycle). They were a diverse lot, but all agreed on these demands: the immediate reunion of all families, an end to the detention of immigrants and their families, and due process under the law for all immigrants requesting asylum.

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Source: Grannies Respond/Abuelas Responden

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