Lean In

[music] This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. [music] Welcome to Synchronicity. This is a bonus episode of synchronicity. I guess if you want to call it that. I just have one subject to talk about today. We'll see if I can keep it to one subject. Obviously, I'm sure many of you are tuning in, especially if you live in the United States, even if you don't, to what's going on at the border, the southern border of the United States with children and families being separated forcibly by border patrol agents and people who are under the direction of the current administration.

Normally, I think the last time I spoke about politics in a serious way was health care. That's just because it affects literally everyone in this country. Its impact is devastating for the majority of people. No one is happy with the current health care plan, and it just never seemed like competent decisions were being made. This situation is significantly different, and there are going to be one link in particular to RASIS, which is a help organization that provides financial aid and legal assistance to detainees who were maybe coerced to give up immigration status or asylum seekers. All briefly, just go into this so people understand what's going on.

I doubt there are a ton of Trump supporters who listen to this podcast, but if you are someone and you support this policy, I would love to hear from you. I don't want to say there's only one perspective that I feel is accurate on this, but it's hard to imagine getting to the point where I could see the justification for taking children and separating families. I don't see any real circumstance save for the health and safety of any of those people where that's appropriate. But RASIS is a, they'll help post bond payments, so if people are incarcerated, and that's what's happening here. Let's be clear about what's happening if you leave your country.

Let's say that the United States starts to turn into an absolute hellhole, just a terrible nightmare place, and as much as we may think it's like that now, and it is like that for a lot of people in this country, especially if you're poor and a minority, it's the likelihood of you living in a situation that feels like a third world country is significantly increased. But let's say all of the country, all of a sudden is everyone is at risk of getting murdered, maybe by corrupt police, maybe by drug dealers, maybe by people who control the money and the power or the government, whatever it is, let's say that's the situation in your country.

And let's say you have kids, you're trying to raise a family too, just like anyone else, anyone should have the right to do. And you want to leave, right? That's a normal reaction to what you would want to do in a situation where you felt your more safety and your children's safety were in jeopardy, right? So you leave, you can go, all right, there's this place United States, we know it's not going to be easy. We also know that we're not really welcome, like it's pretty clear, but we have no other choice because we are going to be killed, and you say, oh, well, that can't really be the situation.

You know, if you look at Syria, you can understand there's a war going on, you can look at South America and say, oh, there's no war, you have to understand a lot of these countries, there is a war. It's also a lot of these countries are incredibly corrupt at all of the local municipalities, like municipal level, even reaching into like the top levels of government. And when that happens, it's not, it's like, it's hard to understand is, yes, our government is corrupt. Yes, our government does shit that I probably don't know about, that's absolutely terrible, but they're also kind of just like buffoons.

There are people who are very clever, very evil and have consolidated power in places and the country is just, they're not good places to live given certain circumstances. And I understand the position saying, well, we don't want people coming into our country because we have enough problems of our own. We can't deal with it. This isolationist kind of xenophobic approach, I understand the perspective. I don't agree with it, but I can understand the logic that one may say, you know, one may report to hold up behind that mode of thinking. But again, let's say you live in a country and you know, you're not really welcomed in the United States, but you are desperate.

You have no other place to go. You have the international right to seek asylum somewhere. You can say, all right, it's so fucked up. Now, no one has to grant you asylum. That's, of course, a policy and an immigration policy that could be determined, but you're allowed to seek it and most nations and states accept that because they can sympathize and empathize in a situation, especially if they could see themselves being in it. So what we have now as a deterrent as a policy is the Trump administration has made a clear point to say that we will be prosecuting all illegal entries into the country regardless of whether they're seeking asylum or not at designated ports.

We're going to treat them as criminals. What that means is once they go into the judicial system, the criminal justice system, they're separated from their children because they're now criminals, right? So if I do something illegal, I'm separated from my child. Now if someone is here in this country to watch after my child, like my wife or parents or siblings or whoever, friend, they go with that person, which is still traumatic. But at least there's some level of continuity, but what happens when you've left your country of origin, you've come to this country and you're separated from your child because you're being prosecuted, you probably don't really know what's happening.

You are on now separate legal tracks. Now your child is just some stray child who theoretically crossed the border by themselves and you're in completely separate legal tracks. This is a terrible policy, obviously, just from a human standpoint. It's just irrevocably terrible for a parent and child to be separated in that manner. It's hard to imagine the stories that I continue to read and I am actively leaning into this. I'm not trying to tune it out in any capacity. Some things I think are worthy of tuning out because they're not going to really affect you and it's not a big deal. This could affect theoretically anyone at any point in the world at any time and it's important we stand up to it.

We'll get to that in a minute. But imagine that this is what's happening to you and this is being used as deterrent. This has actively been said. We have people coming up here and kind of lying about it and quoting this truth. But now the administration is embracing it because they sense that it's somewhat popular in the base of just racist people. Let's be clear. Really, I feel bad for the people who embrace this policy because how out of touch you must be with your own heart and compassion, I can't imagine, truthfully it's painful to imagine. So this is being used as a deterrent and they're saying, "Listen, it's so fucking bad.

We're going to take your kids away from you. Don't come here." Now if the choice is being murdered or raped or just were, whatever it could be, you might still choose trying to get through in the United States as people do. So this is something that's really important. There's a whole other layer of racism and what this is really about for the Trump administration. Conflating gangs, violent gangs, MS-13 and two-year-old Honduran girls is obviously ridiculous. So there's a level of there that I want to touch on and just say, "That's what I sense and see is the real thing that's going on here." And that's really fucking dangerous.

And if you let it get to the point where you're able to treat other people in an inhumane way, consistently and as a policy, we got a real fucking problem on our hands. So I've been thinking about what can we do. And of course, you can donate to places like RAISIS and that's RAIS, there will be links on this podcast episode page, there's links on the podcast, find it, I tweet this shit out a lot these days, it's important that we take a look at this. Now, find organizations that you think are reputable, donating is one way, but I have a feeling there's got to be something else done here. If you live in a state where you have a Republican senator and let's be clear here, I have friends who are Republicans, I don't know how you can maintain, you have to reconcile what's going on at the border with your political affiliation.

I am not a huge Democrat fan at all. Let's be clear, I find them to be weak, centrist, cow towing a lot of the time on the wrong side of issues more than I thought. So I'm not a Democrat, right? I don't identify as that, I do in the action, I do, I identify as Democrat in the polls because I want to look at, oh no, I did independent, so I can do both. I want to be able to accurately, somewhat sway my local elections, but I'm not saying this is a liberal partisan person, I'm saying this is a human being. You got to start contacting your state and local and federal representatives. It's really important that we do this, I live in New York, the state legislature, even though it's not part of the federal legislature, I'm contacting all these people.

I'm going to start doing it because it's just gotten to the point where if we all collectively, you know, raise our voices in the ways that we're allowed to, we'll see if it has an impact. I think any protest, any strike, anything that we can do to express our displeasure in a peaceful way at this point is incredibly important. This isn't a small deal, this isn't just 2300 kids being separated from their families right now, this isn't a guaranteed precursor to concentration camps, but let's be clear, that's what this is, this is a concentration camp. A concentration camp has taken on the meaning of being burned in an oven and being executed.

That's not what a concentration camp is, look up the definition, it's literally just a place where you concentrate people based on a defining characteristic, ethnic or otherwise. In this case, we can say it's illegal immigrants, but it also happens to be a pretty clear ethnic and racial category. Once that starts happening, once people accept that, once we allow people around us to say, yes, I support that, that makes sense to me, that's a road you don't want to go down. Read history, understand that once people start going down that road, and I don't mean you, I mean allowing other people to let that behavior go unchecked is a serious problem.

Every time that's happened, it has led to mass catastrophe, and I believe it's something we can avert. I don't think most people, don't get the sense that most people in this country think that this is the most pressing problem. There's lots of other ways that this ties in. I think people have a growing sense of as great as the economy is doing, whatever that means, people are still not doing well in this country, truthfully. So tapping into that rage, linking that to an ethnic minority, beginning to rip children away from their parents, what does this sound like, right? So let's try to collectively figure out, I think I'm going to get a donation pool going through cryptocurrencies just because it's easier to just use in a central place, no one can have actual ownership of those things, so I don't have to worry about.

One of the things that I've realized is hard to do, having done charitable fund raisers and things through the podcast before, is if you're the custodian of those funds and you're not a non-profit, you're going to have some accounting troubles, luckily, it's never been a huge problem for me, but cryptocurrency could be a way to do that. So I'm going to look into doing that, don't worry anything, we'll probably start it in the server at first, but I'm just looking at different ways to help in this situation without rushing in and doing something foolish and just being like, "Yeah, this is what we got."

But I think it's past the point where we have to take action. So I'm devoting this entire episode to that, don't sign up for Patreon or any of those things, any funds you were going to use for anything related to this podcast, put that towards. I use Rysys, it's a really good one, it has an immediate impact, that's the one you've probably been seeing going around on Facebook where they originally were trying to raise like 1,500 and now it's like, their goal's 11 million and they have 9 million, it's great to see that people really do care about this. But let's not just make it armchair activism, I'm ready to get out in the streets, I mean, I don't think people are protesting in Red Hook, but something happens in New York City, I know there's one planned in DC at Lafayette Square, June 30th, I believe.

But I mean, this is the type of shit that we actually have to do something about. This isn't okay. And I know this happens all over the country, like, who's it, Scott Hekinger, who Sean Dunn and Cass Green are turning me on to, it was a wonderful Twitter follower. He was really astute to pointing out too, like, his public defender colleagues were telling him, like, this shit happens all of the time in this country, especially in New York City. The judicial system is used to rip families apart for typically non-violent, like, turn style jumping, drugs, small drug deals, things that really are victimless in the sense that maybe a systemic thing, there are a problem, but as an individual and the repercussions that are doled out are just way out of line, this shit happens in this country all over the time.

And if you're illegal and it happens, you're deported in the same way. So we got to fix this shit. This is called being human beings. I think there are enough of us out there who think, like, this is not how things should happen. If you're one of those people, and like I said, you live in a place where that is not the current outlook, try to figure out what you can do to change some minds. Don't be aggressive. That I've learned more than anything else. Don't yell at people. Don't call them soulless monsters to their face. If it's someone like Donald Trump, yeah, say, "Fuck you, say you're a soulless monster,"

he's not going to listen, you're not going to reach him, but if you have people you can speak to face to face, don't engage in that type of behavior, it's not going to help. Try to make it personal for them. Try to make it humanized. And if they still don't agree and they don't see it, you may not be able to change their minds. But what we can do, I think, is organize and coalesce, because I do think the majority of people don't agree with this. I don't think you'll find a lot of people. And if they do, I don't think they'll publicly say it. And maybe that'll be reflected in the polls. Maybe that's the silent majority that Trump keeps talking about.

I don't think so. I don't think so at all. So, that's, I know, it's kind of like a downer episode, but it's really fucking important. And I don't think it's a downer. I think it's something we got to look at, stare on the face, continue to look at, and say, "All right, let's do something about this. What can be done? Let's start having discussions at the first place." And then actually trying to figure out what level of action we can take to change this. It's not cool what's going on. If you listen to the audio of these kids screaming and whaling, and then the officer, just board a patrol officer, just callously making light of it, Coriolu and Dowsky doing the wamp-wamp about a 10-year-old with down syndromes being ripped away from the parent.

Like this shit isn't okay. Like these people, these are really hurt people just to be clear. The amount of pain Coriolu and Dowsky carries around on a daily basis. You have to recognize this excruciating. Maybe he numbs himself to it, maybe he, but you eat, trust me, there's no way. Anyone you've ever known was that much level of hostility, pain, anger, that they're incapable of hiding, like that, oh god, you got to feel bad for that dude. All right, that's it. We're going to have a regular episode this week. Don't worry. I have some cool guests, they're already in the docket. I have some people scheduled here really going to like.

So that's what this episode is. Again, R-A-I-C-E-S-R-I-S, there will be links for it. Please, please, please, please go and do this because it's important. It's just look at the situation. Don't turn away. Don't get so angry that you're incapable of looking at it, but yeah, that's what it is for this one, I love you and I'll see you soon. Bye. Some days you want a little extra oomph to your usual look, whether that's lashes for days with the viral liquid lash extensions mascara or awakening your eyes with a lasting lift and soft color with the brilliant eye brightener, Thrive Cosmetics is your go-to when you want to amplify your everyday look, whether you want a simple, just got to get out of the door routine or full glam, you'll always look and feel like the best version of yourself with Thrive Cosmetics.

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