AFSC weekend reads - May 8, 2021

Here are this week's picks to inform and support your activism: 

Taking action with mothers raising children across prison walls: Thank you to all who joined our #FreeThemAll campaign this week to honor mothers, caregivers, and children spending this Mother’s Day in immigration detention centers and jails and call for their release. Please join us in urging public officials: Protect people in prisons, jails, and detention centers from COVID-19! 

Video: Supporting Palestinians during COVID-19: About 80% of Palestinians rely on international aid for day-to-day survival, and with Palestinians being left out of Israel’s vaccination efforts, basic steps for protecting against the pandemic are out of reach for many families, says AFSC’s Mike Merryman-Lotze. AFSC is responding by providing emergency assistance. Want to help? Give to help seniors in Palestine meet essential needs and protect against COVID-19.

Asylum seekers need compassion, not surveillance: “I know community-based programs work,” writes AFSC volunteer Brian Fauver, who sponsored two trans women going through the immigration system. “These models could quickly scale up if the Biden Administration redirected resources towards them.” (Boulder Weekly) 

In South Sudan, peacebuilders find healing for their own trauma: In its first year, AFSC’s South Sudan Program has provided trauma healing to dozens of peacebuilders, strengthening their ability to support their communities. AFSC’s Zaina Kisongoa shares what this has meant to one mother of three who survived South Sudan’s civil war. 

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month: This week we remember Gordon Hirabayashi, an outspoken advocate against injustice and AFSC alumnus who refused to obey a U.S. military decree interning tens of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II. He spent over two years in prison for violating exclusion and curfew orders—but appealed his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.  

Be well and take care