“Why should I care about refugees when there are needy Americans right here that I consistently vote against helping?”
—Overfed Boomer Trash
I told y’all two years ago what a ride you were in for and how you’d see just how low people you’d previously respected and sometimes even loved would sink for this depraved fascist traitor. Not happy about being so right.
I’m heading to the concentration camp at 30–35 Hackensack Ave. in Kearny, NJ.
When the guards ask what I’m doing there, I’ll tell them that @michaelcburgess said the child prisoners are “free to leave at any time” and I’m here to pick up the ones who want to leave.
— There are concentration camps in America. (@sergiosiano92) June 25, 2019
All these garbage idiots blaming the parents for bringing their kids to the border for asylum would have blamed the Jews for not changing religions in 1930s Germany.
Letting ‘Christians’ pull that “you aren’t saved by works, but by accepting Christ” nonsense should’ve been a warning. They’ve no responsibility to be good people and from that naturally comes the Trump era.
After all, it don’t matter what you do as long as ya know the password right?
Apparently where Hitler really fucked up was not putting an R in parenthesis on all the death camps, cuz that shit is catnip for brutality apologists.
Wedding rings taken by Nazis at Auschwitz in 1945.
Rosaries confiscated by the US government at the Arizona/Mexico border. pic.twitter.com/t91UYoFRiH
— Simar (@sahluwal) June 24, 2019
AND THEN
the second hour of tonight’s Democratic debate turned into every single speakerphone/video meeting ever.
THREAD
if you read nothing else I posted tonight, read this:
A quick story …
Summer, 1999. I started my first professional journalism job working for the @AP as an editorial assistant in L.A.
One of my first assignments was to go out to freeway gas stations and interview truckers about some new fuel efficiency regulation.
/1
— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 25, 2019
I was paired with an @AP photographer. He was a middle-aged Vietnamese man who had a thick accent and a cheerful, kid-like demeanor.
The assignment, he told me, was “boring,” but nonetheless he shot beautiful, artful images of the truckers I interviewed.
2/
— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 25, 2019
When I got back to the office, a senior reporter said, “So you went out with Nick? How’d it go?”
“Great,” I said, not wanting to call it “boring.” “We got some good stuff.”
“What’d you think of Nick?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer this. There was expectation in the question. /3
— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 25, 2019
Was there something wrong with Nick that I didn’t realize?
“He was cool,” I said. “Nice guy.”
The older reporter just stared at me. Reading me. “You know who he is, right?”
I got the sense I should know, but 😬… I didn’t. Obviously.
/4
— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 25, 2019
The older reporter pointed toward the wall between the reporters’ pen and the photo department.
This image hung there.
“Nick took that.”
— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 25, 2019
Yes, I knew Nick Ut. I knew his work. One of the photos that changed America’s view of our involvement in the Vietnam War.
Next to the image of the screaming, naked child who was burning alive was this image…
The same girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, grown up with her own child. /6 pic.twitter.com/ds8O6iuoir
— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 25, 2019
I got to know Nick well in the years I was with @AP. I learned that after he took that horrific photo, he wrapped the girl in a blanket and drove her to the hospital.
He saved her life. Who knows how many lives the photo ultimately saved.
Here they are together in 2012.
/7 pic.twitter.com/2e2glpA02Z— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 25, 2019
I’m thinking of Nick today because I saw this.
— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 25, 2019
I wanted to share it, even though it’s horrible and upsetting. It’s awful and gut-wrenching to see, but it feels worse to look away.
An image can open your eyes, especially the kind that makes you want to close them.
— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 25, 2019
The image of the father and his toddler was taken by reporter Julia Le Duc and printed in Mexico’s La Jornada. The @AP picked it up and spread it worldwide, as it did with Nick’s image from Trang Bang in 1972.
Both are about the most nightmarish things I can imagine.
9/
— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 25, 2019
Nick’s photo made people stop and ask a simple question: What are we doing?
I hope Le Duc’s photo from Monday makes us ask the same.
That will only happen if we face it.
— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 25, 2019
I don’t want to ever see this again. But we will, unless we change and stop needlessly turning away people who are begging us for help.
We *can* help. We choose to scapegoat instead.
What kind of country attacks those fleeing violence and bloodshed? What kind of people?
/11— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 25, 2019
Even those of us who didn’t vote for this cruel psychotic in the White House — what are we going to do?
I don’t know. I wish I did.
Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria wouldn’t have attempted that river crossing if we had a sane and moral asylum policy. 12/ pic.twitter.com/B2pPYp4PtS
— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 26, 2019
Even those of us who didn’t vote for this cruel psychotic in the White House — what are we going to do?
I don’t know. I wish I did.
Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria wouldn’t have attempted that river crossing if we had a sane and moral asylum policy. 12/ pic.twitter.com/B2pPYp4PtS
— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 26, 2019
We have made it near impossible for people to seek asylum.
We have separated families that do *legally* apply for asylum, and stash children in nauseating camps.
We betray those who believed: “Give us your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” pic.twitter.com/C6y4rgyfpM
— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 26, 2019
The photographer took his photos. Then he wrapped the burning girl in a blanket and saved her life.
We have to face this horror. But — then what? We have to find an answer for that. Now.
Only then do we earn the right to look away.
// pic.twitter.com/sTqRyz9VCh— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 26, 2019
Meeting Nick in real life, working with him, made that famous photo of his less abstract for me.
Here was a real man, whose image and choices changed the world in big and small ways.
That’s what seeing this little girl’s arm does. It makes it real.
This is real. Now what?
// pic.twitter.com/91zSSGFRVZ— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 26, 2019
By the way, @NickUt is on Twitter!Here he is with Kim just a few weeks ago … ❤️
Hey, Nicky! Thinking of you. https://t.co/fmicTO2clg
— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 26, 2019
Another good interview with Nick here. I want to be sure to highlight his story told in his own words: https://t.co/1SJOR7CAVH
— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) June 26, 2019
—jason malmberg
Flommist Jason Malmberg is a simple man who believes in brown liquor and small dogs. He also makes art sometimes. Copyright © 2019 Jason Malmberg. Image composed by mehallo, based on wordage by Emily.
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