Archive | December, 2016

Holiday wishes to you and yours

19 Dec

Sending a wish to you and your community for the holidays you celebrate, the break you may be enjoying as 2016 concludes, and the new year.
Please click.

Interview with a human being from Aleppo

17 Dec

I heard this interview yesterday on The Takeaway and want to share it forward. Human being, rapper, Syrian refugee and current German resident Basel Marshall articulates clearly one of the secondary but still potent reasons why so many have been killed in Aleppo:

As you can see, Paris or Charlie Hebdo or Brussels, things happened [there], and the whole world got crazy about it. I mean why? We’re not humans? It’s only because we’re Syrians it’s OK that we die? But for those people, no, we have to support them and we have to pray for Paris? We do, yeah, I was sad — I was very sad about what happened. But we’re also humans and we also deserve some support.

It makes me feel like the world is looking at us like we’re second quality humans. I have this anger against anyone who could help and didn’t do anything, and it’s against anyone who was part of this. Anyone who accepted this killing. Anyone who gave the green-light to Bashar al-Assad to kill those people.

We’re also human. We also have families. We also have feelings. We also get afraid when our houses get bombed. We also get afraid when we see our neighbors in another city get choked to death by chemical weapons.

With a cease-fire and evacuations currently underway in Aleppo, we can easily fall into a sense of “everything’s fine now” and a deeper indifference about the fragility of the current state of affairs and the recovery (potentially including more injury and death). And while it’s sometimes overwhelming to consider what’s really happening in the world to real human beings, I agree with Marshall: what helps is to do what we can do. Doing nothing, ignoring real pain and suffering, and practicing not seeing people as people is one option. For his thoughts on other options, please listen to his interview.

For more information about what’s happening on the ground in Syria, here’s a link to the White Helmets.

DACA renewal workshops in SF

1 Dec

Hi all,

A quick request to spread the word about a DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) renewal workshop at Lick-Wilmerding High School, 755 Ocean Ave. in San Francisco on Tuesday, December 6, 2016. No appointments needed, and more info in available in:

What Is DACA

On June 15, 2012, the Secretary of Homeland Security announced that certain people who came to the United States as children and meet several guidelines may request consideration of deferred action for a period of two years, subject to renewal. They are also eligible for work authorization. Deferred action is a use of prosecutorial discretion to defer removal action against an individual for a certain period of time. Deferred action does not provide lawful status.

Please visit US Citizenship and Immigration Services for more information about renewing your DACA (including who is eligible and when to renew).

  • Thanks to LWHS for organizing this workshop.