Are they concentration camps? This is the title the Gazette chose or accepted for the opinion piece submitted by Richard Fein for the Aug. 26 edition.
I think this is a good title for the piece since the main focus is about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez using the term “concentration camp” to describe the conditions of the migrant detention centers currently in use in our country.
Mr. Fein is most focused on whether AOC is justified in using such a term. He implies that AOC is wrong to use the term loosely or expropriate it for her political agenda. Mr. Fein could also be said to be using this term to grab people’s attention and expropriate it for his own political agendas, which include his repeated attacks on AOC and her humanitarian legislative agenda and his support of our government’s current immoral (in my opinion) approach to those seeking asylum in this country.
There is, by the way, nothing illegal about approaching our border from another country and asking to be considered for asylum. In fact, it could be said that AOC and other representatives and senators are, where Mr. Fein is not, addressing the underlying dangers to our country by a government and a president that spuriously categorizes others (including US citizens) negatively and then takes a variety actions against those so vilified.
Mr. Fein, interestingly, talks about children who have witnessed a parent being arrested, sometimes at gunpoint, not to point out the way to decrease this, but as a way to justify the separation of children. Though he dismisses the concern that migrant camps are a sign of what may come, I believe we have a responsibility to speak up against what we witness when it is wrong.
I believe in our part as individuals in a democracy to speak and act against bad things in order to prevent them from growing bigger and worse. Separating infants and children from their parents and locking both up is not the only possible action and it is not the right action.
Edward Olmstead
Florence