"Congratulations", Donald! The horns of the devil clearly show up once more with this.

"Congratulations", Donald! The horns of the devil clearly show up once more with this.  Everyone needs to know. Stop lying and admit to hating everything that is ProLife.
I want to let everyone know. Until now, unless in case of "extraordinary circumstances" warranting detention, ICE would release pregnant women from custody. The Trump administration ended that policy. Now pregnant women will be no longer released from immigration detention, which is totally ill-equipped to meet the basic health, hygiene, and safety needs of mother and unborn child. Pregnant women might be released only on a "case by case basis"--which means the need to prove the presence of extraordinary circumstances justifying their release. It means the need to remain in detention for uncertain and practically endless periods until able to prove the need to be released. It may mean the need to pay attorney fees that they cannot afford. It may mean putting the lives of unborn babies at risk.

Donald, how alarmingly and atrociously anti-life is that? Do you think that any Pro-Life supporter would have done such a thing? Spit it out once and for all: Not only you're NOT Pro-Life. You're the very worst enemy the ProLife cause could have.
I'm sure you don't like the way I'm addressing you, Donald, do you? That's not the way I talk either. I never did and never will. Yet, do you want to know why the "spit it out" expression came to my mind instead of having said something like, "admit to it" or "say it aloud"? From your own words when three years ago, back in April 2015, when at an event organized by Texas Patriots PAC you referred to undocumented immigrants with these words: “Everything’s coming across the border: the illegals, the cars, the whole thing. It’s like a big mess. Blah. It’s like vomit.”
Are human beings "like vomit", Donald? After you referred to some countries and their people as sh-holes, former Mexican president Vicente Fox correctly depicted your mouth as "the foulest sh-hole in the world". Paraphrasing his words, I'll say that what causes me to vomit is to hear you talk.
Today is Good Friday, the commemoration of the horrible, excruciatingly painful death nailed to the Cross that Jesus voluntarily accepted to save all of us. Not just those from certain parts of the world. Not just those who dress in a certain way. Not just those who can afford some minimal living standards. Not even just those who believe in Him. Jesus died for all. Jesus praised the immigrant. Jesus stood up for equality and social justice. Jesus only condemned those like you, Donald. Think about it--although I very much doubt that you care,
Lillian Godone-Maresca

ICE Ends Policy Of Presuming Release For Pregnant Detainees

Instead, pregnant women will be released from immigrant detention only on a case-by-case basis.

huffingtonpost.com|By Elise Foley

Meeting Street School: Meeting the Challenge. Today's School Walkout, March 14, 2018.

Let's go back to the time when most of the world was still in disbelief that the then newly installed current president of the United States could start his term at the Oval Office by openly showing his hatred for immigrants and refugees, particularly if from certain countries where the predominant skin tone is not light white. Meeting Street found a way to simultaneously do charity and deliver a clear message. They started a teddy bear drive for children of refugee and immigrant families.  That's not politics. That's just helping those in need.

Then, directly from the White House, the attacks on D.A.C.A. recipients followed. Only those with very cold hearts, not to say heatless, can think that illegally crossing a border in order to flee persecution or escape extreme poverty is equivalent to commiting a crime. Many undocumented immigrants have only overstayed their allowed period to remain in the country.  Whether one case of the other, there is no crime. And when it comes to minors who were brought across the border by their  parents, even from a strictly legal standpoint it doesn't make sense to attempt to find any apparently valid ground to send them back. Their parents were not criminals but heroes, looking to give to their young what they didn't have when growing up. Some were trying to keep their children alive.  Although not formally legl, entering without inspection or overstaying was an act of courage and love.  Long ago, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said that "the so-called 'illegal' immigrants are not so out of their own volition but because the same society that uses their labor does not afford them a way to regularize their situation. They are not breaking the law: the law is breaking them."  And the kids they brought into the country did not even commit the allegedly 'illegal' act. Because they were minors at the time.

Meeting Street did not look the other way as cowards do.  Instead, they stepped in and offered assistance to parents who were D.A.C.A. recipients--parents who were Dreamers making their dreams a reality for their kids.  Particularly, those parents were in even more dire need of help. They had grown up in their new country and then had been blessed in a very special way--with a little one with special needs. In all likelihood, if forced to leave the U.S., their special sons or daughters might no longer have the level of medical attention, therapies, and equipment they need. Because the reality of the situation is that, if coming from a country of origin with comparable healthcare, they wouldn't be at risk of getting kicked out.

Even though I don't remember the exact title or the author, a book recommendation for the middle school students was about "unnatural disasters". I believe the book was entitled that way. That's a very appropriate kind of reading at a time when environmental protections are being removed and the whole U.S. had been pulled out of the Paris Agreement.

With respect to the primary topic of my post, namely the National School Walkout on today's date, March 14, 2018, I want to highlight the beauty, the courage, and the sensitivity of a very valid point that Meeting Street lists as one of their primary reasons to participate. They say that students of all abilities have the right to be protected and to have their voices heard.

Whereas many schools are literally doing what over two thousands years ago Pontius Pilate did and are washing their hands out of the issue, Meeting Street is there, organizing the event for its students.

The underlying situation should be looked at with a twofold focus. First of all, in general terms, no school should limit itself to leaving it up to its students. Safety is not a luxury. It's not a want but a need. It's not only a matter of letting the students demonstrate if they decide to do so. Students cannot be forced to participate--but if they do, their schools should not only let them do it but should support them instread--as Meeting Street does. It is the adults' job to find the best and safest way to make the event a peacefully successful one. It may sound like a word game but the goal is for the event to transpire uneventfully. For that, also typically developing students can certainly benefit from grown-up help.

Then, when it comes specifically to Meeting Street, they show their commitment to special education in a very eloquent, vibrant way where they say that all students should be heard--independently of level of ability. They are a voice for all the special needs kids who also want to to be and feel safe and yet may not be able to express themselves the same as their non-challenged peers can.

Affording them that chance is going beyond academics and even beyond extracurriculars. It's helping them keep alive. It's teacxhing them about life. It's making life more understandable and meanigful to them.

For all that, thank you, Margaret!

Lillian Godone-Maresca


Further to my post, which I wrote prior to the actual walkout, I'd like to add a few pics of the event, showing Philip, who is my youngest son, some other kids, and also me as I joined the protest along Eddy Street in Providence. I want to mention that most vehicles passing by honked at us in support.

Here are the pics.  Thank you.





 


 

I'll Say It Once More, Loud and Clear: Trump Is NOT ProLife.

My second latest timeline post is a ProLife one. Someone's comment to it was that he'll "be more impressed when we start protecting those who are already born." That brought me to elaborate on a topic I'm totally passionate about--and thus came up with a new timeline post which I'm making into a blog post as well.

The ProLife is NOT hard line at all. BTW, I apologize for the capitalization--but this is what I've made a life commitment to fight for. Being ProLife is NOT having rigid, unmovable traditional values. Being ProLife is being compasionate and courageous. It is defying society and ignoring anyone who is insensitive and obnoxious enough to point the finger when love didn't wait.

Being ProLife is opening one's home to children with special needs. Those who are involved with the adoption community very well know that there are families willing to adopt children with the most severe challenges, with the most complex medical issues, even including reduced life expectancies. Even life-threatening conditions and terminal illness. Being ProLife is welcoming the immigrant and the refugee. Not too long ago, in one of his homilies, our priest said, "Because you are ProLife, we are pro-immigrant as well."

Pope Francis vehemently condemned the Mexican border wall and the Muslim ban. If you scrolled down my timeline and visited my older children's FB pages, you'd see posts after posts defending immigrants and refugees, denouncing racism, fighting against Trump and the right wing, supporting universal healthcare, and promoting gun control.

Life starts at conception. Nobody has the right to dismember innocent, defenseless human beings, to suck their little brains out. There is nothing progressive about supporting abortion. Getting rid of the baby is bowing to obsolete societal prejudice against unwed mothers. Supporting abortion carries the old-fashioned assumption that one-parent families are second-class families--not as good as two-parent ones. Supporting abortion implies the retrograde stereotype that single mothers cannot make a living. Supporting abortion goes hand-in-hand with Trump's view of women as sex objects.
From the very begging I've been trying to make others understand that, far from being ProLife, Trump is the worst enemy the ProLife cause could have ever had. By falsely pretending to be pro-life, Trump is causing more damage to the sanctity of human life than the most recalcitrant abortion propagandist ever could. Trump is Satan's most sophisticated plan to debilitate the ProLife cause, which was getting stronger and stronger by the day.

I'll capitalize again: by being racist, Trump is AGAINST human life. By being anti-Muslim, he is ignoring that Jesus came to earth to die not for some but for all. By using obscene language against people from certain counties where skin tone is not pale white, he is insulting the pregnant women and the children, born and unborn, from those countries. By doing away with environmental protections and repudiating gun control, he is exposing babies in the womb and small children to hazardous chemicals and is endangering kids and humans of all ages who can eventually end up being shot at school any day.

The sanctity of human life, equality, and social justice are three intrinsically intertwined concepts that cannot survive without one another.

God bless,

Lillian Godone-Maresca

Attacks to the A.D.A.: One More Proof That Trump Is Not ProLife

This attempt to shrink the scope of the ADA is in my eyes one more proof that I was totally correct when back in November of 2016 I said that Trump and all those right-wing scoundrels around him are Satan's cleverest and most sophisticated plan to damage the ProLife cause. For God's sake, all people should open their eyes and realize that those jerks have not the least consideration for human life or human dignity.

This attack against the ADA is an attack against the disabled. Until very recently, it looked like the United States were among the best countries for people with disabilities to live and thrive. When adopting from Bulgaria I was told that many Bulgarian birthmothers gave up their infants with challenges for adoption as their ultimate act of love in the hope that they'd be adopted and taken to live in countries such as Italy and the U.S. where, far from being discriminated against, they'd be provided with the resources to reach their full potentials and have the very same opportunities as their able-bodied and typically-developing peers. This attempt to regress in the protection of those with disabilities is like a stab in the back to those birthmothers who trusted the U.S. as a country that could give their babies what their vernacular land wouldn't. Now the U.S. as a country is withdrawing that protection which in the past seemed to be something that could be taken for granted. Therefore, now it's up to the families who committed to those children to continue the fight.

Brittany, who started this petition, had even more courage--because it's much easier to fight for something as an advocate than to do it for oneself. Yet, she was brave and did it--and we all need to support her.

The right to life, the ProLife cause, the true anti-abortion fight is progressive--not retrograde. Nothing could be more eloquently progressive than when over 2000 years ago God did not select for the Incarnation of His Only Son a married couple but a single teenage girl named Mary. And, far from being immobilized by fear, Mary risked the possibility of being stoned to death as it was done those days to women who had an out-of-wedlock affair. Wasn't that ultra-progressive?
Taking rights away from the disabled is about concealment. It aims at making things more difficult for them so that they will be outcasts in society again. It aims at closing doors on them, at pushing them away from the job market. Abortion is about concealment as well. It's about bowing to societal pressures, about being afraid of gossip, about pointing fingers. It's about wanting fun with no strings attached or about not wanting to be tied up to an adorable little one with any special challenge. All this means going back to a society we thought we had left behind. If those facing challenges are to have fewer rights and lesser medical care, the number of special needs adoptions is likely to drop--and the number of abortions is likely to go up.

Needless to say, it's also lacking in any sense and not progressive either to proclaim the rights of the disabled if they're going to be denied the most basic right of all: the right to be born. It seems to very easy to care for and respect everyone. Why, when it comes to practical terms, it looks so unnecessarily difficult, though? We cannot remain silent. We cannot allow the right wing to take away some rights that those living with challenges need in order to go on with their lives on a daily basis. This is not Sparta. This is not Nazi Germany--and we cannot let neo-nazis get away with it.

Please sign Britanny's petition.

God bless.

 https://click.mail.change.org/?qs=5aa134e3bceb84a42e889eea2ffe248ee14998845d526caa764f1e97aa7f7fcb0f549b05635b80fe7c552e2425df73e280b5a9dea03b35ff820c000722720de2