Today I went with a group of people to visit Rep. Doggett's office in Austin, TX. He offices out of a federal building in downtown Austin, which also houses ICE offices, so there is a great deal of security to enter the building. Doggett represents Texas' 35th district, which is a very gerrymandered district, as seen by the map above. It took some work to find someone from Congregation Beth Israel who lives in his district since the Austin areas are not close to the temple, but I did some research on our congregants who had signed up to do social justice work and who their reps were, and found a few, and one of them volunteered to go. Once again, Bethany from Grassroots organized this meeting and prepped the visitors with a phone call and a pdf before the meeting. Our goal was similar to the visit with McCaul, the difference being that Rep. Doggett is a democrat who shares our views about immigration, and has written a letter to ICE earlier in the year. However, ICE has only answered back saying they will write a response some time in the future, a clear delay technique. The matter for this visit becomes more urgent as the deadline for signing the 10 year contract is now within a week's time. So the ASK for Rep. Doggett is to demand an answer from ICE and and a few other items which I'd rather not write about here for privacy sake. We were greeted by his staffer who, unlike the one at McCaul's office, seemed genuinely happy to see us there. There were 5 people in our group, each spoke about the goal to shut down the detention centers in Texas and why. Sulma, from Grassroots, really pulled at our heartstrings by sharing her personal story of having been moved around through 4 or 5 of Texas's detention centers in her own journey to asylum. The staffer asked pertinent questions, wrote EVERYTHING down that we relayed, and really promised to take the issues up with Rep. Doggett immediately. She was very grateful for our work and thanked each one of us on our way out. This visit felt like a breath of fresh air compared to the first. His staffer also really encouraged members of the congregation to CALL their reps en masse, that it really makes a difference. First time I felt hopeful about taking action in a long time. Click below for COMMUNITIES NOT CAGES FLYER
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AuthorDaniela Weil is a kids' writer/illustrator who lives in Austin, and a member of Congregation Beth Israel. Daniela works as a volunteer there and for RAC-Tx. Archives
February 2020
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