On the other side of the dressy scale there was a 7 months pregnant lawyer sitting on the floor at IAD
At O’Hare there was a lawyer who was about five minutes away from giving birth sitting there in her sweatpants with a sign that said “I’m a lawyer and I speak Hindi/Urdu”. Just her and her sign and supersized tea from McDonalds.
I’ll say it again. MOSTLY WOMEN.
Why does their being mostly women matter?
Because, statistically speaking, 64% of lawyers in the United States are men, meaning that the majority of the demographic showing up should reflect this. It is also interesting to note that only 27% of American born lawyers are female- that means that a lot of these women are likely immigrants or foreign born. We have a majority of women showing up in a field where they are a minority; women who dropped everything to help defend human rights and the country. There’s no cis-male equivalency to pregnancy, but if you fail to see the importance and stength of a woman who might feasibly go into labour at any second still standing up for what is right and good whilst the majority of politicians are cowering, then I can’t help you.
“I have been working non-stop for three
days and I have not made a penny,” [said a female lawyer who had been at a Texas airport and asked not to be quoted by name]. A friend, who is a male
immigration lawyer, went on vacation over the weekend, she said, because
he felt it wouldn’t be lucrative. “Male immigration lawyers look at
this and say ‘This is not a business opportunity for me,’” she said.
The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.
People working for Amazon have written to the company’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, to protest the sale of facial recognition tools and other technology to police departments and government agencies.
The workers cite the use of Amazon technology by the US Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, which have been criticised for enforcing Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, which has seen parents separated from their childrenat the US border.
“As ethically concerned Amazonians, we demand a choice in what we build, and a say in how it is used,” the letter states. “We learn from history, and we understand how IBM’s systems were employed in the 1940s to help Hitler.
“IBM did not take responsibility then, and by the time their role was understood, it was too late.
“We will not let that happen again. The time to act is now.”
Holocaust experts claim IBM’s German subsidiary directly supplied the Nazis with technology which assisted the operation of concentration camps at Auschwitz and Treblinka.
In their letter to Mr Bezos, the Amazon workers said they would “refuse to build the platform” which powers ICE, or any technology used to violate human rights.
Listing three demands, the workers called on the CEO to stop selling the technology to law enforcement, stop providing infrastructure to partners which enable ICE, and implement stronger transparency measures.
“Our company should not be in the surveillance business; we should not be in the policing business; we should not be in the business of supporting those who monitor and oppress marginalized populations,” the letter concludes.