Families under Threat

Welcome to the Parents’ Way Podcast, where we invite you to a conversation about progressive politics, spirituality and parenting.

In this episode we want to lift up the families that we know who are feeling very threatened by the current political climate. We lift up several stories and speak out against those who think that we make too much of the threats that our current government is posing to the lives of families in our circle.

We talk about muslim families who cannot travel, cannot see grandparents. We talk about undocumented mothers with children who were born and raised here.

We believe that even though all children are more at risk now than they were last year, for some families the threat has not increased all that much, other families have seen new threats, and for others, such as us, threat is mostly in the future. We are concerned for our child, but for us, the experience of feeling concerned has not translated into a different feeling of bringing our child to school for instance.

That is not everybody’s experience. For families with members who are undocumented, or who are muslim, Jewish families, the sense of terror has increased. And for African American families, the day to day realities of facing a racist world may not have changed all that much.

We go on to discuss what some ways are that we can be better allies. We talk about directly reaching out to families. And also about the feelings that that raised in us.

We feel it’s been important to start the conversation with families we think are more directly threatened than we are. We start the conversations hoping that we signal that we’re open to hearing about everybody’s experiences.

What are some other ways that we can express solidarity, that we can be better allies.

And finally, we mention that in this season of Lent (for Christians), Angela and Niels are holding inter-faith, inter-spiritual prayer. You can join us each weekday at 5:30 AM, PST on our Facebook page.

You can also find us individually on Facebook. Here is Angela Jernigan and here is Niels Teunis.