Radley Balko: The courage to be decent

https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-courage-to-be-decent?publication_id=668365&post_id=161811452&isFreemail=false&r=opzw&triedRedirect=true

One of the more pernicious effects of authoritarianism is to make the everyday participation in civic life we take for granted feel subversive. The goal isn’t to police all behavior at all times. It’s to make us fearful to the point that we police our own behavior.

Last month, Clay Jackson was at the gas station just up the street from his home in a Dallas suburb when one of the attendants asked if he might provide some legal advice to an immigrant family.

“There’s a guy in there who just shoots the shit with you when you come in to pay,” Jackson says. “He’d heard that I had previously given some pro bono legal help to a family who owned a barbecue restaurant. He said there was family in the area where the dad had been caught up in one of the ICE workplace raids and they’re really freaking out. The parents were undocumented, while one of the kids is DACA and the other is a U.S. citizen.”

The man asked Jackson if he would be willing to “just talk to them and make sure they know their rights and where they can some help. I said absolutely. I’m not an immigration lawyer, but they were scared to reach out to anyone, so I said I’d go there and try to just give them the basics.”

Later that afternoon, March 4, Jackson visited the family in their home. “It was a little difficult to communicate because everything had to be translated through the 10-year-old kid.” He met with them for less than an hour and told them their rights if they’re detained by ICE. “I said I’d help find them pro bono counsel who specialized in immigration.”

*snip*