K.L. Kranes

Yesterday, thousands of people at JFK airport in New York City and Dulles airport outside Washington, DC, and other cities across the US went to the arrival terminals of international airports and said to the people coming into the US from other countries – We stand with you. It was beautiful to see so many people reject the idea that to remain safe, we must sacrifice the safety of others.

Love, Not Hate, This Is What Makes America Great

I live close to Dulles International airport and when we heard about people going to protest these policies and support refugees and immigrants, we rushed over. I expected a small crowd. Apparently, I need to adjust my expectations about the will and resilience of the American people. Protesters offered flowers and balloons to people who got off international flights and walked out to meet a startlingly large crowd and holding signs of support.

What I found the most moving was when a woman, wearing a hijab, pushed open the thick gray exit doors and stepped out into the roped off path for passengers. The crowd erupted in cheers, telling her she was welcome. She looked noticeably taken aback by the reception. She put her hand over her heart as she walked by the crowd, nodding at the protesters.

The People United Can Never Be Divided

After the emergence of widespread protests at airports like Dulles and thanks to the ACLU, a federal court issued an emergency stay halting at least part of Trump’s executive order banning entry to the US from seven majority-Muslim country.

This is what it looks like when the people unite together for good. We can make change. If you want some good investment advice, put money into companies that make poster board because we’re going to be using a lot of it.

The Power of Words and Actions

If you need a little more inspiration regarding the power of protest, here are some great books to read!

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle

In these newly collected essays, interviews, and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world. Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism for today’s struggles, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the South African anti-Apartheid movement. She highlights connections and analyzes today’s struggles against state terror, from Ferguson to Palestine. Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build the movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that “Freedom is a constant struggle.”

March: Book One

The is a National Book Award-winning graphic novel by Civil Rights activist and Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and artist Nate Powell. Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon, one of the key figures of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper’s farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president.

Now, to share his remarkable story with new generations, Lewis presents March, a graphic novel trilogy, in collaboration with co-writer Andrew Aydin and New York Times best-selling artist Nate Powell (winner of the Eisner Award and LA Times Book Prize finalist for Swallow Me Whole).

The Jungle

An ardent activist, champion of political reform, novelist, and progressive journalist, Upton Sinclair is perhaps best known today for The Jungle — his devastating exposé of the meat-packing industry. A protest novel he privately published in 1906, the book was a shocking revelation of intolerable labor practices and unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago stockyards. It quickly became a bestseller, arousing public sentiment and resulting in such federal legislation as the Pure Food and Drug Act.|The brutally grim story of a Slavic family who emigrates to America, The Jungle tells of their rapid and inexorable descent into numbing poverty, moral degradation, and social and economic despair. Vulnerable and isolated, the family of Jurgis Rudkus struggles — unsuccessfully — to survive in an urban jungle.

Civil Disobedience

“Resistance to Civil Government” (“Civil Disobedience”) is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican–American War.