Abby Johnson: I went to border to help people. Members of Congress were shocked when I asked them to help, too
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Like most people who follow the news, I’ve seen the difficult stories of families crossing the southern border into the U.S. and how they are treated, no matter if they crossed legally seeking asylum or illegally. My heart breaks seeing little children with no shoes and threadbare clothes clinging to their parents.
What could I do to help? Turns out, quite a lot. Here’s what I experienced on Saturday in Texas at a humanitarian respite center run by Catholic Charities. But first, a little background…
I’m an outspoken pro-life woman. A movie, “ Unplanned ,” was made about my conversion from Planned Parenthood clinic director to pro-life advocate. While being pro-life is certainly about helping women in crisis pregnancies and caring for their needs, it’s also about helping the most vulnerable, no matter where they are.
I have eight children, I run a non-profit ministry, and I travel around the world as a speaker -- I’m a good multi-tasker. I can help people in my community, in my country and even in other parts of the world.
My friend, Destiny Herdon-De La Rosa, who runs New Wave Feminists, is also a pretty good multi-tasker and came up with the idea to help these immigrants we were seeing in the news. I jumped right in because that’s what a pro-life woman should do.
The Bottles2TheBorder campaign was born from pro-life women who wanted to do more to help others. And we weren’t alone. We created a registry of items needed at the respite center run by Catholic Charities in McAllen, Texas.
That registry sold out in a matter of days so we created another one, which we had to close because we had too many items to take down there and needed time to sort it all before bringing it to the border.
A man from a local church in Houston heard about our efforts and donated an 18-wheeler to haul the items to McAllen. Over $120,000 worth of items were donated, which was used to purchase water, pull-ups, powdered milk, and a host of other supplies to bring with us.
When we got to the respite center on Saturday there was a press conference with several Democratic members of Congress at the same location.
National media were covering their field trip, which reached its lowest point when aides to the Congressmen and women gave them cheap toys, which they, in turn, gave to the little kids at the respite center in front of all the cameras for the ideal photo op.
They were dressed in starched suits and pressed dresses, pants, high heels, and polished shoes.
I headed into the center in shorts and a T-shirt I had snagged from Groupon, minutes after pumping milk for my six-week-old baby, and walked up to the group after their photo-op because I had something to say.
I introduced myself and said we had an 18-wheeler arriving at the respite center in the next 20 minutes full of supplies for these poor people, who had nothing and needed help unloading it. I told them their cheap toys and photo op wasn’t helping these people.
If they truly wanted to help, they could lend a hand in unloading the semi-truck in the 102-degree heat with all of us women who came from all over Texas to help.
They looked stunned that someone had the gall to ask them to actually do something, as in not just for the cameras. They told me they couldn’t help because they only had 10 more minutes, which they used to move to the other side of the room and continue their press conference -- for another 30 minutes. They told me they “would help,” but they had another press opportunity to get to.
President Ronald Reagan once said that the most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” He should have added, “...to help and to have a photo op.” This trip to the border wasn’t about politics; it was about people. But seeing those Congressional representatives blatantly use those immigrants for their own political purposes was sickening, especially since there was a legitimate opportunity to do something to actually help them right at the center.
We didn’t give up though. Rep. Vincente Gonzalez, D-Texas, who donated $1,000 to the center, according to the monitor, walked by our 18-wheeler as we were just getting ready to start unloading and we asked him again to help.
With a dismissive wave of his hand, he smugly said “I’ll send someone” and then walked to his air-conditioned car and left. No one from his office came to help. Are you surprised?
In the end, we had about two dozen women and a handful of awesome men unload the truck. We unloaded it in the smelly back alley next to half a dozen dumpsters to get everything into the back door of the center, up the dilapidated conveyor belt and into the warehouse.
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A great story and a sad one.
Great for everything all these fantastic women did to help.
Sad that no congressperson could be troubled to help out in a meaningful way. What a bunch of hypocrites.
The politicians that show up to the border show up for nothing more than photo ops. Do any real work and soil their hands and clothes helping? You must be joking!
How many republican congressmen visited the detention centers to investigate the conditions?
Who gives a shit? I wasn't defending ANY congressperson.
Are you giving the Dems a pass on this?
I'm asking a simple question. I'm curious because when the right seeds an article it generally is for the sole purpose of making the left side look bad. What drew you to this story?
I answered your question. Now answer mine please before you ask another.
That would be good form
Gotta fly for now, i'll check back later .... play nice people!
You’ve got no argument from me.
For some people it’s purely partisan. Not for me and I made that clear early.
However, I classify people who show up to these sort of things, only for publicity and/or partisan reasons, to be more lacking in integrity.
YMMV
Yeah, that's what i thought.
And neither side is worth the powder to blow them to Hell at this point. Both need to clean up their own backyard before they throw bricks at the other's backyard.
There is no perfect party, yet, both try to promote their party as the perfect one over the other. And worse yet, the supporter of both parties simply buy their own crap and call it Filet mignon.
If both parties were as perfect as they claim to be, Americans would live in peace and prosperity among each other.
JMOO
Exactly! They know what the people want to hear, then after they are elected the do the exact opposite, and laugh their butts off at how stupid people are to actually believe their BS.
And it is rampant on both sides. Neither side has the right to point fingers at the other side. If it weren't for their endless lies and false promises, neither side would have anything going for them.
Americans have no right to point fingers of lies, corruption and mistreatment of people by other countries, when we have one of the biggest offenders sitting in the chair of the highest office of leadership in our own country.
Until the American people clean up our own house, we have no right to point accusing fingers at other countries.
JMOO
Have you never noticed the pattern that the Democrats use? If they are on camera, they act like they actually care. But once the cameras are off, they are quick to leave to get to where they can have another photo op showing how much they "care". They do not care about anyone except themselves and power. There is only one Liberal I know of that actually puts his money where he says he is going to put it and does it even when there are no cameras rolling and that is Bono of U2.
Congress is the only group that can actually fix the border crisis, and that is by passing laws to fix the asylum and immigration situation and loopholes. But, instead of figuring out what to do to fix the problem, they are only doing everything they can to make the crisis worse. For instance, when they were passing the funding for "border security", they pushed a reduction of beds at detention facilities. Once they got that reduction, they blamed Trump for the humanitarian crisis due to lack of beds and facilities to properly process the immigrants.
This seed just happens to be about Dems. Other than that, no singling out of one or the other has been done here by me.
I seeded it because one party likes to coin itself the party of the people. This story clearly points out how that is not true in the least. At least not for the congresspeople involved here. It's pretty sad when things like this are pointed out, how many people defend the actions of the people involved. There is no defense of their actions here. None at all. They could have pitched in and helped. Even if just for a few minutes.
People need to stop getting used by BOTH parties which is why i point out their hypocrisy whenever i get the chance. Wake up and smell the coffee people. Most of our congresspeople are entitled assholes. Pay attention.
No offense taken. I agree 100% with you point.
We know of one Democrat , per the article, anyway !
"Rep. Vincente Gonzalez, D-Texas, who donated $1,000 to the center, according to the monitor, walked by our 18-wheeler as we were just getting ready to start unloading and we asked him again to help."
At least he shelled out a bit of "Cash". That's the politician way. Throw "Money" at it, so actual HARD work is needed ?
AOC, and her other 3 cohorts were so devastated, they couldn't even "Personally Donate" anything …. or vote for a few billion dollars of help either. They must be really, really, REALLY devastated.
C'mon, give The Squad a break. They are devastated!
Right before her "inauguration" (her word, not mine) AOC whined about not being able to afford an apartment in Washington, DC when her annual salary was going to be only $175,000 (+perks).
Tlaib's tears and sobs really touched my heart and showed us how much she "cares".
Omar is ... just Omar.
Too bad The Squad forgot to show the world how much they really cared about illegal aliens and the small percentage of real refugees when they voted against humanitarian aid. Too bad they're shielding their despicable actions and words with the race card ... again.
Must be a crappy life when one only see's "Devastation", and STILL doesn't do anything about it !
I wonder if they are devastated that they forgot to actually do something about it ?
They're too busy spewing hatred while making the rounds on MSM shows and cozying up to Al Sharpton.
AOC will be a Tax Evasion Specialist too ….. SOON !
Yep, and Ilhan has that sticky business about allegedly being married to her brother while married to someone else ... or some such story ... that she won't explain.
I had such high hopes for The Squad having a positive impact in the House and our country. Oh, well!
The Taliban 4 are in it for themselves and their own FAME ….. ONLY !
Pretty SAD !
So.....this women doesn't understand the rules that civil servants have to follow when they are in travel status on the tax payer's dime. She thinks they are supposed to stop working to help with HER agenda so she can write her little story and promote what a good person she is and how evil everyone else is.
There are rules that need to be followed when traveling on official business. Fed employees are not permitted to stop and help. There have been instances that employees have been reprimanded because they did something outside the line of their position or the purpose of their trip. In addition, there are watch groups that love to report civil servants and call it a misuse of appropriations.
How nice of you to make excuses for these hypocrites doing there photo op.
This falls right in line with the left making excuses for Antifa claiming they were infiltrated with proud boy plants that did the assaulting.
It's spelled "their" not there.
BTW - Did you catch Pence's photo op. One thing I noticed was how much of a pussy Pence is. He couldn't even look at those people.
Looks like trump grabbed himself another pussy. hahahahahaha
Hahahahahaha - it took me pointing out a grammatical error for you to realize I don't have an agreeable personality? I must be slipping.......
I only did it because I knew it would bother you. I make grammatical errors all the time. Thank god for spellcheck. Shake it off - I'm just poking at you.
The people that need help are those defending the border, not those who come into our country uninvited and illegally