Guest blog by Lauren Regan, Executive Director and Senior Staff Attorney for Civil Liberties Defense Center, www.cldc.org

I’ve spent a lot of time the last few months planning for the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of my grandparents’ executions. From initial brainstorming with the RFC staff and Board about what themes/issues we wanted to highlight to conversations about the format and timing and focus of the events to more recent efforts to draft and then finalize a script and film participants, it’s been an enormous amount of work.

At an RFC event years ago, one beneficiary made the point that in a perfect world, the RFC wouldn’t exist. It’s a strange concept to think about as an employee of such a special organization, but it’s true: in a perfect world, there would be absolutely no need for us. Egregious cases of targeting wouldn’t occur. Children of activists would be able to live safe and full lives without organizations like ours, and activist families wouldn’t have to live in constant states of uncertainty and fear.

The new book, Drawing Deportation: Art and Resistance Among Immigrant Children hit bookshelves on Valentine’s Day and was described as a love letter to immigrant children. However, it is also bitter medicine to understand the American tragedy known as family separation. The book is based on work with children of immigrants along border states like Arizona and California who contend with the fear and stress related to family separation that our current enforcement-focused immigration system creates.

This year has felt like a series of seemingly endless crises, from the pandemic to environmental calamity (fires and storms and floods to name just a few) to the frightening rise in antisemitic, racist and anti-trans speech and violence at home and around the globe. All of these developments are symptomatic of escalating threats to democracy and the frightening rise of fascism.