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Celebration and pride mixed with defiance in New York City on Sunday as throngs of people crowded the streets, rainbow flags waving, for the annual gay pride march.

Tennis legend Billie Jean King was one of the grand marshals, along with transgender advocate Tyler Ford and civil rights organization Lambda Legal. The event, and others like it around the country, commemorated the riots that erupted in response to a police raid at a New York gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in June 1969.

Onlookers and participants in New York noted those origins at Sunday’s event, which was both a celebration of the diversity of LGBT culture and a statement against anti-LGBT policies promoted by President Donald Trump, such as the Republican president’s attempt to ban all transgender people from serving in the military. They also spoke out against policies aimed at other communities, like immigrants and minorities.

“We’re making a statement that we’re here, everybody. Whether it’s immigrants, whether it’s queer people or people of color, we’re not going to put up with what this administration is doing,” said Diego Molano, of Queens, at his second pride parade. “You can’t just cage everybody up.”

Olivia Nadler, a Connecticut resident attending her third parade, said, “People that are oppressed are not going to go away, they’re not going to be quiet, they’re not going to be ignored.”

Among the signs people were carrying in the parade were phrases like, “Black and brown and trans lives matter” and “No more guns.”

Ohemaa Dixon, 20, from Brooklyn, teared up as she spoke about what the parade meant to her and the joy she felt in seeing everyone come out to attend.

“It’s okay to be who you are and love who you love and dress how you want to dress and do what you want to do because I think it’s so important to be who you are and who you love,” she said. “I’m getting emotional about it because I think it’s so beautiful when people are who they are. That’s why I love coming to these things. I think it’s really cool that people come and they are exactly who they want to be.”

 Elected officials, including New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, were among those attending the march.

Before it started, Cuomo officially unveiled a New York state memorial to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people that honors victims of intolerance. Placed in Hudson River Park, it has nine boulders with pieces of glass installed in them that can act as prisms and reflect rainbows in sunlight.

Cuomo formed the commission to come up with an LGBT memorial after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando that left 49 people dead.

The theme of this year’s march was “Defiantly Different.” Eighty floats and tens of thousands of marchers were expected.

In San Francisco, a weekend of gay pride events was finishing with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade and March through the city.

Organizers expected large crowds for the event, which included more than 240 contingents. This year’s theme was “Generations of Strength.

 
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Celebration and pride mixed with defiance in New York City on Sunday as throngs of people crowded the streets, rainbow flags waving, for the annual gay pride march.

Tennis legend Billie Jean King was one of the grand marshals, along with transgender advocate Tyler Ford and civil rights organization Lambda Legal. The event, and others like it around the country, commemorated the riots that erupted in response to a police raid at a New York gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in June 1969.

Onlookers and participants in New York noted those origins at Sunday’s event, which was both a celebration of the diversity of LGBT culture and a statement against anti-LGBT policies promoted by President Donald Trump, such as the Republican president’s attempt to ban all transgender people from serving in the military. They also spoke out against policies aimed at other communities, like immigrants and minorities.

“We’re making a statement that we’re here, everybody. Whether it’s immigrants, whether it’s queer people or people of color, we’re not going to put up with what this administration is doing,” said Diego Molano, of Queens, at his second pride parade. “You can’t just cage everybody up.”

Olivia Nadler, a Connecticut resident attending her third parade, said, “People that are oppressed are not going to go away, they’re not going to be quiet, they’re not going to be ignored.”

Among the signs people were carrying in the parade were phrases like, “Black and brown and trans lives matter” and “No more guns.”

Ohemaa Dixon, 20, from Brooklyn, teared up as she spoke about what the parade meant to her and the joy she felt in seeing everyone come out to attend.

“It’s okay to be who you are and love who you love and dress how you want to dress and do what you want to do because I think it’s so important to be who you are and who you love,” she said. “I’m getting emotional about it because I think it’s so beautiful when people are who they are. That’s why I love coming to these things. I think it’s really cool that people come and they are exactly who they want to be.”

 Elected officials, including New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, were among those attending the march.

Before it started, Cuomo officially unveiled a New York state memorial to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people that honors victims of intolerance. Placed in Hudson River Park, it has nine boulders with pieces of glass installed in them that can act as prisms and reflect rainbows in sunlight.

Cuomo formed the commission to come up with an LGBT memorial after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando that left 49 people dead.

The theme of this year’s march was “Defiantly Different.” Eighty floats and tens of thousands of marchers were expected.

In San Francisco, a weekend of gay pride events was finishing with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade and March through the city.

Organizers expected large crowds for the event, which included more than 240 contingents. This year’s theme was “Generations of Strength.

 
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Protests continue over the treatment of migrants detained in Texas for entering the United States illegally, although the Trump administration on Wednesday reversed its controversial practice of separating detained children and parents at the border.

On Sunday, about 30 parents who have been separated from their children by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol were released. U.S. officials had dropped criminal charges against the parents, who had been apprehended entering the country illegally.

Annunciation House, an El Paso, Texas, organization that aids immigrants, said it would be receiving the parents. It was not known how or when they might be reunited with their children.

Annunciation House Director Ruben Garcia said, “It is my understanding the charges were not dismissed by a judge, but rather they were withdrawn by the government.”

Garcia said the immigrants were given little guidance, other than an 800 number to call, to try to get information about their children. Some of the 30 parents were being held in the El Paso County facilities, he said.

Protests

Still, thousands of migrants remain in detention awaiting their court cases, and many are still apart from their children. As the dramatic story unfolds, Americans are hearing conflicting narratives.

On Sunday, about 100 people had gathered in Tornillo, Texas, where a children’s tent encampment has been built to deal with the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy. Protesters chanted, “Free the children now!” according to the El Paso Times.

At an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Otay Mesa, California, near the U.S.-Mexico border, protesters on Friday chanted “immigrants are welcome” and demanded the release of the families detained in Texas.

“They’ve got a big mess right now, families that are separated that can’t even talk to each other, connect with each other, make sure that everybody in the family is still okay,” said protester Jan Denny. “We’re not even sure yet how they’re going to get all these people reunited,” she added of the confusion surrounding the shifting policy.

At the White House on Friday, President Donald Trump highlighted other families whose loved ones had been killed by illegal immigrants. “These are the families the media ignores,” he said, as he introduced people holding photos of their loved ones.

“Respect this country. Respect the laws of this country, and then you can come in, like my family did,” said Agnes Gibboney, the mother of a son killed by an illegal immigrant.

The Trump administration says 500 of the more than 2,000 separated children have been reunited with their families.

Protesters in California say Trump is following a pattern of blaming migrants for the nation’s problems.

“Whether these are Chinese immigrants, whether these are Mexicano immigrants, and now Central American immigrants,” said a protester named Myron of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, “there has always been an excuse to blame others.”

Trump critics

Among those raising their voices at the rally was Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California.

Harris, a frequent Trump critic, toured an adult detention center, where she met with mothers separated from their family members and children. “This is a fight,” she said, “born out of knowing who we are and fighting for the ideals of our country.”

Julian Castro, a former San Antonio mayor and secretary of Housing and Urban Development under the Obama administration, told demonstrators in Tornillo Sunday that it’s an issue “about what is right and what is wrong.”

Trump has demanded better border security and a merit-based system of immigration. Protesters say he wants to bar immigrants from the developing world, who already face a hard path to entry and huge backlog of cases.

“We have a broken immigration system,” said Angelica Salas of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. “This is not news to anybody.”

The immigration issue is divisive, but Andrew Pappas of Cincinnati, Ohio, told the Associated Press that he believes Trump’s goal “was not to tear families apart” but “to make Congress act on immigration reform.”

One California border protester, Ellen Montanari, said the issue is close to her heart because her adopted daughter is Latina, like most families in detention.

“We do need sane members of Congress to sit down and talk about what a reasonable immigration policy looks like,” Montanari said, although she worries that in this year of congressional elections, there will instead be more posturing.

 
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Protests continue over the treatment of migrants detained in Texas for entering the United States illegally, although the Trump administration on Wednesday reversed its controversial practice of separating detained children and parents at the border.

On Sunday, about 30 parents who have been separated from their children by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol were released. U.S. officials had dropped criminal charges against the parents, who had been apprehended entering the country illegally.

Annunciation House, an El Paso, Texas, organization that aids immigrants, said it would be receiving the parents. It was not known how or when they might be reunited with their children.

Annunciation House Director Ruben Garcia said, “It is my understanding the charges were not dismissed by a judge, but rather they were withdrawn by the government.”

Garcia said the immigrants were given little guidance, other than an 800 number to call, to try to get information about their children. Some of the 30 parents were being held in the El Paso County facilities, he said.

Protests

Still, thousands of migrants remain in detention awaiting their court cases, and many are still apart from their children. As the dramatic story unfolds, Americans are hearing conflicting narratives.

On Sunday, about 100 people had gathered in Tornillo, Texas, where a children’s tent encampment has been built to deal with the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy. Protesters chanted, “Free the children now!” according to the El Paso Times.

At an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Otay Mesa, California, near the U.S.-Mexico border, protesters on Friday chanted “immigrants are welcome” and demanded the release of the families detained in Texas.

“They’ve got a big mess right now, families that are separated that can’t even talk to each other, connect with each other, make sure that everybody in the family is still okay,” said protester Jan Denny. “We’re not even sure yet how they’re going to get all these people reunited,” she added of the confusion surrounding the shifting policy.

At the White House on Friday, President Donald Trump highlighted other families whose loved ones had been killed by illegal immigrants. “These are the families the media ignores,” he said, as he introduced people holding photos of their loved ones.

“Respect this country. Respect the laws of this country, and then you can come in, like my family did,” said Agnes Gibboney, the mother of a son killed by an illegal immigrant.

The Trump administration says 500 of the more than 2,000 separated children have been reunited with their families.

Protesters in California say Trump is following a pattern of blaming migrants for the nation’s problems.

“Whether these are Chinese immigrants, whether these are Mexicano immigrants, and now Central American immigrants,” said a protester named Myron of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, “there has always been an excuse to blame others.”

Trump critics

Among those raising their voices at the rally was Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California.

Harris, a frequent Trump critic, toured an adult detention center, where she met with mothers separated from their family members and children. “This is a fight,” she said, “born out of knowing who we are and fighting for the ideals of our country.”

Julian Castro, a former San Antonio mayor and secretary of Housing and Urban Development under the Obama administration, told demonstrators in Tornillo Sunday that it’s an issue “about what is right and what is wrong.”

Trump has demanded better border security and a merit-based system of immigration. Protesters say he wants to bar immigrants from the developing world, who already face a hard path to entry and huge backlog of cases.

“We have a broken immigration system,” said Angelica Salas of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. “This is not news to anybody.”

The immigration issue is divisive, but Andrew Pappas of Cincinnati, Ohio, told the Associated Press that he believes Trump’s goal “was not to tear families apart” but “to make Congress act on immigration reform.”

One California border protester, Ellen Montanari, said the issue is close to her heart because her adopted daughter is Latina, like most families in detention.

“We do need sane members of Congress to sit down and talk about what a reasonable immigration policy looks like,” Montanari said, although she worries that in this year of congressional elections, there will instead be more posturing.

 
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For many Americans, the ultimate embodiment of their love for cars and freedom is renting or owning recreational vehicles, or RVs, which made their mass debut in the U.S. in 1930s, only to become more popular in ensuing decades. Today, more than nine million Americans own RVs and love traveling and spending their vacations in these miniature homes. Mariia Prus explains how it is possible to have everything needed for a comfortable trip in one vehicle or towed trailer. Steve Baragona narrates.
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For many Americans, the ultimate embodiment of their love for cars and freedom is renting or owning recreational vehicles, or RVs, which made their mass debut in the U.S. in 1930s, only to become more popular in ensuing decades. Today, more than nine million Americans own RVs and love traveling and spending their vacations in these miniature homes. Mariia Prus explains how it is possible to have everything needed for a comfortable trip in one vehicle or towed trailer. Steve Baragona narrates.
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Trump administration officials say the U.S. government knows the location of all children in its custody after separating them from their families at the border and is working to reunite them.

A fact sheet on “zero-tolerance prosecution and family reunification” released Saturday night by the Department of Homeland Security also says a parent must request that their child be deported with them. In the past, the agency says, many parents have elected to be deported without their children. That may be a reflection of violence or persecution they face in their home countries.

As part of the effort, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have posted notices in all its facilities advising detained parents who are trying to find or communicate with their children to call a hotline staffed 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday.

A parent or guardian trying to determine if a child is in the custody of HHS should contact the Office of Refugee Resettlement National Call Center at 1-800-203-7001, or via email at information@ORRNCC.com. Information will be collected and sent to HHS-funded facility where minor is located.

The fact sheet doesn’t state how long it might take to reunite families. The Port Isabel Service Processing Center in Texas has been set up as the staging ground for the families to be reunited before deportation.

How the government would reunite families has been unclear because the families are first stopped by Customs and Border Patrol, with children taken into custody by HHS and adults detained through ICE. Children have been sent to shelters around the country, raising alarm that parents might never know where their children can be found.

The fact sheet states that ICE has implemented an identification mechanism to ensure on-going tracking of linked family members throughout the detention and removal process; designated detention locations for separated parents and will enhance current processes to ensure communication with children in HHS custody; worked closely with foreign consulates to ensure that travel documents are issued for both the parent and child at time of removal; and coordinated with HHS for the reuniting of the child prior to the parents’ departure from the U.S.
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Jehovah’s Witnesses have a long history of being persecuted around the world. Their activities are banned or restricted in several countries. They are considered an extremist organization in Russia, while their members are imprisoned in South Korea and Eritrea. Even near their main headquarters and publishing house in New York state, Jehovah’s Witnesses lead a somewhat secluded life. VOA’s Anush Avetisyan has the story.
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Globalization in the 20th century facilitated the exchange of goods, ideas and technology. But it also helped spread deadly germs and viruses around the world. A new exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History illustrates the impact of these sometimes lethal biological linkages and looks back at the deadliest and scariest epidemics throughout history. Maxim Moskalkov has more.
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As VOA approached the 77,000-square-foot detention center from one side, three young cousins trekking on a dirt side road stopped.

“Yep, that’s Ursula,” said Ramon Montoya through the driver’s window of a red pickup, referring to the detention center, a sterile dirty-white box with burgundy trim that stands a few kilometers north of Mexico. Locally, the center is called by the name of the street it’s on, Ursula.

The Kansas-born son of Mexican-native parents and meat industry workers, 20-year-old Montoya moved to McAllen, Texas, with his family when he was in the fourth grade. 

“Where the Tex meets the Mex,” he described it, “a fusion of two cultures.”

“I love it here,” Montoya continued. “This place has a lot to offer and it’s sad to see it disgraced by something like this.”

Detention center

The detention center is also the country’s largest U.S. Border Patrol Processing Center and it is a short stroll from Montoya’s home. For him, there’s no escaping the reality of family separation in the South Texas border region, where illegal border crossers regularly seek refuge from economic hardship, cartel and domestic violence in their home countries.

Inside the facility since early May, more than 1,000 migrant parents and children were held and later routinely separated.

In Texas, a Republican stronghold politically, a new University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll, showed a majority of state voters opposed separating families at the U.S.-Mexico border; while 28 percent supported it. Republican men were more likely to support the separation than were women and Democrats.

An executive order this week shifted the focus from family separation to family unit detention. But it did not clear up how families already separated are to be reunified and what kind of conditions detained families will be held in.

It did not ease the hit in the gut for some first- and second-generation Americans in a state that continues to swing toward greater diversity, where Latinos may outnumber non-Hispanic white residents by 2022.

Montoya, a mechanical engineering student at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, calls the situation shameful. 

“Put yourself in their place for just a second, and you might be able to understand why so many people are devastated by this,” he said.

​Laws not working

About an hour drive southeast of McAllen is Brownsville, an area rich with nature reserves that cut across the U.S.-Mexico barrier.

The proximity to sandy beaches on the Gulf with their palm trees and green parrots is what brought retired educator Larry Genuchi here 26 years ago.

Similar to McAllen, the area’s sizable share of Hispanic residents make for a diverse blend of shared traditions. But also like McAllen, the community has heard stories of migrant despair. It is also the site of a former Walmart-turned-foster care facility that houses more than 1,400 unaccompanied migrant boys, some of them forcibly separated from their families.

In an interview and downtown tour along the U.S.-Mexico border, Genuchi expressed nostalgia for the days he would stroll right across the bridge, before crime became rampant in neighboring Matamoros, Tamaulipas. He says he now hears gunshots across the Rio Grande River.

But while the 70-year-old from Lubbock, Texas, doesn’t claim to have all the answers, for him there is clearly a wrong one to solving illegal immigration.

“I’m a parent and a I’m also a grandfather and I’m telling you,” he said, “taking away children, putting them in danger — boy, that goes against everything in my body.”

Genuchi, who only shares his voting record with “God and my wife,” is appreciative of law enforcement for doing “the very best that they can.” But some policies, he suggests, need to change.

“All they’re trying to do now, I think, is just enforce the laws that are there,” Genuchi said. “But they’re finding out the laws don’t work real well.”

Caring but realistic

Newly elected GOP Hidalgo County Chair Adrienne Peña-Garza, the first woman to hold the position in the county, is transparent about her own role as a Hispanic Republican resident in an “extremely” democratic area.

Shielded from Thursday’s torrential downpour that resulted in Texas’ worst flooding post-Hurricane Harvey, Peña-Garza spoke to VOA by phone in her friend’s truck.

The porous border, as she describes it, needs to be fixed, and while she doesn’t think children should be separated from their parents under most circumstances, she believes stories in which a child’s safety is in question go underreported, along with the quiet heroism of McAllen’s Border Patrol agents whom she describes as “merciful and compassionate.”

But as a mother and community member herself, rhetoric on the issue is important, and she is careful in talking to the media.

“I know that there have been people in my party in the past that had been a little too far to the right on rhetoric, where they sound like they don’t care about individuals,” Peña-Garza said.

“I care about all people no matter where you’re from, but at the same time we’re talking about U-S-of-A, we’re talking about border security, we’re talking about what’s best for people.”

Next to “Ursula,” Ramon Montoya imagines his own family coming to McAllen at a different moment in time.

“We have so many examples in our world’s history where people have been victim to these kinds of injustices, and now we’re the ones causing the harm,” Montoya said. “I choose to believe that we’re better than this.”
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During the hottest hours, when the sun is highest in the sky and the blistering pavement could fry an egg, Rashida Tlaib is relentlessly walking door-to-door in a Detroit neighborhood in search of votes.

And she’s doing so without eating any food or drinking any water during the day.

That’s because Tlaib is a practicing Muslim, which means she is fasting during the holy month of Ramadan.

“I know that my faith comes up more on social media, but at the doors I don’t get it as much,” she told VOA during a break beneath the much needed shade of trees along the street.

Making a connection

While others would stay indoors in the air conditioning during the stifling heat wave, Tlaib views it as an opportunity to build name recognition, as she seeks to represent Michigan’s 13th District in the U.S. Congress.

“People still can’t pronounce my name, but they remember what I’ve done, and they remember that I’ve come to their home,” she said.

Tlaib is no stranger to politics, having served in Michigan’s Legislature. She is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, but on these streets — in a predominantly African-American neighborhood — she is a local, someone who attended schools in the area.

“It’s that direct connection to the neighborhood that I think people are much more excited about,” said Tlaib, acknowledging that walking from house to house gives her the chance to directly connect with potential voters and to hear about their concerns and needs.

A chance at making history

She is campaigning in one of the poorest congressional districts in the state of Michigan and the country, and her religion and race rarely come up as topics of conversation when she encounters voters.

“For me, the direct door-to-door contact has been about constituent issues,” she explained, adding that most people have welcomed the opportunity to speak with her. “At the doors, I think it’s really how you make people feel, and I haven’t faced much opposition, and I haven’t seen that big push back or opposition yet.”

She says few of the people she meets realize she is on the cusp of making history — again.

“I tell them I’m the first Muslim woman ever elected in the Michigan Legislature, and if I’m elected in this congressional race I’ll be the first ever in Congress.”

Several candidates

“Is she a shoo-in? No. Is she a possibility? Yes. She is a formidable candidate,” said Osama Siblani, publisher of the Dearborn, Michigan-based Arab American News, a weekly publication serving the large Arab-American population in Southeastern Michigan.

He says Tlaib’s candidacy, and two other races prominently featuring Muslim Americans in Michigan, show a new political awakening in the larger Muslim-American community nationwide, where about 100 are running for public office this year, many of them Democrats hoping to be a part of a “blue wave” in the congressional midterm elections in November.

“We were, at one time, people who were in hiding,” he told VOA. “We were changing our names in this country. Despite September 11, despite the Trump era, we are moving forward, we are running for election, we are winning and we are making a significant impact in our society.”

‘Bigger than me’

The significance of the moment is not lost on Rashida Tlaib, who isn’t just representing Muslim Americans, but also is part of a larger group of hundreds of women this year seeking public office across the country.

“Nationally, this is a pretty historic campaign,” she said. “People that are supporting me, from this Muslim woman in Tampa who told me, ‘Please win, because if you win, we belong.’ I told her, “We’ve already won. You absolutely belong.’ It means so much bigger than me.”

But if Tlaib is to win, she’ll need support outside the Arab-American community in Michigan, most of whom don’t live in the district she seeks to represent and can’t vote for her.

Tlaib faces several challengers seeking to replace Congressman John Conyers Jr., who resigned in December amid allegations of sexual misconduct. The winner of the August 7 Democratic primary will likely head to Congress next year because there is currently no Republican running in the November general election.

If Tlaib wins the election, she may not be the only Muslim-American woman in the next U.S. Congress. Fayrouz Saad, a Democrat, is running in a competitive race in Michigan’s 11th district, while Ilhan Omar, the nation’s first Somali-American lawmaker, is campaigning for the Democratic primary election for Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District on August 14.
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