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Dear Friends, This past week, the Trump administration announced that the U.S. Government will be transferring 1,700 migrant children on the southern border to Fort Sill in Oklahoma, which served as an internment camp forleaders of the Japanese American community in the spring and early summer of 1942. In response, the @TsuruForSolidarity group has organized a protest to be held this Saturday, June 22, 2019. This protest stands in solidarity with the children and their families by opposing this administration’s immigration policy — whether the Muslim travel ban or the detentions on the southern border — which revives an unfortunate impulse of exclusion based on religious or racial animus. I've been invited to speak for a few minutes and officiate a Buddhist ceremony at the Oklahoma protest. For the service, I will be chanting the Heart Sutra, dedicating the merits of the sutra chanting to both those incarcerated at Fort Sill during WWII (including roughly 90 Buddhist priests and dozens of Shinto priests) as well as the children about to be transferred there. During the chanting, I will invite people to offer incense to pay their respects. If it is at all possible, I welcome and urge everyone to please join us this Saturday, June 22nd from 11am–1pm, at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. More details on the protest are included in the attached flyer. If you have any questions or comments regarding American Sutra or this newsletter, please email me. Kindest regards,
Duncan
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