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We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe God wants more for women than we've been taught. Join us as we dive into the intersection of faith and feminism, learning together as we go.
To the We Are More Pod cast. My name is Alyssa. And my name is Bree. We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism. We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach his word.
Speaker 1:And apparently, that's controversial. Get comfy. I've had a lot
Speaker 2:of hairspray stuck in my head and not in the way that most people would think. I'm thinking dandruff buildup. Nope. Nope. I'm thinking of the musical.
Speaker 2:Obviously. I've been listening to it a lot in my car.
Speaker 1:I know. Because here's why. Not that you've been listening to it with me in the car. It's that you sing it. And I don't, like, register that you're singing it
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:But my subconscious does. And it is stuck in my head all the time. I can hear the bells. Bom bom bom. It's not even like the best of the musicals.
Speaker 1:No. Like, it's fine.
Speaker 2:It's decidedly not. And not even like the Broadway version of it. I have the oh, what is her name?
Speaker 1:Nikki Nikki Blonsky. Nikki Blonsky.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Which she was very popular recently on TikTok.
Speaker 1:Oh, really?
Speaker 2:Something happened. She she she went viral or something.
Speaker 1:I always really liked her. Did you know that she dated Zac Efron while they were in that movie? And then immediately after the movie was over, he broke up with her?
Speaker 2:That was a trend back in that time Mhmm. When movies like that would come out. They were like, oh, the main characters have to date. Mhmm. So when high school musical was out, he was dating Vanessa Hudgens.
Speaker 2:And I think
Speaker 1:he went back to dating her He did.
Speaker 2:Yeah. After Hairspray came out. But what a weird time.
Speaker 1:I think that started with like Twilight. I just feel like you you don't have to do that. No. I don't need that in my life.
Speaker 2:And I get that in like theater, you create weird bonds with people whilst doing the theater and doing the filming. And you might feel things, but that's just your character, you know? You might feel things. You might feel things, but that's not real.
Speaker 1:Deny them is what you're saying to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Got it. Alright. That was exciting. Has nothing to do with what we're talking
Speaker 1:anything, frankly. But it has been driving me insane over the last couple days.
Speaker 2:I will also say, today, while filming, usually, I sit on the other side of Alyssa.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's throwing me off.
Speaker 2:And we flip flopped today, and my headphones keep hitting the wall behind me. And I wanna look at you, but then my headphones hit the wall behind me. And I'm really struggling. Well, I
Speaker 1:will say this is the comfier spot. I've got, like, pillows on pillows on pillows.
Speaker 2:I know. That's why I sit there. That's
Speaker 1:rude. Someday. Someday we'll have some wonderful recording space, but it's not gonna be like you know how you see filmed podcasts on YouTube? And they're like, on the least comfortable couch known to man. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And they've got their Or like a desk.
Speaker 1:Table. Yeah. And their headphones or not their headphones. Their microphones and whatever. We're gonna be in beanbags Mhmm.
Speaker 2:On the actual floor. There's a podcast called Call Her Daddy or something like that. Oh, dear. It is. Am I thinking of the right one?
Speaker 2:Probably. They just read like Reddit posts. Oh, yeah. And I saw a YouTube video of one and they have like two big comfy chairs and they wrap themselves in blankets I
Speaker 1:love it.
Speaker 2:With ottomans. Ottomans. Ottomans. Ottomans. Ottomans.
Speaker 2:And I think that's what we should do. But maybe beanbags. Beanbags. And then
Speaker 1:I needed, like, an iced coffee machine.
Speaker 2:But also, like, a little table next to you where you can keep your iced coffee.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah. Because, then it'd be on the floor.
Speaker 2:That's a mess. Or iced coffee in a Camelback.
Speaker 1:Camelbacks though, it gives you like a plasticky flavor.
Speaker 2:I don't want that. A new camelback every single time you get ice. Okay. Or one of those bras that you can put wine in. The budget for our show
Speaker 1:is just gonna be astronomical.
Speaker 2:Yes. When people finally start to sponsor us, they're gonna say, what are your demands? And I'm gonna be like, a bra where I can put wine. That'll lift my boobs up. And then as I drink the wine, my boobs will drop.
Speaker 2:They'll sag.
Speaker 1:Great. Well, sponsors out there. How do you feel about this? Are you excited now? They're alarmed.
Speaker 1:Excited might not be the word.
Speaker 2:It might be like cost effective for them.
Speaker 1:For your wine bra? Mhmm. How would that be cost effective? We're just drunk all the time? We can't make any other demands because we can't talk?
Speaker 1:No. They don't have to pay us anything else. Just Pay us in wine broths. Just wine broths.
Speaker 2:Do you need more than one? Is this a plastic situation? How do you clean that? I
Speaker 1:don't I don't know. I it's not something I have life experience with.
Speaker 2:Me neither. So you out there, people of the world, have you ever had to
Speaker 1:clean your wine bra? How did it go? Let us know.
Speaker 2:Were you so drunk you just threw it away afterwards? Or like what happened? Were people concerned about you? And does how like, the size of your boobs, does it affect how much wine you can then keep in your bra?
Speaker 1:Well, it depends on how big the bra is, I guess. Like, if you're an a cup and you're willing to be a double d, then you've got a lot of wine. But if you're already a double d and you're only willing to go to, like, a g cup, not so much. Maybe we need to find a different wine receptacle. It's also gonna be warm wine at some point.
Speaker 2:Very body temperature. Yeah. Which some wines are best served at.
Speaker 1:Okay. I disagree. I do not like a room temperature wine. Not in for that.
Speaker 2:Okay. I'm really going off the rails, but hear me out. I love wine.
Speaker 1:We know. But I'm not one of those,
Speaker 2:you know, Frasier type people. Yes. You know? I don't care about the dirt that it was grown in.
Speaker 1:You're not a whiny.
Speaker 2:I'm not a whiny. I like my $3.95 bottle of wine from Aldi. And I specifically like it in a cup with an ice cube. We know. They know.
Speaker 2:They've heard this. Then that gives you a little bit of hydration. That really is
Speaker 1:the issue. The hydration. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know how to move from this. We're going to a more serious topic Yeah. For today. So, let's put on our serious pants.
Speaker 1:I feel like we're kind of lightly avoiding it just because it is it's such a difficult topic, and it's easier to just be fun and funny. Mhmm. But we talk about this all the time in our real
Speaker 2:life. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So we're gonna talk to you guys about it. We told you last week we were gonna be talking about immigration. And the reason behind that is I feel like you'd have to be living under a rock not to know. But in The United States, we are dealing with our federal administration going after who they call illegal aliens, often who are not, often who are citizens. But even if they weren't Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Detaining them. We've got them in detention centers and deporting them to countries they aren't even from. And just all sorts of human rights violations. People have been killed in the streets. It's bad.
Speaker 1:Things are bad. Yeah. The city of Minneapolis, about 4% of the city is currently protesting on a regular basis. And the interesting thing about that so my husband looked this up and found it. But apparently, there's like a three and a half percent rule.
Speaker 1:When you get three and a half percent of people vocally talking and working against something, that's when it starts to shift. That's when things start to change because it's like such a noticeable amount of people. It doesn't seem like it would be. But so four percent of the city literally 4% of the city is not going to work, not going to school, and in the streets protesting in the freezing cold, which is impressive.
Speaker 2:It really shows what people are willing to do, especially like Minneapolis. Right? It's freezing freaking cold.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Where we're at, it was like 28 degrees today and I was bothered. So I can't imagine spending all your day outside because you believe in something so much. And all you have to do is log on to your TikTok or any social media platform right now to really see what's going on. And I think something that's important is that people are documenting things right now. People are doing live videos of just what's happening around them.
Speaker 2:Right. And it's tragic that it's come to this. Mhmm. But I think it's really important for people to see from, like, not from a news perspective or a journalist perspective, like, here's what real people just walking the streets doing their protesting. This is what they're seeing.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. There I think probably most of you have heard the stories of the two deaths that happened.
Speaker 2:There's been more, but the two most recent.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The two that are really hitting the news, which were Renee Good and Alex Pretty. And those two, I think, have been very viral because of, like, they just happened in the streets. Like Mhmm. It was right there.
Speaker 1:But there's so many littler stories too of, like, there is a little five year old boy. And this one hit me particularly difficult because that's around the age my son is. And they ICE detained him. ICEs are like immigration enforcement officers. And ICE detained him, this five year old child, and held him outside of his home because the people wouldn't like his family wouldn't come out of their house.
Speaker 1:And they were trying to lure them out of the house. Now that little boy and his father were just released from detention, which is great and something to celebrate certainly. But a lot of why they specifically were released is because there was media backlash Mhmm. About this one kid and how many other kids are currently sitting in detention just sitting there? I actually saw a drone footage Mhmm.
Speaker 2:That they flew over some of the detention camps. I think they were specifically in Texas, but, like, the people in the detention centers were also protesting. Mhmm. But it's really frightening to see that footage. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because not a lot of people know what the inside of that looks like. Mhmm. Now we're just getting like an aerial view, but there's nothing. Right. There were like barely trailers there.
Speaker 2:People were outside in what looked like maybe rain jackets.
Speaker 1:I don't know. But it's it it's frightening. Well, it calls back to during World War two, The United States did have detention camps. They had concentration camps for Japanese citizens in America because they were scared of the Japanese people. And we look back on that and I I thought we were all horrified.
Speaker 1:I thought we all had said never again. And yet here we are doing the same thing. Well, also I think people
Speaker 2:people don't wanna believe that history is repeating itself. So the comments that I've heard is it's like, well, it's a detention facility, but they're they're just keeping them safe there and trying to explain away what this detention facility is. And what does that really mean? Does it mean a concentration camp? What are they doing in this detention facility?
Speaker 2:How are they being treated? What's happening to them? Well, and
Speaker 1:it's incredibly secretive. If nothing is wrong, if they're just like and to be fair, you should never strip someone of their freedoms. Like, you should never detain someone for no reason at all. But let's assume they're taking great care of them. They're getting lobster every night for dinner and playing pickleball.
Speaker 1:I don't know. Assume that's the case, then why don't we know what's going on? Why hasn't someone walked through with a camera and been like, hey, look, they're playing cards over there. They're playing video games here. They're having a great time.
Speaker 1:Whatever. Like, that's not happening. It's all very secretive, which tells me there's something to be secretive about.
Speaker 2:Right. And there's also video footage of people trying to get footage Right. Of these facilities. And they're all fenced in. You can hear people screaming from inside.
Speaker 2:But anytime you get close enough to them to try to film what's happening, they kick you out. Mhmm. Also, something that I think should be mentioned is, like, what are these people going in there with? Because they're just snatching people from the streets. Right?
Speaker 2:They're not taking them back to their house and saying, like, okay, let's pack up some stuff for you, like your essentials, your medications
Speaker 1:Right. Your phone, your whatever. Extra underwear for heaven's sake.
Speaker 2:Yeah. What if you're on your period? Right. Like me right now. It's horrifying just to say like you have the clothes on your back and whatever you have on you and let's go.
Speaker 1:And there are people being snatched off the streets that have children that were not snatched off the streets. So now they have to worry, what about my kids? What about my pets? What about my mom that I take care of? What about all of these things that I'm just leaving behind?
Speaker 1:Imagine if you disappeared all of a sudden. Mhmm. What people that depend on you now are at a loss? There are so many worries and concerns. You can't say, oh, they're just keeping them safe.
Speaker 1:Because anytime you're snatched out of your life, there are going to be terrors.
Speaker 2:There are gonna be things that are awful and scary. There's also something called an a number, which is assigned to each detainee. Now, you can't go look it up if you don't already have it. If you call the different facilities, they won't give it to you. What happens is, I guess, the actual person who's detained has like one call that they can make out to tell whoever they need what their number is.
Speaker 2:And what that means is like, if you have that number, you can assign money to this person's account so that they can make more calls or get what they need. But there's a problem getting these numbers if the people then can't share what that number is. Mhmm. So they have one call that they can make, maybe. And you better hope that that person who you're calling is going to be able to record that number.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Pick up the phone.
Speaker 1:That they pick up the phone. That you knew the phone number to begin with. Because you don't have your your cell phone to look up your call history or anything. It and you think back again to World War two and to the Nazi concentration camps where people were tattooed with a number.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. They're purposely making it complicated. Mhmm. There is no structure. That is the structure.
Speaker 1:That it's chaos and that it's impossible to get out of or give those people support. Well, you think about, like, the budget that's been given to ICE. It's the highest budget of any, certainly any federal law enforcement, but like any department right now. They just increased it. And the budget I forget how much.
Speaker 1:They were like, we could give every single
Speaker 2:officer a bonus. It's like 800 and something $895,000,000 just in kind of like alloc non allocated funds. So they could give each ICE officer $42,000 Mhmm.
Speaker 1:As a bonus. Right. And you're telling me that with that level of budget, you can't let people make more than one phone call? Mhmm. That's gonna break the whole budget because I I have unlimited minutes on my phone.
Speaker 1:They can have my phone. Mhmm. You're telling me you couldn't do that? It's insane. And the the issue that I have I mean, so many issues, just One of the issues?
Speaker 1:One of the many issues, one of all of the millions of issues is the church's response. Because remember that this administration, the Trump as our president and his cabinet of idiots, they can't exist without some level of social support. They couldn't. They could not do what they are doing without government support and social support. And the church has really backed them and backed them in this particularly, which blows my mind.
Speaker 1:Because biblically, this is just wrong on every level. Just the Bible is really specific about how we are to treat immigrants. And I'm gonna go into a little bit of that because I think it's important knowing what the Bible really says. Not what the media says, not what your friend on Facebook says, but what it really says. So, in the Hebrew Bible, the word, which I may be pronouncing that wrong.
Speaker 2:You probably are. You're right.
Speaker 1:Which means stranger or resident foreigner, something like that. Someone who's not from your land appears 92 times throughout the Hebrew Bible specifically. And that to me says, this is important. 92 times. That's a lot of times.
Speaker 1:So you can see it throughout. And there's a lot of verses that talk about this stranger or foreigner. It says, don't oppress them. You were strangers in Egypt. I've sorry.
Speaker 1:I've got the
Speaker 2:KJV versions up. And that's a little throwing me off because there's a
Speaker 1:lot of yees and thous. But you see it throughout like, in Leviticus, it says the stranger that dwells with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and you'll love him as yourself. It's really specific. There's not a lot of like, oh gee, I wonder what that says. In Exodus, it's it talks about laws that are for you should also be for the foreigner.
Speaker 1:So anything that applies to me should also apply to someone who has come into my land. And to treat the stranger as one of your own country I'm like pulling there's literally 92 times this word is mentioned. And one of the things one of the verses that I did look up in the NLT, I think is really important. So it's Malachi three five. And it says, at that time, I will put you on trial.
Speaker 1:I am eager to witness against all sorcerers and adulterers and liars. I will speak against those who cheat employees of their wages, who oppress widows and orphans, or who deprive the foreigners living among you of justice. For these people do not fear me, says the Lord of heaven's armies. So God is saying here, you don't fear me if you don't care for the foreigner in your land.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Not the legal immigrant to your land. Not the person who has their passport on them at all times. Not the person who's not brown at all. Because let's not pretend that this isn't a severely racist situation. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:No. Anyone who doesn't care for the foreigner like I taught them to, like I told them to in the 91 other verses, doesn't fear me, doesn't worship me, doesn't care about me.
Speaker 2:And I think it's really important to mention again that, like, God sent Jesus down and Jesus was a refugee.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Right?
Speaker 2:Yep. He didn't look like us today. Mhmm. If Jesus was walking around the streets of Minneapolis, he would be detained. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:People ICE would come up to him because he looked different. His skin color was different. He had to flee his home country because people were after him. Mhmm. Why do you think people come here?
Speaker 1:And not just that. Think of your own families. Like for us, we're only, no, obviously, lots of different families. But on one wing of our family, we're only like third generation
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Born in The United States. And that's not that far back. No. My ancestors came here for safety, for freedom, for a better life, and they came here as immigrants. Pretty much all of us, unless you have a native American background, came here as immigrants Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Somewhere along the line. Even if your family goes back to the revolutionary war, you were still immigrants. And this space accepted you. I
Speaker 2:think something else that's really important to note is humanity. Mhmm. In times like these, people like to find a specific group of people and dehumanize them. Yes. And we talked about this last week, but they did that to the Jewish people in World War two.
Speaker 2:We've done it to all kinds of different groups of people where we forget that they are human. Mhmm. That Jesus died on the cross for them
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:For us, for everybody. Take a look around you. Every single person that you see moving around Mhmm. Even if they're not moving, Jesus died for. And especially if we're gonna call ourselves Christians Mhmm.
Speaker 2:We should be caring for them. Because the Bible, I just looked it up, says to love one another and love God, just the word love, 310 times.
Speaker 1:And it's so easy like you said, it's so easy to dehumanize, to not actually sit and think about others. Because we do get really wrapped up in our own world. It's easy. We're busy. We're we've got stuff going on.
Speaker 1:We've got family. We've got work. We've got whatever. It's easy to just look at our own lives. But you have to look at each of these people who has been snatched off the streets often violently and say they are living a life.
Speaker 1:They have a family. They have people that love them and that depend on them. They need that love and kindness and they deserve it. Other arguments that I've heard during
Speaker 2:this time is just a general fear. Again, dehumanizing people, but aren't you afraid of the immigrants who come in here illegally? They're not following our laws. Not that we've made it easy for people, but, all of the crime and the violence that they're creating. Immigrants make up what?
Speaker 2:Like, 1%?
Speaker 1:It's very unreasonably small if you look at the level of fear that we have.
Speaker 2:Of the population. And if you look at other moments where people get angry at, like, teachers or Mhmm. Pastors, the argument is always there's always going to be bad people.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:People do bad things. But it's not because of the color of their skin or anything else about them. Just people make choices.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Right? So rather than say, I'm scared of the violence of them, so therefore, I'm okay with what's happening to them.
Speaker 1:Violence shouldn't be returned with violence. Right. Even if they were violent. And I'm not in any way saying that they are, but even if that were true. I saw a post maybe last week on social media, and I tend to not see like, it's not that I don't have any friends on social platforms that are conservative.
Speaker 1:I have many, many that are. She just doesn't have any friends. That too. But I tend to, like, hide them, you know, hide their posts during times like this because I find it really difficult to see. And there was somebody that posted that I didn't I would never have expected this out of them and said something along the lines of we should take ICE out of Minneapolis because it seems like a waste of resources because they love hanging out with murderers and rapists and they're fine with that.
Speaker 1:Referring to all immigrants. I would also like to argue, who do you
Speaker 2:think we have sitting at the head of our White House?
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, clearly.
Speaker 2:We all like to hang out with that rapist.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Right? Well, I did some research on because, of course, the main argument that you're seeing right now or that I'm seeing right now anyway is these people are all criminals. So I wanna do some research on are they? Because you you can just say stuff now in in the media apparently, and it's true.
Speaker 1:But here's the reality. So immigrants overall, including undocumented immigrants, are less likely to commit violent crime than US born citizens. Now these are statistics specifically from The United States. In fact, undocumented immigrants are 33% likely less likely to be incarcerated than US born Americans. Why?
Speaker 1:Because many of them, obviously not everyone, but many of them came here for a better life. They came here so their children would have a better life. And so they're not gonna risk that over petty crime, over violent crime. Like it's less likely, 33% less likely than a US born citizen to be incarcerated. I went to Tijuana back when I very first got married.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that they told us was that part of the reason that people try and cross the border so often is human trafficking. There's a lot of farmland as you go further into, like, Baja area, and it's very common for the gangs to go into the farms as young girls and young boys are working and just snatch them. Just take them and you'll never see them again. And so these people were crossing the border not to bring drugs into The United States, not to cause violent crime, but because their children are being taken into a life of horrific Violence. Violence.
Speaker 1:And so they came here because they want safety for them and their families. And we don't make it easy for them to come here legally. And as a parent, I can't fault that. As a parent, you can't tell me like, well, you need to follow the laws to give your child a good example. No.
Speaker 1:Absolutely not. If my child has a risk of being snatched into sex trafficking, I'm crossing the border too. I'm coming too. I can't fault people for doing things I would absolutely do. There was a video that I saw the
Speaker 2:other day on TikTok. This guy was interviewing someone who was kicked out. And he was camping out by the border because he had just been kicked out. And they said, would you wanna go back? And he said, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Even though I experienced a lot of violence in The United States, even though they kicked me out, even though look at where I'm at. I'm sitting in a tent outside like this is my new home. Based on the violence that he was experiencing back in his old life, he would still wanna come back over. So that shows, like, doesn't that touch your humanity? Right?
Speaker 2:Don't you wanna give that person an opportunity for safety?
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I think
Speaker 1:most I I guess I would hope most humans, if they sat face to face with someone, would say, yeah. I want better for that individual person. But they'll they're still willing to kind of generalize everybody else. And I've seen that happen. I've seen people say like, oh, well, I know this person, but they're fine.
Speaker 1:They're not a criminal or they're not doing things wrong or whatever. There's no buts. It's all or nothing. You either believe people are people and deserving of love or you don't. And I've read online something that said, basically, like, what you're doing right now is what you would have done in World War two.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Are you proud of yourself? Whatever you're doing right now, if it's sitting in complicit silence or if it's supporting a side that is violent and not representing Jesus in any way, that's what you would have done. Mhmm. That's the side you would have taken.
Speaker 1:Are you okay with that? Do you feel good about that?
Speaker 2:I saw a quote on Facebook. I don't know that it is a quote. I don't know who it's by. It's a little meme GIF. I don't know.
Speaker 1:We can cut this whole
Speaker 2:part out. It says, the wrong side of history will always be the side that denies someone of their humanity. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:You're right. What side do
Speaker 2:you wanna be on? Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I can't like, I think Brie said this last week. We we can't fly to Minneapolis and protest. We can't do that. And so we we're here and we're talking about it because it's important. But this is hard for us to talk about.
Speaker 1:It's it's hard from a personal perspective because of some people that we know, but it's also hard just to deal with emotionally. Like, to to come on here and talk about it for an hour is hard. But this is the side of history that I wanna be on. Mhmm. So talk about it.
Speaker 1:Even with the people that it's hard to talk about it. There are some more stats. A Texas study showed that US born citizens were two times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes and four times more likely to be arrested for property crimes. And one of the big reasons is that immigrants are often more vulnerable to crime. So because they are not documented, because they don't have a lot of the protections that we have, they're not gonna access the police.
Speaker 1:They're not gonna call 911. They're vulnerable to these crimes as so they're victims, not perpetrators. And we should we should feel that. And if we're talking about who poses risk, and I think that's important because if you're afraid of this group because you've been told to be, it's also important to say, who should you be afraid of? Who is really the risk here?
Speaker 1:Eighty eight percent of homicide offenders are male. Forty one percent of women will experience physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. And this is in The United States specifically. The majority of sexual violence perpetrators are men who know the victim and who are men in general. Okay?
Speaker 1:We're not all sitting here saying, let's kick out all the men. Even though eighty eight percent of homicide offenders are male. Absolutely no one is making the argument, incu- including me. We need to kick out all the men. Some of the men.
Speaker 1:But not all the
Speaker 2:men. Listen.
Speaker 1:It's just it's just wild. And there are also benefits to having all of these human people in our country. Now they should certainly be given rights. They should certainly be given citizenship. But we are benefiting from them.
Speaker 1:In 2022, in Texas specifically so there's there's these stats nationally too, but I pulled up the ones from Texas. Undocumented immigrants paid $96,700,000,000 into federal, state, and local taxes. They do pay taxes because they're taken out of their paychecks immediately. Right? So they paid 96,700,000,000.0.
Speaker 1:Where did that go? It went into the schools. It went into local infrastructure. It went into all kinds of important things. They paid $25,700,000,000 into Social Security and $6,400,000,000 into Medicare in 2022.
Speaker 1:Now while they paid that amount into it, they can't Exactly. Benefit from So they are paying for your social security and Medicare. Not only are they not violent criminals, they're paying for your social security and Medicare. So you are benefiting off of the backs of these people who can't defend themselves, who you're kicking out of the country. What happens when they're gone?
Speaker 1:Society will suffer when they're gone. Mhmm. And there's there's so many sides to this. Because, like, I remember so we grew up next to a tree farm. And the owner of that tree farm That's so hallmark of us.
Speaker 1:We did. We did. The owner of that tree farm, would bring in people from Mexico, undocumented, and pay them, I'm sure under the table and not as much as they were worth seasonally, and then send them back at the end of the season. And those people were taking jobs that nobody else wanted. Okay?
Speaker 1:Like and this is kind of a darker side to this. But there weren't a bunch of Americans, like US born Americans wearing an American flag, lining up to get this job. Mhmm. It's a hard job. It's a
Speaker 2:lot of labor, a lot of long hours.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. They weren't taking American jobs. They were taking jobs no Americans wanted, but that still needed to be done. And they were being underpaid for them. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So again, what happens? What happens if we kick everybody out who's willing to do jobs you don't wanna do for less money than you would take? Mhmm. Now that was exploitative. And I'm not saying that's a good thing or something we should support, but it is the reality.
Speaker 1:It is the truth. They are critical in I say they. Undocumented immigrants are critical in agriculture, in construction, hospitality, manufacturing, to the point that they have across the country about $299,000,000,000 in household spending power. Now that doesn't mean that they are wealthy by any means, but that's again all filtering back into the economy. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Into your local grocery store, into your school system, into your road upkeep. All of it filters back down. These are contributing members of society. They aren't taking up your Medicare and making your insurance costs go higher. Like, that's insane.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. It's propaganda. And it's sad that we've fallen for that. It is sad. Not surprising.
Speaker 1:There have been a lot of faith leaders that have started calling for peace in this situation. And I I think the word peace is difficult here. Because what does what does that mean?
Speaker 2:Right. Like, do you want things to stay the same but everybody to be chill with it?
Speaker 1:These ones specifically, I think, are calling for an end to violence. I will say the ones that I'm about to quote. But I do think a lot of the religious leaders are like, stop protesting. You know, like, peace by doing nothing. Right.
Speaker 1:Just like if you close your
Speaker 2:eyes Mhmm. And you turn off all of your social media, everything will be fine. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's good.
Speaker 2:You'll be in bliss.
Speaker 1:So some of the quotes that I have are primarily from, like, Catholic leaning faiths. So Catholic, Anglican, things like that, which is where we're seeing seeing more of the clergy, the church leaders actually stand up to the administration. We're not seeing a lot of it in Protestant non denominational type churches. Or at least not as much, I guess. One of the quotes is from archbishop Paul Coakley.
Speaker 1:And he says peace is built on respect for people. Mhmm. Another one from archbishop Bernard Hebda says, we must rid our hearts of the prejudices that prevent us from seeing one another as brothers and sisters. That's another thing that Jesus talks about a lot. That family feeling.
Speaker 1:Not family within your own borders.
Speaker 2:Or family that only looks like you.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Family brothers and sisters of Christ. We are all the body of Christ together. Right? When you get up into heaven, some of us are toenails.
Speaker 1:I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 2:You should give me a look. When we
Speaker 1:get up into heaven, are you gonna be able to look these brothers and sisters of Christ in the eye? Mhmm. Because I think some of us won't be able to. And I have to ask the question too. If our primary goal in life is to love god and love others, are there some people that will not wind up in heaven over this specific situation?
Speaker 2:Right. And I really think that there are.
Speaker 1:And that's a tough reality for me because I love a lot of people that I think are on the wrong side of history right now.
Speaker 2:Not totally on topic, but a lot of these people who are wanting
Speaker 1:the violence Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I would say encouraging the violence, are happy to partake in the culture of these people. Mhmm. How many times do you see a family after church going to a Mexican restaurant? Or an Asian restaurant or whatever it is? Or anytime you celebrate like, we should be celebrating this culture.
Speaker 2:Yes. And we should say, thank you for bringing it to us. Mhmm. The salsa is amazing.
Speaker 1:I'm just heartbroken. I it's it's a hard topic. We come from a space that is obviously historically conservative. Many of the people we care about are backing this administration, are backing ICE right now. And so to sit here and talk about it, we're gonna get some backlash over this.
Speaker 1:And it is hard. But I don't think I could live with myself if we didn't. Right.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, the reality is we've put the government has put so much money into ICE. That should make you angry. Mhmm. All of your health care that went up, all of that extra money went directly to ICE. You can look it up.
Speaker 2:They're willing to give these people up to $42,000
Speaker 1:or more for bonuses. I think there's a $50,000 signing bonus right now.
Speaker 2:They walk the streets without a lot of training. Mhmm. Look up the videos of what's happening right now. They just willy nilly spray people in the face with tear gas and mace.
Speaker 1:Didn't you say a little girl just
Speaker 2:A little girl. Mhmm. There's a video of it. She got sprayed in the face with tear gas. Or I don't know.
Speaker 2:Whatever that is. Yes. And it's really hard to manage. It's really hard to get out. They say, just so everybody knows if that happens to you, baby shampoo and water Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Is what you need to help get it out. But and again, with Alex Pretty and Renee Goode, just killed.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. For no reason at all.
Speaker 2:Real law enforcement officers are taught to deescalate situations, not escalate them. And coming from a law enforcement family, you know that, like, the last option should be the use of your gun.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Well, we have heard many a story. Do we say that dad was a cop or do we not?
Speaker 2:We can just say from a family.
Speaker 1:Okay. And coming from, again, a law enforcement family, we both do. We have the same family.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you were aware.
Speaker 1:We have heard many a story of wait like, things like waiting for a warrant to come through Right. So that they could access a home, things like that. And ICE will bust down your door, has been seen busting down doors without any sort of warrants. Or speaking to children. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:There's very specific laws in place about you're not allowed to talk to a minor without, like, their guardian present. But they don't care. Mhmm. They'll surround kids. They'll take kids.
Speaker 2:They'll use them as bait. They will walk onto your property without your permission. Mhmm. They will murder people. They don't have the proper training, and they're encouraged to do this stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I watched an SNL skit this morning. SNL has been doing a lot of content about this. Mhmm. And they're doing a really great job, so definitely go check it out.
Speaker 1:But they did an open the other day, and it was basically, like, the new head of ICE because the old one was removed because he was wearing Nazi clothing. Was he actually removed? Yeah. Oh, yeah. He was removed.
Speaker 1:Only because he did it on film. You know?
Speaker 2:He's doing the Nazi salute,
Speaker 1:you guys. Yeah. Only because it was filmed and put on social media. But he was actually removed. And so they've got a new guy.
Speaker 1:Now granted, the new guy is on film from other situations sitting at the border separating families and also taking a $50,000 bribe. Mhmm. So, you know, we're not doing great. We're not like upgrading. But anyway, so it's a SNL skit of that guy, the new guy sitting talking to all of the ICE agents in Minneapolis.
Speaker 1:And they go through all the jokes and stuff, but then they go to a serious moment. And one of the agents says, you know, you signed on a bunch of really big violent guys, gave us a ton of money and no training. It's almost like you wanted this to happen. Mhmm. And then it's actually that Pete guy who dated Ariana Grande.
Speaker 1:He's he's the one up front. And he goes, well, don't start thinking now. And that's the reality is in order to be part of this, you have to turn off your brain and you have to say, I don't care about anyone but myself. I don't care about anyone but who looks like me.
Speaker 2:There's a video of this woman who is handicapped. She's on her way to a doctor's appointment. They surrounded her car. They smashed in her windows. She said, I can't get out of the car.
Speaker 2:I'm handicapped. I cannot move without assistance. And they broke her windows. They cut her seat belts. They dragged her by her arms and legs out of her car.
Speaker 2:She is a US citizen.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Not that that should matter. But if you're immigration enforcement, it should matter.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter. She's a human. No. And she wasn't causing violence either. Right.
Speaker 2:She wasn't trying to fight back. What what is the reason? Mhmm. And the thing is, like, that can happen to anybody. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Look at the two people that were killed. That can happen to anybody. So why are we okay
Speaker 1:with it? It's the amount of excuses. I watched I've been watching a lot of content on this. And it was another comedy show, but she was pointing out an actual news story. It was actually on Fox News.
Speaker 1:And whoever the commentator was, he was like holding his cell phone up to his chest. And he was like, now tell me this doesn't kind of look like a gun. Like, he's trying to excuse it. Right? Like, oh, they totally could have thought that.
Speaker 1:And he whips out his phone and like points it at the camera as though it is a weapon. And he's like, tell me that doesn't look like a gun. Tell me that looks now I will I will grant you this one thing. I have heard of like convenience stores being held up, and the person holding up the convenience store doesn't actually have a weapon. They pretend that they do.
Speaker 1:Maybe they use their phone to look like it or they use their hands or whatever, you know, and get away with it. That being said, Alex Pretty, who is the
Speaker 2:he did have a gun on him.
Speaker 1:He did. Yes. But he didn't have it out. Right. It was holstered.
Speaker 1:Yes. Man specifically was talking about his phone. Right. Alex Pretty was holding his phone up to his chest. Like it like a phone.
Speaker 1:Like you would be holding a phone if you were filming something.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And
Speaker 1:on top of that, the federal agent who's looking at him should probably know the difference. Unlike a convenience store cashier, okay, who excusably could not know the difference, I guess. The federal agent should probably know the difference between a gun and a phone. If he doesn't, I have very serious concerns. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:I have very serious concerns anyway. But
Speaker 2:In regards to Renee Goode, what happened with her, and if you don't know, an ICE agent shot her through her car and she died with her partner next to her. And I think they were on their way to get their child.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Her well, her and her wife had just dropped off their child at school, I believe.
Speaker 2:She was just trying to get away. She looked at the ICE agent. She rolled down her window and said, look, I'm not angry, man. I don't have a problem with you, man. She was trying to maneuver her car so that she could leave because these masked men were trying to surround her for no reason.
Speaker 2:Terrifying. She's trying to just deescalate and leave. And she was murdered because of it for no reason. But then the response from our government that came out was, well, she was a homosexual. And she was trying to hit him with her car.
Speaker 2:And immediate response was, how can we make her into the villain? Rather than saying, this should have never happened. Right. We apologize. Right.
Speaker 2:This should have never happened. Mhmm. And what frustrates me is people buy into that. Mhmm. I discussed this with some friends and they were like, well, she was trying to hit him with her car.
Speaker 2:She wasn't. Mhmm. Look at more video angles.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Because there's people filming all the time. She was not trying to hit him
Speaker 1:with her car. And even if she was, I've seen several like law enforcement officers talk about this. Shooting someone who's driving a vehicle is not anything you ever want to do Right. Because it doesn't necessarily stop the car. So if you think as someone who is supposed to be trained this isn't just a random person off the street who's panicking.
Speaker 1:Someone who's supposed to be trained And I take out the driver of the car, the car is gonna continue to move. Mhmm. It's gonna continue to go. And it did. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So you're not actually saving yourself if you think the car is coming at you. The better response would be, step the four inches to the right. Or shoot the tires. Or shoot
Speaker 2:the tires. Right. Exactly.
Speaker 1:There are many other options.
Speaker 2:And that's what trained law enforcement knows to do. Exactly.
Speaker 1:That's the thing is law enforcement. And we're seeing this is what scares me too, again, from a law enforcement family is you're seeing the police have to go up against ICE. Because there are a lot of states that are saying, like, absolutely not. You're not allowed here. So now the police are having to hold a line.
Speaker 1:Or like in Minnesota, the National Guard got called in and has to hold a line against federal agents. And now now are they doing the right thing in holding that line? Absolutely. They're standing between agents and people.
Speaker 2:What else could the National Guard be doing right now rather than fighting their own people? Right?
Speaker 1:And that puts them in danger too. Right. Now we're putting these other people in danger.
Speaker 2:And think about this. This is your government. Mhmm. And people are scared of them. They're putting blockades.
Speaker 2:People are trying to use whatever they can Mhmm. In Minneapolis to protect anybody. So they were using trash cans to try to create a barrier around a preschool because they wanted to protect preschoolers because these ICE agents don't care if you're a child or not.
Speaker 1:And as I'm sure a lot of you out there are parents or know children, love children in your life, think of what these kids will grow up with. Like, I think of, you know, just the general trauma that many of us deal with day to day of just life is hard. Think of this trauma. Okay? Yes.
Speaker 1:That little boy, that little five year old boy was let out of detention. But think how this has messed up his brain. The memories that he's gonna carry
Speaker 2:for the rest of his life. For the rest of his life. That he's gonna be terrified of the people that are supposed to protect him. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Right? There there will not be coming back for some of these people. And I think a lot of us have the ability to sit here and say, well, at least it'll be over eventually. Maybe the midterm elections will, you know, turn the tide or, you know, he'll die. Or eventually, he'll have to leave office, things like that.
Speaker 1:Like, we all hope for that. And I obviously, like, I hope for really all of those things too. But I also sit here in my home as a white US citizen in a pretty small community from a perspective of privilege. And I can sit here and say, I hope it's over soon. There are people that can't say that.
Speaker 1:Where I sit determines what I see. So you can't just sit there. You can't. Because if you just sit there and hope for it to be over, someone will have suffered because you
Speaker 2:did. Mhmm. And I think if you're hoping for it just to be over soon too, you have to do some soul searching.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And say, okay, let's say this is over tomorrow. What did I do? Mhmm. What did I think was okay? What what does that say about the people that I surround myself with?
Speaker 2:Like, when at the end of the day, in a
Speaker 1:few years, when we all look back at this and say this was the worst of humanity, just like we did for World War two, what does that say about you? Mhmm. Well, would you be proud to tell your grandchildren? I'm gonna say that sentence again. I stopped 45 times.
Speaker 1:Would you be proud to tell your grandchildren what you've done throughout this amount of time? Who you stood for? Would you be able to tell them, I fought for Jesus? Not for a politician, not for the church. I fought for Jesus because Jesus told me to love others.
Speaker 2:And not in the way that our government is manipulating? Mhmm. Manipulating Jesus.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Trying to say that they're following God because they're very, very clearly not. You just read all these passages in the bible that say, protect the immigrant, protect the refugee, love one another. Mhmm. And they're very clearly not. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But they're trying to say that they're the Christian side. Right.
Speaker 1:There I've seen a lot of Christians, like, pull cherry pick tiny verses. Like, oh, here's this one thing that says this or whatever.
Speaker 2:You can't fight this.
Speaker 1:92 times. Right. 92 times, the bible says, love the immigrant. Be kind to the immigrant. Jesus even has a parable where he talks about, a man on the road and he's beaten terribly, and then the Samaritan man is the one that comes and helps him.
Speaker 1:And how wonderful and blessed that man is because he didn't look at this person who was of a race that hate like, the man who was hurt on the side of the road was of a race that hated this other man. And yet this other man came to his aid. Mhmm. There's another story, and we talk about this one a lot, but Jesus and the woman at the well where she was a Samaritan woman. And the Jewish people were not good friends with the Samaritan people.
Speaker 1:They thought that they were kind of kind of
Speaker 2:the way that we're treating immigrants today.
Speaker 1:That they were interlopers, that they were the wrong side of things, you know.
Speaker 2:Dehumanize. Exactly. And yet Jesus came
Speaker 1:to her, sat with her, and she was the first person that he ever told, like, I am the messiah. Mhmm. And then she went off and became a preacher. She went off and told her community about Jesus because Jesus showed her radical love. What will happen to people if instead of showing them this radical hate, you show them radical love?
Speaker 1:If instead of detaining children, you show them radical love, what happens to them? Mhmm. What happens to the next generation?
Speaker 2:And radical love isn't just like patting them on the back and saying, I love you. Love is an action. Mhmm. So speaking out against the wrongs that are happening right now, sending care packages to people who are protesting, try to help someone. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Even if it's
Speaker 1:having hard conversations in your own circle. Mhmm. Now I hope that you are able to do even more, and some of us can and some of us can't. It depends on your situation. But having hard conversations with people that you know aren't gonna agree with you and doing it anyway because once you know, like I said, there's that three and a half percent rule.
Speaker 1:When three and a half percent of people stand up and say no more, it starts to shift things. Get to three and a half percent. Get to three and a half percent in your home, in your community, in your school, in your church, in wherever you find yourself because that will start to affect change. If that's all you can do, do that thing. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Because Jesus asked us to stand in
Speaker 2:the gap. And not the store.
Speaker 1:Not the store. Let's see. What should we talk about next week?
Speaker 2:Let's ask judge.
Speaker 1:Would you do a big big switch and talk about Blake Lively? That would be a big switch. Let's see. Law, order, and the bible. Law and order.
Speaker 2:Don't don't.
Speaker 1:What scripture says about what law is for, that could be interesting. Who gets labeled as dangerous? We should. Violent. We could talk
Speaker 2:about Joel Fireball.
Speaker 1:What fear does to fear? We could talk about, like, here's some instances of the people that are supposed to be leading you, that you are trusting Mhmm. And their abuses. Because we could talk about Trump on that one too, that would kinda tie it in. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Let's do that. So obviously, this week was pretty heavy and that's hard. And I like when we can do more fun episodes, but I do feel like now is the moment to talk about heavy things. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So next week, we are not gonna be talking about this exact topic again, but kind of continuing on with the vibe. I would
Speaker 2:say we're gonna you know, we've been doing a good job this year about calling out people specifically by name. And that's what we're gonna do next week. The people who are supposed to
Speaker 1:be
Speaker 2:leading you, the people who you think are Christian people doing right by you, maybe they're not so right.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. We're gonna talk about church leaders. We're gonna talk about political leaders. We might talk about some musicians and things like that that act like they're Christians or tell you they're Christians.
Speaker 2:And then it comes out that, oh, hey.
Speaker 1:Here's some filming you in the bathroom.
Speaker 2:Which, again, happened again. Yep. Happened again.
Speaker 1:So we will talk about that then. We're so excited that you have been listening thus far. Actually, I wanted to say thank you real quick before we sign off. In January was our second highest listen count ever. And I just think that's really amazing that we are continuing to grow and that you guys are very clearly sharing the podcast, talking about the podcast, and that we can be a little part of your lives.
Speaker 1:So thank you for doing that.
Speaker 2:We're sending big love to Minneapolis.
Speaker 1:And lots and lots of
Speaker 2:prayers, man. Yep. Stay strong. Stay warm. Alright.
Speaker 2:We love
Speaker 1:you guys. We'll talk to you next week.