"America's Sweetheart" Gives a Shout Out to Berks

"This is a brand of tragedy that quite frankly is not part of the United States of America that I read about in my Weekly Reader." Tom Hanks held up a poster made by the children detained in Berks County Residential Center during last night's  ACLU telethon. 

​“We are here tonight to do kooky bits on the internet and to raise money for the ACLU. That’s right – American civil liberties, you remember those.” That’s how Tom Hanks introduced the celebrity studded telethon Stand for Rights: A Benefit for the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), which was live-streamed on Facebook last night. The Berks County Residential Center got a shout out when Hanks did a segment with two ACLU lawyers, Donna Lieberman and Lee Gelernt, who are currently representing women and children at the center. Lieberman and Gelernt visited the facility two days prior to the airing of the telethon and presented Hanks with a message in the form of a signed poster from their clients saying, “We want to be free!” Gelernt said the families simply want the people to know they’re there and to “see the human dimension behind all these policies”. Some of the families have been detained for at least 18 months. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear their case this month. 
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Click here to view the telethon. The Tom Hanks-Berks segment begins at 1:11:10.

​What you can do:  Call, write tweet to Governor Tom Wolf--#closeberksbabyjail

​posted by Amy Levengood