I’ve got an odd coupling here for you all, but I wanted to provide some follow-up to two of my posts. On the heels of the Mexican parents who were detained and deported without a chance to contact their 11-year-old son, we recently had a Haitian mother who was detained and forced to stop breastfeeding her 5-month-old daughter.
On October 15, Francieuse Lafortune’s appeal to stay in the U.S. was denied, and she was immediately detained, a move that in effect forced her to abruptly stop breastfeeding her baby. For those of you who have breastfed or who are in the medical community, you know how traumatic such an abrupt separation can be. And in reality, it was not even necessary, since it is not unusual to grant supervised release to someone who has been given a deportation order.
The good news is that Lafortune has been released (under supervised release, which, duh, they should have done from the beginning!) and reunited with her daughter and husband. You can read the short news report here.
Next, I had told you guys about Publix Super Market’s fabulous “green” bags. Guess who has a similar bag now? JC Penney! I know! I was shopping there the other day (don’t judge! They have some great stuff now, plus a decent petites selection), and they kept making announcements over the loudspeaker about their new environmentally-friendly, reusable shopping bags. So when I got up to the counter to pay, I asked about it, and for $1.49 (seems to be a popular price) I got a large, beige shopper made of the same material as the Publix ones. It’s pretty neat! Incredibly roomy, with large handles. I could easily take this one bag to the mall and need nothing else (and if I do, at $1.49 a pop, they’re a steal). So, kudos JC Penney!
