This is a story about the millions of people across the United States, including Jews and Catholics, protesting their government's actions in banning Muslims. It's also about one Australian who has taken a stand in the only way he knows. And how you can help in the face of this mayhem.

And it's about the dead. There's a tiny photo of Joachim, in his darling little shorts and his little white shoes. He's smiling. Thank God he has no idea what's to come.

The list started to emerge on Saturday afternoon Australian time, tweet after tweet. Some with photos, some without. Compelling, a brief account of the fate of those aboard the St Louis, turned away at the US border in 1939.

Every name is different but their deaths not so much. Like tiny Joachim, many died in Auschwitz. Theresienstadt. Sobibor. Golleschau. Buchenwald.

News of a Muslim ban and of closed US borders transfixed and horrified Charlie Schwartz and his mate Russel Neiss, both young Jewish educators in the US. As International Holocaust Remembrance Day approached, the pair decided to commemorate the deaths of those turned away by the US by tweeting one murder at a time.

By the time I spoke to Charlie, Sunday afternoon in Boston, he'd left his keyboard and was at a massive rally in Copley Square, in the heart of Boston, where thousands had congregated to support Muslims and to oppose Donald Trump's immigration orders.

We could barely hear each other above the noise and the chanting. But when I asked him why he and Neiss had decided to commemorate the St Louis and those who sailed on her, he replied: "As America is closing down its borders and changing its approach to refugees, we needed to be sure that it was a lesson learned and a lesson understood."

Turning people away. Returning them to where they would surely die.

I ask him how many people are at the rally but he said he couldn't be sure but "a tremendous amount of people".

"This is the best way to make our values known and our vision for America. Sometimes it is rallies and sometimes it is tweeting, it looks different day to day."

From the crowd, he shouts into the phone that American democracy will win if citizens act.

A thousand kilometres away the Catholic Archbishop of Chicago Blase Cupich releases a public statement, describing the executive order to turn away refugees as a dark moment in US history, "rushed, chaotic, cruel".

"The world is watching as we abandon our commitments to American values."

American values. I ring Damon Silvers in Washington, the director of policy and special counsel for the AFL-CIO, which is the US equivalent of the ACTU, to talk about American values, American democracy and what those of us who aren't American citizens can do to resist. He described the signing of the executive order in such close proximity to International Holocaust Remembrance Day as ironic. Not the word I would have picked, particularly since the White House statement on the day did not mention Jews.

"We are an incredibly inclusive group and we took into account all of those who suffered," administration spokeswoman Hope Hicks told CNN on Saturday, in classic Holocaust denial mode.

Anyhow, Silvers knew the executive order had been signed on Friday but it wasn't until Saturday morning he realised the full extent of the religious discrimination embedded in that order. He and thousands of lawyers across America began to organise. That alone should frighten the Trump administration, lawyers have turned into organisers, working for free, preparing habeus corpus petitions for detainees at airports across the US.

According to The New York Times, by 9pm Saturday, Ann Donnelly, a judge of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, ruled the government was "enjoined and restrained from, in any manner and by any means, removing individuals" who had arrived in the United States with valid visas or refugee status, after she heard from lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union that one of the people detained at an airport was being put on a plane to be deported back to Syria at that very moment.

So how does Silvers feel about American democracy at 2am on Sunday.

"It's a lot better now than it was at 10am . . . I believe very deeply in the democratic commitment of our people so I am optimistic about the future of American democracy but I am very concerned about the short term well-being of our country."

What can Australians do to help?

Silvers says: "The most important thing people can do in other countries is to contact institutions that matter, that are connected to the United States; and express your outrage."

The most obvious manifestations are, of course, consulates and embassies, but also businesses. Tell them how the United States is perceived in the world right now.

Stuart Marshall, an associate professor in anaesthetics at Monash University, is doing just that. Academics do a lot of pro bono work, particularly for academic journals. On Sunday he wrote them a letter saying he would not be doing any peer reviews or making any other contribution for the foreseeable future and published it on Twitter. The positive response was huge.

"I make this decision with deep regret but I am no longer able to support businesses and organisations based in the United States in the light of recent events.

"Your organisation and several others that I perform pro bono work for in the scientific community benefit financially from my work and pays taxes to the US government. This government has decided to systematically discriminate against academics and others on the basis of race, religion and nationality. Henceforth I do not wish to directly or indirectly support this action. I'm sorry it has come to this, as this does not reflect the America I respect and have a deep affection for, nor the Americans I know personally. I will review my policy when the discriminatory laws enacted in the last 24 hours have been reversed. I realise that this may have significant effects on my future academic career. However I would rather have a conscience than a career."

He knows it's risky but it's the only thing he can think of which may have an impact.

Time for us all to follow suit.

@jennaprice

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