Renee Good was murdered. Alex Pretti was murdered.
Before them there was Keith Porter, Herber Sanchaz Dominguez, Victor Manuel Diaz, Parady La, Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, and Geraldo Lunas Campos.
All were murdered by ICE just this year and January isn’t even over yet.
These are things that must be said. That must be documented.
It was plain from every angle of video that was made from the two most recent ICE killings (Renee Good and Alex Pretti) that ICE executed them unjustifiably.
I recently heard someone say that it’s too late to pretend like you didn’t know any better.
In a few years or maybe even longer, many will say that they didn’t know or that they were against it the whole time. But a lot of us will remember the truth.
I know now that I should’ve said more when irrefutable evidence was shown that people of color in this country live in a different world and because I didn’t then, I share part of the guilt in what is happening now.
I wrote essays that I kept in journals and in files that I never published, keeping them to myself to avoid the arguments with those I knew would never see reason.
I was never good at the hard news part of journalism classes. The idea that everything one needed to say needed to be said as fast as possible. We live in a world that demands us to say what we were thinking in the moment without taking the time to really put it all into words.
I’m not good at that and thus I am ill equipped for this new world order.
By the time I had gathered my thoughts on one event another had already occurred.
I think a lot of us white women who consider ourselves to be liberal and open minded aren’t sure where to use our privilege and those of us liberal in the south and in the Bible Belt often feel as though we don’t really have any.
I know I’ve argued with a number of men in red hats and I know that it feels like banging one’s head against a brick wall. The women standing with them, who seemingly know nothing about politics, are the same women who will follow their husbands off a cliff because they’ve been taught to be submissive since birth. I’ve tried to initiate conversations with them but these are usually the most frustrating in that they most often agree with me completely and then seem to have a complete mind swipe the second the conversation ends.
As the rest of the world watches the United States descend into a fascist authoritarian nightmare most Americans’ seem to be paralyzed, not with fear, but with exhaustion.
We know now that this was always the point. That we would all be too busy trying to get through our everyday existences. Trying to figure out how to pay for healthcare, trying to figure out to get our children through the education system without being shot, how to pay our bills with our ever shrinking paychecks that could never seem to keep with the rate of inflation, running on a treadmill that seemed to be going nowhere but the speed and incline just kept on rising.
It is hard to exist in this country right now. People being killed by an army of men who only answer to Trump and his inner circle. It feels as though I am writing something that is just an idea for a horror story. Some description of a book I read or movie I watched and not real life.
Then the most heartbreaking part of all of it is watching those around you, people you’ve known your entire life tell you they see what they are told to see. They tell you that when it comes to their own comfort they are willing to do anything.
I know that in many cases the red flags were always right there but that because the vitriol was not directed towards me I chose to look away. One of the biggest reasons for this is because it was such a common thing for the people within my community which is predominately white and rural.
Being the only person willing to stand up in a room full of people being told to sit down is scary as hell.
But even scarier would be being the one dragged from the room by force whether you sat down or not.
I don’t want to write about these things.
I want to write about gardening and living in the woods and sustainability. I want to write poetry and make up stories that allow me to escape reality.
But the line has been drawn and those who don’t speak up and out now are on the side of the oppressors.
Even if I only speak to a small corner of the internet that is my own.
It’s my responsibility to do so as it is anyone who lives in these times.
Contact representatives even if you know they will do nothing, if only to annoy them.
Protest. Speak out.
But most important is take time to educate yourself and those around you.
People need to know that others feel this way. That they aren’t alone and that standing up is important because it is one of the first things that evil people try to do. I believe that this administration is made up of some truly evil people, who have for some strange alignment (or rather a misalignment) of the stars have managed to come together at this same moment in time and I truly believe that this is just the beginning of the terrible things they have planned.
The only good thing about the current administration’s tactic of encircling those who are different, or those who disagree with them, is that we now see who is in our circle. Who is willing to stand beside us and fight our way out together.
A Hermitess 