It Is Not Otherwise
When my parents adopted me from Colombia at six weeks old, I am certain they did so with good intentions. I am fortunate to know enough about my birth mother to understand that her wishes for me were similar: a desire for me to have a better life, a more spacious opportunity. From my understanding, their shared vision of America was one which could give me something that, perhaps, a life in Colombia could not.
While I cannot know what might exist in that parallel universe, I can say that I have been offered the encouragement, ability, and nurturing to explore everything about myself and my place in the world. My life in the US has been a freedom of opportunity, expressing many of the chances that we think of when we invoke the “American Dream”.
At the same time, since the age of four (my age when 9/11 happened), I have rarely known a life in this country without crisis. The energy and optimism of my youth has been tested by endless wars, growing inequality, a planet being burned for money. Periods of relative peace have been few, and my generation has often had to put aside its deeper needs to do the important work of justice, fighting to maintain the values of an equitable and peaceful world.
I’ve been privileged enough to remain relatively protected by these disasters, both here and abroad. When war came to my family’s door and sent my father to Iraq, my mom made his deployment feel like a passing phase. If my parents were affected by the 2008 market crash, they didn’t show it. I have not had to flee my home, lose possessions, or face targeted physical violence. Even as a Hispanic person, the racism in my life has largely been in the form of micro-aggressions, never escalating into something more dangerous.
By the time I reached high school, however, I realized that the American ideals of my upbringing did not translate to the realities of many of my neighbors. A combination of my lived experience, awareness of history, and witnessing our national life threw me into a realization: that America was not as kind or generous as perhaps my parents hoped it would be. I had been brought to a land that refused to face its own origins, and that ignorance festered in the heart of its people. That ignorance became fear, fear became anger, and anger often exploded into bigotry and cruelty. I began to feel estranged, unwanted even, a trespasser on land that shuddered with conflict.
Even before ICE descended on the Twin Cities of my upbringing, inviting unprecedented violence and chaos on its neighborhoods, I had been grieving recently what might have been. What I might have done, or what many of us could have been able to do, if we were not so consumed by the relentless greed and boiling hatred incited by a few. I have been mourning a world that’s struggled to become, a world in which we all might have lived in peace, seen each other more clearly, loved with an openness which we all deserve.
I have badly wanted life to have been otherwise. It is not.
I’ve struggled to find the words to express my grief for what is happening in Minnesota right now, and what it reflects in our country. I felt the urge to jump in with everyone else, to respond with something immediate and passionate, but the language would not come. My grief was so close, and my anger burned too hot. Everything in me wants to be there right now, alongside neighbors in the streets. It is painful to watch from afar.
Renee Good’s horrific death at the hands of ICE agents are not the first at the whim of this administration. I fear it will not be the last. There is a clear and open intent to terrorize Americans, to secure our submission by force. We are standing in both a heartbreaking place and a critical juncture of our history. We may hesitate to accept the gravity of this moment, or seek to avoid the discomfort of its urgency, but there is no going around it.
This government, as it stands today, does not exist to protect me. It does not care for my safety, my welfare, or that of my community. It does not want me to think freely, speak openly, or demonstrate concern for those around me. If I were killed today by an ICE agent, an excuse would be made for it. I could be called a domestic terrorist, a professional agitator, an enemy of America. Death would be deserved. This government wants my silence, my complicity, my unwavering loyalty no matter how many laws are broken or rights are trampled. I am expected to bend my knee, and to be grateful for those who attack my neighbors with impunity. As a naturalized citizen, I’m also aware that there’s an interest in reducing my own status.
As far as I’m concerned, that is not a political position: that’s a position of conscience. For Americans, each of us must look inside and ask: what are you willing to risk for the life you want? Is the value of your life found on your own, or alongside your neighbor? What is the true cost of peace, of wellbeing, of being whole? When your own government gasses your street, beats your child’s teacher, kidnaps people in your community, what does your heart say? Will you look this moment in the eye, or look away?
These are not things to merely ponder safely in our homes, because the answers are being decided in the avenues of Minneapolis and beyond.
I think it’s important to give ourselves a moment for heartbreak, for quiet moments of shock and sorrow. We are living lives that are asking us to carry on as the very fabric of our shared existence is being purposefully unraveled. It is not human to deny your feelings, in any capacity. We need tender spaces to grieve where we are and what is happening.
I hope you give yourself that chance, even for a moment. Perhaps even now, as you read this, there could be an opportunity to pause and invite that space for yourself. Doing so reminds us that we care, that we value life, and that we ultimately want better (far better), for ourselves and for others.
There is a time for that, but we also cannot linger there. A conscience that cannot act is perhaps no conscience at all, unwilling to sacrifice the comfort of self-preservation. All that we love and hope for in this world must include our presence, our participation.
For perhaps too long in America we have vainly hoped our lives would be passively protected. By whom or what we probably couldn’t say: just the small yearning for someone else to figure it out, for life to go on, for things to quietly go away and no longer intrude on our hearts. From my perspective, at least, that protection has rarely been the case, and certainly isn’t now. To be passive in the face of such obvious and naked aggression, especially at the hands of your own government, is to give up one’s rights in silence.
On the national stage, we are being led by weak, confused, insecure people. People who cannot hear anything except their own cruel thoughts, driven by a lack of empathy and the dark pleasure of watching others be hurt. Their power is frightening, and their willingness to lie and deceive without limit. We should not be afraid of them.
I am not afraid of ICE, or this administration, or anyone who claims that its brutality is legitimate. I will not accept the idea that to resist them is un-American. To approve state violence and justify murder is an act of cowardice, a failure of will. It’s a betrayal of an inner honesty, allowing one’s consciousness to be occupied and abandoned to a hollow selfishness.
I do not know how all of this ends. What I do know is that, perhaps foolishly, I still believe in the America that my parents wanted for me. Every person detained, beaten, abused, and killed by ICE are my kin. Every person on the street, putting their bodies on the line for their community, is a guardian for our future. The courage, compassion, and profound determination of everyday citizens demonstrates what we are capable of and the way through this darkness. The resilience of Minnesota and communities across America is far more powerful than the increasingly desperate attempts to convince us to comply and turn against each other.
I grieve this moment, but not because I believe our future is decided.
The wholeness of our lives, and our nation, can only thrive in our ability to see one another. To be human is to be connected, to challenge ourselves and grow in the presence of others. Anyone who tells you to be afraid of your neighbor, to approve their abuse, to celebrate their death, is someone who would deny you your own humanity. That is an ask to live within someone else’s fearful existence, not your own.
As we grieve what is, as we mourn what could have been, we must also empower ourselves and each other to bring what we love into being. That world lives within us, among us, in no other moment but this one. However badly we may want things to be otherwise, it is necessary, for now, to understand that they are not.
I’d like to finish with something shared with me from the daughter of a patient of mine. It gave me pause, and may it be an offering for our lives as we face this moment.
I have been through a lot. A lot of people hurt me in the past, and I have felt alone. But I don’t hate them. I can’t have hatred in my heart. If I let hatred live there, the only person who gets hurt is me.
A grounding reflection. Thank you.