In Vulnerability, We Choose…

When did this happen? When did America turn into a nation killing its own citizens?

I woke up to my own vulnerability this morning. A heavy dose administered by the events of the week have left me reeling, my physical discomfort exemplified by the stress of living in a struggling democracy, and events now hitting close to home.

I don’t believe that I am the only one.

To some degree, we’ve all been feeling it as the chaos and corruption continues to reverberate dark energies across the nation.

I’ve been asking myself why this particular event feels so deeply personal. The murder of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent. There have been several horrific abuses, scenes of violence, wrongful deaths over recent months of ICE morphing into a corrupt and lawless agency emboldened by the intransigent racism of Stephen Miller and friends. Since they’ve coopted funds from compliant taxpayers intended for the public good, now transformed into equipping thugs with weapons to use against us and congress has looked away, the immigration enforcement arm of this government has been turned into a force of criminals and murders assaulting and intimidating everyday Citizens Jane and John Does.

When did this happen? When did America turn into a nation killing its own citizens?

And worse, employing talking heads to spin the narrative, to lie and twist reality to suit their despicably hate-filled agendas?

I feel sick to my very soul with what’s happening. From my discussions with close friends, I don’t think I’m the only one feeling this way.

From the protests occurring continually across the nation, there are millions who don’t need anyone else’s interpretation to know the authentic truth of reality under this second Trump Administration.

A friend of mine pointed out another authentic truth this week:

It took a white woman being killed by ICE for activism to awaken.

My sweet husband put it another way:

It’s the beginning of the end of a regime, when they start killing white suburban women in their SUVs.

Let’s sit with that for a moment…

We’ve all seen the videos of unidentified masked thugs posing as ICE (and maybe not-ICE) or newly-pardoned J6ers assaulting Hispanic workers in neighborhood delis, chasing down farm laborers in fields, breaking windows of vehicles driven by Latinos, the new mother and infant inside, crying and screaming as a masked ICE agent tries to intimidate the new father out of the safety of their car.

We’ve all heard of the wrongful shootings of immigrants fleeing for their lives in the presence of state-sanctioned racism. I have to ask myself, Why didn’t any of these violent events strike a chord in the same way? Why only now, a more intensified, unshakable and lingering effect?

I know why. We all do.

As a middle-class white woman, I can relate to what happened to Renee Nicole Good. I can see myself stopped by masked ICE thugs or those posing as such, unidentified and brandishing weapons at me as I try to return from my local feed store with a bag of dog kibble for our rescue dogs.

The imagery harkens back to the young woman murdered in Ukraine by a Russian agent at the beginning of the Russian invasion. She was delivering dog kibble to starving shelter dogs trapped and helpless as Russian forces violently swept into the country, killing everyone in their wake. The beauty of her soul risking and losing her life to feed dogs still makes me cry.

That’s the truth of the reality of the moment. Up until this week, as many of us sat by and called our Congresspeople from the safety of our homes. Or, hid behind the four-by-six screens through social media, posting our sympathies, criticism, hope or outrage.

While millions have been protesting for a while, we needed – and still do – more. I need to write more, when my hands aren’t tingly and numb from an undiagnosed nerve condition plaguing me for months now. I need to show up more, when the pain isn’t exacerbated by seasonably appropriate January temperatures. I need to donate more to the ACLU, to the Southern Poverty Law Center, when I pay off the end-of-the-year donations to my local dog rescues…

And, as I write this, I know how much I and my friends have personally done and given.

The reasons why this violence is occurring, reaching anarchistic levels, is that the powers-that-be are allowing it. Funding it. Supporting it. Tacitly approving it with their silence. Or, as in the case of my own governor, capitulating to it.

The ones with the most resources are those most comfortably situated with allowing our country to descend in a freefall anarchistic plunge. If worrying for your personal safety and those of whom you love doesn’t feel like living in a third-world country, what will?

I think of the simple acts of Citizen Jane or John Doe: Every time we choose that One-Click button puts money into the pockets of Jeff Bezos, or drive up to Target to buy that Nespresso machine, we are supporting this assault on our democracy and contributing to its weakening.

I know why I haven’t personally taken stronger measures, and it’s for the same reason as the rest of us: Who will take care of our loved ones and dependents if we don’t make it back home? Who will express the bladder / change the diaper / feed sweet potatoes / load the broken-spined, incontinent rescue dogs onto their wheelchairs, should I get caught in our new government’s web of hatred and violence?

I admit to take the same self-protective measures we’re all inclined to take. The ones I’ve no doubt Renee Nicole Good had wished she’d taken.

That’s the thing with unarmed women. We’re not driving around with weapons in our Subarus, anticipating the new illegal traffic stop and assault by weaponed ICE (or not) thugs.

At this moment in time in our country, ALL of our survival is at stake. And there’s always some way to change it, help it for the better. I love Obama for saying:

Democracy is a verb.

Acknowledging that, I can admit to my own biases and prejudices in the presence of a myriad of ethnicities. Being a cultural anthropology major from Chicago thirty-three Decembers ago, I can appreciate all of the varieties of life, the myriad of ways in which we are born and live. I don’t need to be African-American to appreciate my own dance rhythms and wants to dance to Will Smith, and I don’t need to be Latina to appreciate the Spanish language or cultural norms of festivities, dancing and ranchero music.

As with my favorite anthropology professor Dennis van Gerven, I know there is no such thing as race, simply, ethnicities. The fact that there’s a segment of our society going after people for being who they are or the way their live, criminalizing and vilifying them with the judgment reserved for those ultimate creators of all life, means we aren’t as far along as moral actors in a civilized society as we thought. That I feel the inherent need to say,

Lo siento, nuestro presidente es un pendeho,

To my local Mexican waiter, and that I worry his absence on any one particular Tuesday means he was snatched by ICE, lets me know that I’m sensitive and attuned to their vulnerability.

And this past week now the worst one since September 11, I’ve become even more attuned to my own.

Namaste, and may we all stay safe, and live to fight another day…

In honor of Renee,