frozen

My brain is spinning, and I wish I could turn it off, unsee what I’ve seen, unhear what I heard, but instead there’s a constant reminder.

My phone is beeping relentlessly, so I turn the ringer off, but the buzzing doesn’t cease, like a mosquito you can’t kill. The buzzing increases, rapid fire, which can only mean one thing, they’re back.

And I don’t have it in me right now.

I mute the chat, it’s not that I don’t want to help, but because I just don’t think I can. Not right now. Not this morning. Maybe later. Right now, I don’t have it in me.

This is privilege, sitting here, typing away, drinking coffee, and wishing for the sound of water. A room with a view. Peace.

What I know now is there will be another and another and another, because ICE has targeted my small city, and their vehicles are everywhere.

Once incognito, one now brandishes an ICE logo covering both sides of the SUV with DEFEND THE HOMELAND in scary all caps along the tailgate – like an old man screaming get off my lawn into the twitterverse in the dark of night.

It wasn’t the woman who collapsed to the sidewalk sobbing and screaming until no sounds came out, her body heaving up and down in silent anguish. It wasn’t the young woman who clung to a passerby, screaming why-why-why-why over and over, like a red-tailed hawk circling high above.

It wasn’t the ICE agent who got in my face, nose-to-nose, and told me to go back to social studies, then barked:

“Impede and I WILL arrest you.” “Impede, I WILL arrest you.” “Impede and I WILL arrest you.” over and over, like an AI bot who doesn’t understand reality.

Or people.

He spit this out on repeat – over my pleading and questioning and insulting – a counter balance of threats, like a bass player stepping center stage of a band, while the lead singer, is howling and crying, fading into the background.

It wasn’t that he was brown that shocked me – surprised, yes, but not shocked. Not anymore.

It wasn’t the robotic white woman who got out of the pimped-out ice vehicle to push us back – a woman, how could she – and it wasn’t the Latina female agent who threatened us with arrest again and again.

It wasn’t their smugness. Their ridicule. Their smirks. Their power mongering. Their utter mocking of our futile protest.

It wasn’t even the civilian, although terrifying.

Leaving, ICE didn’t race off, but instead drove so close to the sidewalk, slowly, deliberately, threateningly, then abruptly stopped, agents jumped from the vehicle, and grabbed a young man, camera rolling, and threw him on the hood of the car.

“No-no-no-no,” I stammer. “What did he do?” “Please, no! Hands off,” we beg, “yo yo yo, you don’t have to do this,” someone pleads.

But they threw him to the hood of the car, pinned him there, cuffed him, and took him away, for being an american: standing, filming, yelling, and documenting what most of us only see on a screen.

It wasn’t the local police, campus security, circling, around and around, not to protect us, their constituents, friends, neighbors, and taxpayers. Telling us to “move along” and “you can’t park here.”

Took an oath to serve and protect us – but instead focus on the protection of federal agents targeting our immigrant community when they

Leave the courthouse

Buy a bacon egg & cheese at the deli

Head to the mall

Walk to the grocery

Pick up kids from school

Go to work

Drive

Go to school

It was the videographer that pushed me over the edge.

A cameraman.

It was the professional cameraman who did it for me. A videographer, like you see on the evening news, in the movies, at sites of chaos and calamity, sent by our government to film the kidnappings, the abductions, the force, the helplessness, the grief.

Propaganda. From social studies. I didn’t need to go back to social studies to know this.

Some of the agents were clearly charged with protecting the cameraman so he could get the good shots: shots of citizens protesting the kidnapping of our neighbors, victims sobbing and desperate, neighbors yelling obscenities for them to go home, family members begging for help, filming regular people like me trying to document the madness.

They were filming the abduction and the demise of civilization, the destruction of families. The human humiliation.

And they were proud of it.

That’s what did it for me. That’s what broke me. This time.

Tomorrow it’ll be something different. And I’ll be ready.

But not today.

PS: and it’s only gonna get worse. congress just okayed $75 billion for ICE.

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information for at-risk families, or to volunteer:

Danbury Unites for Immigrants