a brief ICE post

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The USA feels really bad right now. I don't really know what more to do or say, which is why I have not said anything in public about it. It feels trite or performative to the point of crassness to post on my silly little blog about it. I am so unused to being so proximate to collapse and state violence, though, and I don’t know how to express my feelings or thoughts, or where or to whom. No one is being killed on the street by ICE in my city (though there's an ICE facility not too terribly far from where I live), but I know a lot of people in Minneapolis and have spent time there. My heart goes out to my friends and loved ones on the ground. I can only imagine how surreal and dire it feels there.

I don’t really understand what’s happening, either. I don’t read the news because I have a hard time discerning who or what to trust, after COVID and October 7th and all. I also don’t really interact with too much social media news if I can avoid it¹, but Minneapolis has been impossible to avoid. As the media ecologists predicted long ago, I am so awash in information as to be inundated, even with my conservative approach to media consumption. How can you right yourself when you’re caught in the undertow? All I really know is that there are legions of militarized yet acutely undertrained federal agents deployed all across the country to detain and disappear Undesirables, and that the federal government has no problem using violence against citizens as it does this. That seems extremely bad to me. It’s hard to imagine a way back from this; it’s hard to imagine that things won’t continue this way and get worse.

As I have for basically my whole working life, I work in a kitchen with several Mexican immigrants. I am scared for them. I don't know anything about their legal status but it doesn't matter. They are my compatriots. I see them every day and we work hard together buy each other Mexican cokes and coffees. I once had a beloved coworker who would always call me mija, my daughter. I don't want my coworkers to be deported or disappeared. I know that people (myself included) in my city will mobilize to protect them if/when ICE comes here in full force, but I fear that won't be enough. Also, it's been made pretty clear that being an American-born white person will not protect your life anymore. "Using my privilege" or whatever will not even really work in the same way I am led to believe it once would have.

I am trying not to focus on my own fear and heartbreak, but it is hard. I have been thinking a lot about monastic life in the middle ages and how the cloistered, communitarian nature of the abbey allowed for the preservation of wisdom and culture in an era of repression and darkness. I am finding myself hunkering down and focusing on inward and skyward pursuits, because these are my vocation: to the extent I can resist the powers of darkness, I believe this is how I will do it best. I am also focusing on strengthening my existing communal and family bonds. I don't know if these things are the right things to do. It is very hard to know what to do.

Be safe out there. Solidarity forever.

1. I know too many people who habitually post videos of murders and pictures of dead children. Sorry, I think that is insanely wack behavior. I don’t have to see a woman get her brains blown out in front of her wife to accept that that is bad. Seeing violence like that can only hurt you.