do not urge me to leave you

If someone says something that you know to be wrong, say something. Push back on it. Iran didn't start this war. They haven't been at war with the US for forty seven years. The US didn't have to support Israel's strikes with this kind of escalation (we haven't in the past, in fact Trump hasn't in the past). The Iranian people are not looking to the US as liberators. The Strait of Hormuz was always going to be used tactically in this way, it is absurd to suggest that the Iran would open it because it is the single best method of leverage they have to resist annihilation from a superpower. Bombing civilian infrastructure is a war crime. Saying that an entire culture will be destroyed is genocidal.

There is no moral reason for the US to do this, the reasons that the US is doing this are oil and to destabilize the region. Hubris, cruelty, and a vile old man who wants to give himself a hero's legacy play a part as well.

You should be saying out loud to the people around you "This war is unjust, unnecessary, and cruel, and every reason our leaders are giving us to tell us why we're doing it is a lie."

There is no justification for bombing water and power infrastructure for ninety million people; that will kill thousands of civilians and is a war crime.

Iran was bombed while they were negotiating with the countries that bombed them; they were willing to make the agreements requested by the US and Israel before they were bombed.

The Strait was open in February. If the US and Israel hadn't attacked Iran there would have been no reason for Iran to close it.

1) stop anyone from sending laborers to "Israel" to rebuild Tel Aviv

2) stop the US and its allies from restocking and rebuild their ammunitions and jets

3) continue campaigning against the bombing of South Lebanon and Gaza

4) de-propagandize

5) continue BDS

one neurologist: *mentions psych history*

several doctors: you need PT to restore confidence in your body

the PT: *triggers hours long tremors and apnea episodes during which we cannot understand or respond to communication*

This is a relatively mild example because we are not dead, we are just starving avoidably. We have some doctors who believe us and try to help, largely due to our extensive documentation and argumentation analyzing the evidence and our efforts treating our condition as "merely" a psychosomatic, then functional disorder (note to medical professionals and other dipshits, these are different things and both require a combination of physical and psychological supports). Both made our condition rapidly decline. Indicating it isn't either.

We have to call 911 fucking again after a month in two different hospitals in the next few days because we are in and out of lucidity and cannot move enough to get basic hygienic tasks done like wiping our ass, even with caregiver assistance.

Because we were hospitalized twice following abuse. Because we take meds for auditory hallucinations. Because we can't speak and our former neurologist who only tested our least affected muscles thinks it's because we are crazy.

every fucking doctor, nurse, physical therapist, etc. is working as the medical equivalent of a cop. they gatekeep access to medicine, and while you get some beautiful traitors (rare to impossible for cops, where the analogy is iffy), they are trained to uphold a system of incomprehensible violence. the good people in the medical industrial complex, and there are many, are not the majority and are working against the system to do good.

There is no psych diagnosis or history that exempts you from respect or worthiness. You can have any number of physiological conditions while being Mad. Many physiological conditions cause "psychological" symptoms and exist alongside them. Don't sit back quietly while doctors try to kill you for being insane. Get help, seek community, and survive. You are loved, you are lovely, and maybe your symptoms come off like you're being an asshole, maybe you are an asshole, but who gives a shit. You still deserve care. You don't have to be the Super MadCrip who overcomes or masks their madness to be worthy of a full belly and pain relief and restful sleep.

Seeing a notification from this again and grieving because we were angry and owned that anger and all I can be right now is exhausted. I have to hold on to the hope that our outpatient providers can and will do better, but a factitious diagnosis is a death sentence if you are actually ill. I'm lost. I feel like I've failed my system, my friends, my chosen family. And I'm so fucking hungry.

We don't even want surgery, we were told to advocate for one and now here we are, and we don't know how to climb out of this hole. You can't objectively prove muscle pain and spasms are preventing you from eating enough when you can still swallow.

The worst part about all of this? It was multiple doctors who told us in the first place these interventions need to be looked into, some saying ASAP, some saying "should've already happened," some saying they will do it, some saying we have to do it. We were being carted off to surgery, and now we are being sent home in ketosis (again) and called a clinical faker for something we did not once lie about --- we used the language our doctors used, people misunderstood and claimed we were saying something else and that it was a lie, people said we were making ourselves sicker on purpose by (checks notes) following our doctors orders --- and we have to ... what? Take the blame? Just accept it? How do you prove something like that wrong when you still need care? How do you ask for help?

How do you ask for help?

Let’s also remember the struggle of our Palestinian brothers and sisters during this time and keep them in our prayers! 🕊️🤲🏼

Quick Guide for Non-Muslims:

Ramadan 2026 / 1447 AH starts on February 18 or 19 (depends on when the crescent moon of the new lunar month is spotted! we follow the moon, she sets the schedule) and lasts 1 month.

You can greet your Muslim friends with:

“Ramadan Mubarak” (Blessed Ramadan) or

I was not originally invited to speak, but heard last minute that someone else had fallen ill and was giving up their slot, and begged white organizers through the grape vine to let me speak as a Salvadoran migrant and union steward who came to the US at age 7.

I have long been soured of going to so many rallies and felt alienated that they were allegedly for or about my people, but that no one had thought people /like/ me exist - we are still here! There are migrants in your work spaces and neighborhoods and organizations, we have stories and labor songs and speeches to share, we are marxists and labor organizers and have reasons to speak out too.

But seldom if ever do you hear our music or faces or voices near the banners. Instead of Tigres Del Norte we heard Bella Ciao, and none of the singers knew the Italian words or bothered to even translate them, so they sang nanananananana, instead of the powerful lyrics that maybe meant something once to someone somewhere. Instead of Somos Más Americanos we heard Don’t Worry, Be Happy.

Instead of a Salvadoran woman who wanted to speak to the American union workers about the Banana workers unions, we heard from a dozen white people about democracy, and justice, and the constitution, and no one was warned about what would happen if they marched down the street from the park to the ICE facility. They fully expected everyone to come back and complete the second half of the rally.

Instead, marchers with their dogs and children were tear-gassed to hell and back the second they dared get close to the facility, maybe at best 1/3rd of the marchers returned while the rest were bottlenecked towards ICE. There was little to no water to treat the untrained protestors. I returned to the rally quickly realizing I could not get caught up at ICE, knowing who I am and what awaits me.

When I got back a chorus of smiling white faces sang a silly song like a Christmas carol with their heads bobbling, reading the lyrics from some handed out papers. White people with upside down flags cheered. Then a black woman in overalls abruptly got on the mic and said “Well thank you everyone but we have to close the program early because people are getting tear-gassed, please get home to safety righty away,” - and I swore I couldn’t believe my ears.

They had brought us all here, marched all these people down to the ICE facility, and expected us all to march back without encountering teargas? And then when some people had made it back they had them sing a little jingle but turned the one migrant away? I begged them to let me speak for the three minutes I had allotted, noting that I had put myself in serious danger to come out here today. That I needed to be heard just this once, and that all the white people had their fair turn to say many unrelated things, and to sing many unrelated songs.

She said, “you don’t understand, there are children down here,” and I had to say “you don’t understand, there are children in the camps.”

And she tried again, “yes but the gas is spreading,” and I said “yes we have been down here being gassed for six months, don’t you understand?”

She blinked twice and told me they just had to break down. I watched from the sidelines as they continued to blare Caribbean Blue and smooth jazz while people filtered out, stood around talking, chatting - finally I said, “please let me speak, you still have speakers going, it’s been 20 minutes,” and the DJ, a white elderly man in a sweater vest who had a strict “only the classics” policy that seems to actually mean “no hip hop and no curse words,” - barked at me that he had to break down and to help him take down his canopy. I am no maid, so I did not listen. He then turned to my comrades and told them to take his canopy down, which they did not. Then turned to his two other labor organizers who were not paying attention, and they took a leg of the canopy and moved it somewhere without breaking it down.

And one looked at me and said quietly, “it’s okay, take that bullhorn no one will notice,” and we took it and ran.

And we ran to a firetruck which I climbed, and I gave the speech, which was in fact more than 3 minutes, sorry not sorry, to a crowd of workers who were slowly pouring out from the ice facility, some stopping, some going, some who heard me, some who didn’t. And I gave it there and it was the only speech most of these people will ever hear from a migrant in all of this, and I think that is tragic. But I firmly believe that had I not given it, had I not climbed the truck, had I not taken the mic, some people would have never heard this story at all. And I think very much you should hear it. And I hope you will share it, if you have the chance. And I hope I get to tell it again, someday, to people who actually listen, to the masses who came to actually support immigrants, and not just to the dredges after they’ve been gassed and are running for shelter while I’m coughing myself.

This is what I had to say.

Olivia: I came to the United States when I was 7 years old. And I became a citizen when I was 20. But I am on this stage to ask: if you will give me 3 minutes of your time, *cough* I will give you 300 years of American History that has been taken from you.

There are five crops that changed the world as we know it. Bananas. Coffee. Tobacco. Sugar. And Cotton.

First grown by slaves in the New World, these crops all happened to also grow in a little bean-shaped country that my parents lived in near the Caribbean called Cuzcatlan, ‘The Land of Precious Things.’ It would be renamed El Salvador in the 1800’s. 

But the precious things remained after the name changed. And the people were captured, and they were forced to work for pennies on the dollar to dredge the precious things from the soil, and the sea, and the mountains, and the sand. Cuzcatlan was not precious just to us, you see. It was coveted by the Americans. And once they saw our jewels, they would never be satisfied again. 

The people suffered. And how we suffered! Dying in the fields, raped by their masters, buried in the shining black volcanic sands, their blood fertilizing the crops.

Of Bananas. Coffee. Sugar. Cotton. And Tobacco.

Until one day, the people of Cuzcatlan said, ‘We can bear it no more.’ And they broke their shovels in half, and they plunged the stems into their masters, and they rode through the streets on their masters’ Spanish horses, and they cried out that Cuzcatlan would no longer belong to the American companies that demanded their precious things without paying precious prices. Perhaps, soon, those business leaders would learn to negotiate for the labor and crops they so needed.

And the Americans? The Americans could not stand it! They would not abide such a story be told. And so you never heard it! The American companies, and all of their corporate masters came down on Cuzcatlan, with a fury seldom seen before. They killed everyone.

Instead, you heard a story about “Communists” and “Terrorists” in Central America, spreading a disease that would destroy your country and families. You heard a story that we have no good will towards you. That we wanted you to starve, that we were lazy, and formed gangs, and were lawless, and wore weapons to sell you drugs and fund terrorism. 

But you never heard the story of Cuzcatlan, because it was a sad story, and sad stories do not sell fruit, and coffee, and cigarettes!

No, they came to my country, and they wiped out entire villages. The Archbishop, Don Remar - er, Don Romero, himself, was shot by the military during his Sunday Mass, for having dared to wonder whether the workers deserved some mercy. Assassinated for having dared to wonder, and he was left bleeding on the pulpit, even as worshippers bowed their heads. 

EVERYBODY was KILLED. 

EVERYBODY! The women, with their children still in their arms. Anyone looking for cover; people who found cover, people who didn’t. People who worked, and people who had no jobs. Communists. Catholics. Those who didn’t know how to read, those who didn’t know what labor rights were. Simple folks. Smart folks. 

And they didn’t stop there. They went through the countryside, and they killed everyone they thought was hiding labor organizers or communists sympathizers. Banana union men and women, who they labeled terrorists. And in one village, we still only speak about in whispers, called “El Mozote.” The Americans tied women and children to trees, and they threw their babies in the air, and they shot them. Everyone was killed, to send one message, and that is: “A union is a threat to the American Empire. Not one union man or woman will hide in your village, or any other. And if you hid one here, now or ever, you will never breathe to hide one again."

And I tell you this because I am you from the future. You and I, all of you, are very much alike. You worked very hard to buy the precious things you have from the ground, the sky, the water, and the aether. You all wrote stories, you filed insurance policies, you taught children, you rung people up, you made sure whatever sorry system they had worked, not because you believed in it, not because you wanted it, but because it was all you could do. 

And in exchange, they offered you cheap bananas. Coffee. Sugar. Tobacco. Bananas.

But I will tell you a secret. They were never cheap. They were precious. And so are you. 

And they stole you, and they stole us, and they stole it all, and they told you: if you look the other way, you get to be satisfied and at least well-fed. But who can afford the luxuries of cigarettes or vapes or groceries anymore? Even that is being taken from you. And even if you have them, your food or your small pleasures won’t satisfy you. Not more than knowing the truth about Cuzcatlan, not more than knowing the truth about El Salvador. Today, where our precious land once stood, they built a concentration camp called CECOT. And not just for our precious things, our people, but yours. Your citizens, your dissenters, your unwanted disappeared into the hole that America built. 

And what will we do when they start building incinerators at the camps? What will you do when they open up mass graves? 

For our people, the most precious gift of all: do not take my warning lightly. The story of Cuzcatlan is not just from the past. It is from the future. The workers face the same enemy, and the enemy never had your interest in mind. From the moment they had you, the plan was to have a worker. From the moment you existed, it was to create another soldier against the people of Cuzcatlan and the rest of the world. You were a commodity to them. 

But we have written you a new future. One in which we no longer point guns at each other. One in which our billionaires fear the land of precious people from learning they are no longer precious things. 

Turn to me now! And tell me you will not forget the last three minutes. You will never again be ignorant of this story. And you will not let it happen here. You will close the camps. You will destroy ICE.

Spectator: Yeah! Olivia: You would rather have seasonal bananas or never see one again than have it covered in blood. 

Spectators: That’s right! Yeah! 

Olivia: You would rather trade fairly with other union workers than kill your fellow man, wouldn’t you? 

Spectators: Yes! Olivia: Tell me you love me, and that our fates are tied! Tell me you’ll stop them from dragging me down from this place, and I’ll never let them do to you what they did to us. I promise. El pueblo unido…

Spectator: JAMÀS SERÀ VENCIDO!

Olivia: Nunca será vencido. Amen.

I know I stuttered a bit, as I had just been gassed, as it took place not but 400 feet maybe from the Portland ICE facility.

One correction among many tiny ones:

“You worked very hard to /ply/ the precious things you have from the ground, the sky, the water, and the aether.” - And that work, it is very precious.