one thing that's really monumentally hard about this moment is accepting that there will never be perfect allies. i'm hispanic; i have been against ICE and state-sanctioned violence the whole time. it's so hard for me to hold both my activism and my personal rage in both hands. the rage in me keeps asking why the fuck wasn't it enough at the first kidnapping. why haven't the other deaths mattered at all?
but at the same time - if Good and Pretti's murders are radicalizing people, it's radicalizing them. someone online (with 5k likes) said: i don't know why, but this one feels more personal than usual. i don't blame them for their ignorance (they're just people) but that one comment hurt me. none of the other crying mothers or little kids calling out for their parents or men slaughtered by police felt personal?
and ... i get it. maybe for once other people are finally saying that could have been me in the car. they are finally saying he just tried to help someone up, he wasn't even at a protest. maybe they finally realized: these people did nothing wrong, but the government defamed them before any investigation was even begun. the killer was pardoned before he even drew the fucking gun.
and i know what that's like, i have seen this happen too-many times.
but maybe this was the first time they've ever actually seen ICE violence. maybe they don't read the news, maybe they genuinely believed every kidnapped person "deserved it". maybe... i don't know. maybe it didn't feel real until now, you know? to be fair: social media has a way of making everything film together, a massive wave of tragedy that you cannot parse. and maybe there's just such a sense of pointlessness to it that it filtered out for them. the government usually provides such a clean narrative (he was resisting, she was a criminal); maybe it had given them some peace to just-believe. maybe this is the first time that the lie is obvious even to their eyes.
it's frustrating, and dehumanizing. a white lady and a white man shouldn't be the face of a movement that largely affects everyone else.
and... they died for our movement. and if this is what it takes. if now there are people who are going to take up a banner and walk with me... I want them to be there. i want them to feel the same fire i do. i want them to have that fury that has been burning in me for so long. hell, maybe because they're new to it - they'll burn hotter. there's probably places i am jaded and overwrought. a friend in need is a friend indeed, right?
i have always hated the parable of the prodigal son. i cannot help but feel i have been standing in this space, screaming. that we have been begging for help. that we have warned you. why wasn't it enough when it was one of us?
still. still. i close my eyes. they're here now, and that is something. a handprint. at least, at last: they're by my side. as the saying goes: better late. okay. okay.
whatever it takes.
