We Were Never Safe
This is not my normal topic here but I have something to say.
As I see my darker-than-me-skinned, US-made and born Indian-American friend off towards his home, I sit in the car worried. He's not Mexican. He's brown. It wasn't until I had a Kuwaiti partner that I realized that their skin color mattered just as much as mine. They aren't seen as one of them. They're seen as one of us.
As I think about how our state can fight back against the federal "help" that is being imposed on us, the only recourse I see is legal, which means nothing in the grand scheme of things.
They're not just coming for illegal immigrants. That was a lie they fed to their base to get to where we are now. They want to turn this land into one color. They want to strip us of our ancestry, of our language, and of our history.
They'll look at people like my ex and my friend and think, they're not one of us. They'll send them to places they've never been to before, where they use languages they don't know. They'd send me there too, without a care in the world.
People warn us, have your driver's license and a copy of your birth certificate with you. What? Since when do we walk around with our legal documents proving our birth when we've been here all along?
When this land was taken, not just from the Indigenous, but from the Mexican, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, and all the other communities that were here before this land was "discovered," we didn’t ask the colonizers for their birth certificates and round them up and ship them away. Maybe this is our biggest mistake.
Maybe we also mistakenly thought, there's no way Operation Wetback could happen again. Yet here we are. And now, what happens next is even scarier than we could imagine.
We are watching the end of a democratic country in the hands of our countrymen. This is not what the founding fathers imagined, but this is definitely what we are watching. To say otherwise is irresponsible.
For me to tell you that I'm not scared would be a misinterpretion of my actual feelings. I'm scared. Not just for me, for my children as well. And for you, my community and neighboring countrymen.
They've been working on keeping us divided by saying that our language isn't inclusive and saying we need an x as part of our assmilation but what we really need is unity. Unity among the ricos and pobres. Unity among those native to this land. Unity.
Somos Indígenas. Somos Latinos. Somos Chinos. Somos Mechicanos. Somos Negros. Somos del Medio Oriente. Somos Chicanos. Somos Asiáticos. Somos Pochas. Somos gente.
I don't even speak Spanish but I know that much.
Our history isn’t erased until we allow it to be. It is long. It has been costly. But it is ours.
Right now is the moment to show them we are stronger together than we are divided.
California strong.
Please stay safe and drink water.