F*ck this.

This is not okay. None of this is okay.

Tonight, I witnessed one of the worst things that I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how to process it and don’t seem to have the coping skills to deal with the emotions that I’m feeling right now. But a close friend encouraged me to write it all out, so here I am at 1AM trying desperately to get my thoughts in order and make some kind of sense of it.

I was at the man’s apartment and heard this noise that, at first, sounded like a toddler crying, but it turned into a wailing that I recognized immediately as a mom cry. The kind that only a mother can emit when she is about to lose her baby. My heart stopped.

ICE has been all over my area this last week (and month) and I ran outside fully prepared to fight them off and keep them from kidnapping someone’s child. But that wasn’t what was happening.

Paramedics had picked up a 15-year-old boy from the building next door. He had been sick and was having breathing trouble. But he crashed before they could even get him into the ambulance and they had to do CPR on the sidewalk to try get him breathing again. The mom was on her knees on the asphalt, screaming and crying and pleading for his life.

I just stood there dumbly, holding my breath, gripping the man’s arm. I wanted to help, but there was nothing I could do. The paramedics were doing their job, his life was literally in their hands and there was nothing that anyone else could do in that moment but wait. I wanted to rush to this mom, this woman that I didn’t know, and help her hold her pain. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run away. I felt like I shouldn’t be there, that this was a private moment that I had no business being a part of. That standing there and doing nothing was morbidly voyeuristic. But I couldn’t leave, I felt like I needed to be there in that moment, that leaving this family alone on the sidewalk, not bearing witness to this mother’s pain, walking away would have been so much worse than staying.

Once they got him stable enough for transport, they took him to the hospital and the family followed in another car. I’m not sure what happened from there. After we went back inside though, I immediately burst into tears and felt guilty for not doing something, even though I couldn’t figure out what that something would have been. I felt a desperate need to hug my babies.

Right before we heard the mom crying and ran outside, we had been watching news clips and videos of the raids in Carpinteria and Camarillo earlier in the day. We had just seen a video of them waiting outside of a hospital. A fucking hospital. These assholes have no fucking shame. No humanity at all and it’s disgusting.

This family, the mom, the son, the father and two other older kids were Hispanic. I’ve been hearing stories about people avoiding medical care right now because they are afraid of being abducted at doctors’ offices and outside of hospitals, with good reason. I can only assume that that was the case for this family, because I can’t imagine that any mother would ever have watched their child suffering to this point if they didn’t know that the alternative could potentially be so much worse than their illness. Now he is in the hospital, fighting for his life.

This is insane. It’s all fucking insane. It’s out-of-control. These wannabe cops, untrained “agents”, fucking bounty hunters are 100% THE ACTUAL CRIMINALS THAT ARE TERRORIZING OUR COMMUNITIES RIGHT NOW. They don’t follow any rules or procedures at all and treat the law and constitution as if they are mere suggestions. They seem to think that they are heroes doing a public service and are dumbfounded that they aren’t being welcomed as such and that no one is cooperating with them. They think that they are invincible and have infinite power and authority because they’ve procured bullet proof vests that say “police” on them (which anyone can buy on the internet by the way), are wearing fatigues and masks and carrying guns. They’ve been allowed to do whatever they want. To ignore due process under the guise of “protecting” the community. But they aren’t protecting anything or anyone, they are vigilantes. And contrary to the uneducated opinions of a significant portion of the country, they are not picking up murderers, drug traffickers, gang members, rapists or thieves. They are literally snatching brown people off the streets. This isn’t conjecture, THIS IS HAPPENING. Daily. In my community as well as others all over the Central Coast, Southern California and the California farm belt. And to some extent in other liberal sanctuary cities around the country.

What the fuck are these immigrants even supposedly doing? Seriously? I just can’t fathom that anyone could actually be so ignorant as to believe rhetoric that suggests that thousands of people fought for their very survival to get into this country just so they could rape and pillage and then go spend their days picking strawberries and trying not to get a heat stroke for slave labor wages that don’t even cover their rent. WTF?!

These kidnappers are not going to the homes or businesses of suspected criminals showing ID and valid warrants (as the law requires) and arresting them. The people that they are kidnapping are fathers working to keep their families housed and fed. Grandmothers working in their gardens and babysitting their grandchildren because their parents can’t afford childcare. Teenagers walking to school. Mothers sitting at their dying child’s bedside. Children who are already trying to overcome insurmountable trauma are being ripped out of foster homes. And there are multiple instances of parents being snatched and the children just being abandoned. Literally abandoned in cars, on the street. What kind of a person takes a parent away without first calling another family member or social services to take custody of the child? Just leaves them terrified and vulnerable and alone?

This isn’t about me and my emotions and my inability to cope with reality right now. Yes, I am absolutely terrified for my kids. And yes, I’m worried about our medical care and food, and housing. Especially after just having had (non-cancer related) surgery again twice in the last few weeks and having my greedy landlord raise my rent again for the fourth year in a row without knowing how I’m going to pay for the increase.

But right now, all I can think about is that mom sitting at the hospital, at her sons bedside, praying that he’ll survive the night, that he’ll be okay, that she’ll get to take him home again. And also, in the back of her mind being terrified that, at any moment, any one or all of them could be snatched and disappeared into a legal CONCENTRATION CAMP.

I’m so scared. And so fucking angry.

I’m angry that any of this is even happening to begin with. And I’m angry that nobody with power is doing anything to put a stop to it. How did they allow it get this far? How did we allow it to get this far? And, I’m angry that there are still so many people who are feigning ignorance because they “aren’t on social media” or “don’t watch the news” or “don’t participate in/discuss/do politics”. You can’t ignore this away. I feel like this really shouldn’t be news at this point, but “politics” is life. It’s not whether you like politicians or their positions and it’s not just about whether your “hard-earned tax dollars” are going to people who are supposedly “abusing” the system (it’s not the immigrants who are suckling from the gov’t teet btw, those who are have more money than a majority of the country collectively and can 100% afford to pay their fair share without even making a dent in their vast fortunes, but that’s a whole other post).

If you drive on public roads, you visit the library, you visit local, state and national parks, monuments and campgrounds, your kids or grandkids are in school (public or private), you work any job, you receive any form of social security, retirement or pension, you shop at stores, you buy things, you live on land or nearby seas that are part of the U.S., you eat, you drink, you breath…YOU ARE INVOLVED IN POLITICS. Politics affect every part of your life and existence.

Politics decide whether you have qualified doctors to treat you at the ER and whether medications are tested for safety before you are treated with them. Politics keep toxic chemicals out of your air and water and food. Politics protect you from eating things contaminated with bacteria that cause food-poisoning. Politics decide whether or not you get to have the electricity that you pay for or whether it can be shut off randomly (with no return compensation) because the company who owns it hasn’t been doing their job to keep their equipment safe. Politics is deciding whether there will be enough firefighters and equipment and water to put out the fire at your home and protect your home from the wildfire that is way too close to you before it wipes it your entire community. Politics decide how much money the greedy fuckers at the top are required to pay you and whether or not you’ll have any money left to live on or a home or medical care when you’re too old to work.

If you voted for this administration and recently learned that you were cheated out of your vote, you have a responsibility to help clean up the mess that you’ve been complicit in. You may have been lied to and misled and fallen for it. Twice. But you know what’s worse than being ignorant? Knowing that you’ve been ignorant, doubling down on the ignorance and doing nothing to change it. The anger directed at immigrants is profoundly misguided and misplaced. Regardless of what you have been told, immigrants, whether naturalized, birthright or “illegal” are not the enemy. Don’t let them dehumanize you or anyone else. Don’t let them pit us against each other. We have a shared humanity. We have way more in common than not. We are all just trying desperately to survive in an increasingly hostile and uninhabitable world where we are being preyed on and exploited for our monetary value. But we all have the common goal of giving our kids and grandkids and nieces and nephews and friends and neighbors kids better lives and a future that’s actually worth living for.

No one is coming to save U.S. We have to save ourselves.