The day they put you on the plane
For Kilmar Abrego Garcia and everybody in the Salvadoran prisons; for Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Öztürk and every protestor in custody; for all of the "home growns" whom we are told are up next...
On the day you are shackled and kidnapped, you will wake up and eat breakfast. You will tell somebody that you love them, unless you forget. Maybe you will have gotten enough sleep the previous night, or maybe you’ll still be reeling from a terrible day or week or lifetime. Maybe— on the day that you are shoved onto that plane— you will have just experienced a million small kindnesses. Maybe that morning the sun will shine just so and you will walk outside and find a dollar on the street. Maybe you will run into an old friend who exclaims “it’s been too long, we should hang out” and you can tell they actually mean it. Maybe everything will be perfect until the moment that they grab you.
On the day that we are told that we’re better off without you, maybe you will have comported yourself as a saint. Maybe you will have recently broken up a scuffle or comforted a crying child or caused your loneliest friend to lose themselves in laughter. Maybe you will have painted pictures or composed songs or strung a few words together that, when the rest of us stumble upon them later, bring us to tears because they are gorgeous and holy and true.
Or maybe not. Maybe— on your last day walking the same streets as the rest of us— you will have been a world historic jerk. Maybe you will have cut off other drivers in traffic or nicked a wallet on the train or yelled the most hurtful thing you can imagine just to see the look of pain on somebody else’s face. Maybe you will have severed relationships and broken hearts. Maybe you will have done things— truly awful things— that you hesitate to admit out loud.
Maybe all of these things will be true at once. Maybe you were and are and always will be a saint and a sinner and a decent friend and a real piece of work.
On the day your plane lands in an unfamiliar place, you may be herded into a “regular” prison here in the U.S., or a “mega-prison” in El Salvador. We are told that the latter is degrees more inhumane than the former. But also, what is a mega-prison if not just more prison. In the mega-prison, we may catch a glimpse of you, shirtless and afraid, like the caged animal that they want us to believe you are. In the regular prison, we will just never see you again. Pick your poison. Or don’t, actually, because on the day you vanish, we’ll be told that you longer deserve a choice, just as you no longer deserve fresh air or another kiss that feels like a first kiss or the sound of your mother’s voice reassuring you through tears that “no matter what, you will always be my sweet, perfect baby.”
On the day that we are asked to cheer whatever fate befalls you, they will say so many things about you. They will say that you were MS-13 or Hamas. They will say that you were a murderer, that you “hit 90 year olds with baseball bats” or that you terrorized children. If you are somebody’s child, they will say that you were no angel. If you are a parent, they will say that you “weren’t exactly a mother or father of the year.” They will say all these things about you and the rest of us will be expected to repeat, in unison, “couldn’t be me.”
If the things that they say about you are lies, some may shout retorts in your defense. “They weren’t one of the bad ones,” they’ll say about you. And though they will be trying to show you kindness, there is subtext there as well. You can’t say “well, this human being does not deserve to be disappeared, to be treated like an animal, to have the Constitution shoved in their face as a gag…” without reinforcing the lie on the other side of the ellipsis.
“…but somebody else does.”
On the day that your family won’t know where they’ve taken you, I hope that you don’t feel alone. Not because we finally stand up for you and only you, but because by that point we have already been standing and fighting and getting thrown in prison ourselves. I hope that when it’s your turn, we are accustomed to saying two things at once.
Not now.
Not to anybody.
I hope that the day the worst comes for you never actually comes. The list of the disappeared is already too long, but I hope that we stop all this before it continues ad infinitum. I hope that at first our protests are small and then they get larger and that they eventually grow so large that they can’t lock us all up. I hope that every time they try to turn us against one another, to peel one of us off and say “but what about this monster? don’t they deserve it?” we say no, of course not. I trust that, if we stay strong, they (even they) will blink, because that is what cowards do.
I hope we realize, in this moment and all those to come, that it was always a lie. It’s never actually been true that disappearing some human beings into prisons makes the rest of us more free.
On the day that they try to direct the full force of their hate towards you, I hope that our hearts have grown so large that it’s not even a contest. I hope that they give up in disgust. I hope that, someday in the future, they deny that they ever tried. I hope, in that moment, that we remember the truth.
On the day after they would have come for you, I hope you wake up and eat breakfast in your own home and feel the sun on you face and even if you are far from perfect, I hope that somebody embraces you as if you are.
On that day, that blessed day when we are all on the other side of this terror, I hope you don’t forget.
I hope you say “I love you.”
I hope you hear it back.
End notes:
Registration for the two bonus Barnraisers Project “How To Actually Build Community” classes CLOSES NEXT MONDAY. As a reminder, these sessions will be on Thursday, April 24th at 9:30 AM CT and Sunday, April 27th at 3:00 PM CT. Both classes are free, virtual and two hours long. They are a real delight and I’d love to share them with you. REGISTER HERE!
It is such a gift to be able to offer all of this (the writing and the classes) free of charge. How can I do it? Because, as you likely know by now, every week I put a little note at the bottom here about how this work is possible because paid subscribers chip in for everybody’s benefit, and every week a few more folks raise their hand and say “hey, that can be me.” Thanks, as always, for being one of those rad (and profoundly appreciated) hand raisers.
Song of the week: The Intruders’ cover of Paul Simon’s "Mother and Child Reunion.”
No, I would not give you false hope
On this strange and mournful day
But the mother and child reunion
Is only a motion away
The full song of the week playlist is on Apple Music and Spotify.
Here’s this week’s “Musk and Trump don’t care about you” sticker in the wild. You know, one of the joys of this project is that I get to write sentences I never could have imagined in my wildest flight of fancy. You know, like, “holy cow, check out this sticker at the Victoria Secret next to the New England Patriots stadium in Foxborough, MA.” Go Pats. Buy 2 get 1 free undergarments. And also, fight fascism. Now that’s one stop shopping.
Also, do you want a sticker? Can you commit to putting it up in a public place (ideally where it’ll be seen by people who don’t already share your politics)? I’m still sending them out (once again, for free!) but I’ve got a big backlog so it might be a minute.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg said a few weeks ago on BlueSky, "No more Niemollering." I hadn't ever thought deeply about the self-interest embedded in that quote. It's used so often to tell us we should speak up for others because we might become the other. But really, we should speak up because we should speak up.
If there were an emoji for a heart crying I would put it right here.