Apathy is the Enemy

A prison in El Salvador where Trump hopes to send migrants https://www.nytimes.com/es/2025/02/05/espanol/america-latina/el-salvador-carceles-bukele-migrantes.html

Donald Trump is waging war on America, what it means to be an American, and the soul of our nation. I am so sick of people saying… “Maybe this is who we are now?”. Why? Because that is not good enough. America is not a place or a country where we have accepted our shortcomings, our injustices, our failures, and said, “This is who we are now.” If that were the case, Selma, Stonewall, or Seneca Falls would just be a town, an inn, and a hamlet. The United States would not be the America we are today, because we are a nation not born but forged in the crucible of the never-ending fight of our people towards better.

Donald Trump today threatens a quarter millennium of American independence, which has been defined by its most downtrodden, most marginalized, and most repressed, throwing off chains of oppression and refusing to exist in a nation absent of fairness, freedom, and fundamental rights. This turn of events may feel startling to the millions of us who have not been included in the ire of those in power, but I promise you the words of a lowly German Lutheran Pastor by the name of Martin Niemöller ring true today:

“First they came for the Communists, And I did not speak out, Because I was not a Communist, Then they came for the Socialists, And I did not speak out, Because I was not a Socialist, Then they came for the trade unionists, And I did not speak out, Because I was not a trade unionist, Then they came for the Jews, And I did not speak out, Because I was not a Jew, Then they came for me, And there was no one left, To speak out for me.”

First, he came for E. Jean Carroll, And I did not speak out, For I was not a Woman, Then they came for Sarah McBride, And I did not speak out, For I was not Transgender, Then he came for Mahmoud Khalil, Because I was not a student, And I did not speak out, Then he came for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, And I did not speak out, Because I was not an Immigrant,  Then he came for me, And there was no one left, To speak out for me. 

He is coming for all of us. 

To my fellow Americans, if your house were on fire, and your child were still inside, you would not sit on the curb and let them perish. Our house is burning down, our collective child, our American experiment, is inside, and the fire is spreading. Lest we forfeit our agency, a dead child, a dead dream, an America in the past tense is what we shall receive.