The least we can do
My husband and I are white, born in the U.S. I’ve never seen an ICE agent. Still, I am moved to tears, anger and activism, including attending rallies, like on the 31st.
The week before, a woman bundled against the bitter cold held a sign about it. She said the people in Minneapolis were doing so much, this felt like the least she could do. That’s how I feel. Whatever I do, it’s the least I can do.
It was 18 degrees on Saturday. When I stopped to chat, my feet, in thick-soled shoes and two pairs of wool socks, got cold. I went alone and saw friends, neighbors, my kids’ teachers, total strangers. There were veterans, seniors, young children being carried, teens and twenty-somethings. People sang and danced. They held printed and hand-made signs, on the back of brown paper bags, taped to a hiking pole, or a pool noodle.
One friend talked about her adult daughter, battling a crippling, painful disease, worrying about her health insurance. Another was visibly shaken. Her daughter in Minneapolis has seen things “No mother ever wants her child to see,” she said. Two have sons living abroad. One carries her adopted daughter’s papers now. There were hundreds of us, maybe over a thousand.
Our world has turned upside down. Those we pay to protect us now threaten, provoke, vandalize, terrorize and kill. It must stop. Please, do whatever you can do, call, write, march, vote. It’s the least we can all do.