Saturday, February 18, 2017

My heart is broken

I post this, my voice, for those who
know me, and those who are
protesting in harms way. Although I have
been a citizen of the U.S.A. now for
forty years, I still feel a discomfort.
I still feel the angst that surrounds
our every day existence because of the  
hate and overt vitriol against my ethnicity
and people of color. The unfair distribution and
application of community standards are being
amplified with prejudice. I carry with me, in my
car a copy of my citizenship papers. Many
innocent lives will and have already been
disrupted. Does ‘America’ still have
a heart? Does Lady Liberty still welcome,
still embrace? 

In the last couple of days I’ve seen a
mother extricated from her children, in front
of them. A son removed from his home
in front of his dad and family. In both cases
they were ‘dreamers’ or at least non-criminal
individuals that had been given assurances
by our government that they would be okay if
they maintained a good citizenship. This promise
was distressingly broken by ‘our’ government

His face, the son's, is my face. Her face, the mother's,
is my sister’s face. He looks like I did at his age. 
She like my sister. In their lives there was innocence 
and joy with thoughts of a ‘dream’ being within his 
and her grasp, now not to be, never to be witnessed.
Before this interruption, disruption, his and her faces,
Reflected unquestionable characterized mannerisms
of longing to be accepted by others, by America.
Accepted by even those who would feign a smile
The smiles would come with duplicitous sneers
of rejection along with that all too evident
disdain and prejudice just because of a
bias toward a different tone in skin color,
the black hair and the misunderstood language.
The attempt to assimilate has been made problematic
and challenging brought forth by the country,
the society they, we have so wanted to be a part of, 
wanted to love and be loved. Obstacles after obstacles 
have been placed before them, before us. A no longer
welcoming, embracing society.

Now, the evil representation of this government
with the evil one at the helm dictating the fascist agenda
has come to disrupt their worlds, my world.
They have violently extracted them and my, along
with many other hearts and souls from their mundane
normal of comfort while many others around are unaffected  
by this intrusion upon of their normal daily experience and
without the moment to moment fear, day and night
of being separated from brother, and sister, father and mother,
friends, neighbors...from life.

I know that there are some who are empathetic
but they battle their own personal unresolved  
attitudes compartmentalized that have been insidiously
inculcated in them as a result of a continuum of
bombardment with misinformation and demonization
of people based on ethnicities and nationalities yet the 
Latino face seems to be the one that has been posterized
as being representative of an ‘illegal’. One who has ‘dangerously’
and supposedly come to America, ‘illegally’, to rob you
and others of their riches and jobs. This having been,
subconsciously, implanted although, ill-conceived,

Those with still some compassion understand and
feel the disruption of life that has been taking place yet
they flail about not knowing what to do, how to respond
and support a fair resolution. All the while, the Latino 
victims and their families continue shaking in fear in
unceasing exhaustion from the sleepless nights. 
They are filling churches as their only temporary reprieve
from this Hell, while others, not so lucky, lay alone in a cold,
windowless cage, where the smell of iron-raw steel bars
is ever present and wailing cries are heard coming
from other containing cells of other children and mothers,
fathers and brothers, awaiting their destiny.

Welcome to America? 

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