Will you stand up?

Today, Americans who did not yet know the name Jerce Reyes Barrios learned about his fate as we learned about our own.  Mr. Reyes Barrios is a Venezuelan soccer player who sought protection from the United States government after being tortured by the government of Venezuela.  He has that right, the right to seek out safety and to be free from torture.  Instead of getting to make his case, however, Mr. Reyes Barrios was abducted, put on a plane to El Salvador, and put into a prison built to house terrorists. 

The American government sent an asylum seeker to a prison for terrorists where men are caged for all but 30 minutes a day, where they wash themselves from a bucket and sleep under bright lights without a mattress, pillow, or sheets. 

Why is this happening?

Why did we put this man on that plane? The honest answer is that we have no idea. We have no idea because he wasn't charged with a crime, put on trial, and allowed to defend himself from the State's accusation that he is a member of a Venezuelan gang. 

We have no idea because the Trump administration is in such a hurry to engage in "mass deportation" of "criminals" that it can't be bothered to utilize any of the existing frameworks we have put in place to decide upon the facts of things. 

We have no idea because the government won't say.

Someone, somewhere decided to say this man was a gang member, so the American government disappeared him into a notorious prison in a faraway place where anything could happen.  No fewer than 261 people died in El Salvadoran prisons between 2022 and 2024, "four of them children."  America's prisons are terrible places, but at least here, organizations like the ACLU can file lawsuits based on violations of people's Eighth Amendment rights.  In El Salvador?  In El Salvador, they declared a state of emergency and suspended their constitution for 30 days. In 2022. They have renewed the 30-day window 36 times.  I guess it must be a pretty big emergency, since they have arrested more than 1% of their own population.

Fascism by any other name (still smells like hell)

Fascists, authoritarians, tyrants, dictators - they don't start with the popular kids.  They start with the unpopular ones. And if the people Dear Leader doesn't like seem a little too sympathetic, don't worry. That's what propaganda is for.  

Have you noticed who the propaganda is aimed at here lately?  

It's immigrants and trans people, first and foremost. 

Have you noticed who the propaganda has been aimed at historically?

Black Americans, gay Americans, gender non-conforming Americans, and every single wave of immigrants who have ever rolled in.

If you've been on the fence, historically, about how you feel or what you think about  undocumented immigrants or trans people, it is long past time to knock that shit off.  Human beings don't need anyone else's personal blessing in order to have rights, dignities, histories, and worth.

Will you stand up?

This the time, friends.  Not next year. Not next month.  Right now.

Right now, the government is putting men on planes without explanation and sending them to places where journalists can't interview them, constitutions don't exist for them, and family can't speak with them.

Right now, almost 1 in 100 Americans is already incarcerated. As a percentage of population, we're not on pace with El Salvador yet, but Trump hasn't put us in a state of emergency yet.

Yet.

Unfortunately, many of us aren't used to standing up, even when things are dire. White Americans in particular have been participating in the dehumanization of the people all around us since we got to this country.  And we have a history and a habit of abducting people born in other nations and relocating them to places where constitutions don't exist for them and family can't speak with them. We fought a war about it, and after we botched the Reconstruction, we almost lost the country to the KKK.  After just a few decades of rising equality, Republicans want to drag us back into unapologetic inequality, quashing not only voting rights but also memories, histories, vocabularies, words.  We're not to speak about Black history, Black artistry and innovation, Black Lives that Matter. 

Which means we must speak of all of it. Right now.

Right now, cisgender Americans must speak of trans dignity, must demand that our government stop targeting and abusing trans folks, who are being actively defamed and dehumanized by federal and state governments, offensive executive orders, and your gross friend.  Are you calling out your gross friend?  Your respectable pastor who demonizes trans athletes? Your brother who thinks the left should abandon trans rights?

This is happening. If you are scared, it's okay. People can do great things, even when they are afraid.

Practice calling out your friend. Practice being in respectful but uncomfortable dialogue with others. Practice making yourself do things that scare you, like singing or speaking in public. Feel yourself surviving the fear.

As someone much wiser than I said recently on BlueSky, practice breaking rules.  Last week, when I was at Kroger, I took three gift cards and hid them behind a box of food because they fund an establishment that embraces hate. It scared me. It was good to practice that tiny act.

We have to do this. We don't get to choose.

It's game time.