sometimes i think that language is a barrier to understanding instead of a help. lately i have been thinking about the concept of silent witness a lot.

take the ice (immigration and customs enforcement) raids that have been happening in flagstaff over the past several days. look at what is happening - i mean, simply examine the actions that have taken place. poor people living in homes that they pay for with very hard earned wages - wages far too low for the work they are doing, and wages earned by doing work that no one born in america would ever want to do - these people were taken from their homes and ripped away from their families by big burly men wearing light green uniforms and wearing badges that say "ice." this is absurd.

yet the average community member accepts this practice. why? because of the justifications ice makes. because of the bizzare consensus we have in our society that the geographic place of ones birth determines where they have a right to live, love, and work.

but if you zoom out from all of this arguing and see only images: people suffering in mexico, travelling to the us to provide for their families, working long and hard hours for meager pay, living peacefully in their homes until one day they are snatched by uniformed men. it doesn't take any additional knowledge to know that what is happening is wrong.

a similar thing happens if you look at a rich community where i used to live in bethesda, maryland. in this place, called brookmont, there were a bunch of rich white families with shwank jobs and then there were their nannies of color. many of these women were probably undocumented and poorly paid. when you zoom out from this situation and look at it from a distance, from far above the ground at a point where you cannot hear the words being said or the justifications in place... what exactly is the difference between this and slavery, really? what is the difference between capitalism and slavery except that in capitalism there is an illusion of freedom?

tomorrow i am travelling to the mexican border with no mas muerte, a humanitarian aid group who patrols the trails along the border where people try to cross and places emergency food and water packets for them to find. i am going to a place where humans are hunted with dogs. i will spend my thanksgiving be thankful i am not in that situation myself, and thankful that there are some people who care, thinking about what i can do with my life to lessen global injustice.

<edited to add>

* last year 183 dead bodies were recovered from the Arizona-Sonora border