Law enforcement is killing us

just like they've been killing "others" for centuries

Federal law enforcement officials (ICE) killed another innocent white citizen today, another good-hearted observer who was doing nothing more threatening than filming ICE agents as they terrorized people. ICE agents also pepper-sprayed a man directly in the face while holding him down on the ground (see below). And sent an adorable 5-year-old child to ICE detention. And held a Somali American citizen, born in the U.S., in detention for two days after giving her a concussion. And disobeyed a court order by detaining a two-year-old and sending her to Texas. I could go on, but I assume most people reading this Substack are keeping up with the horrendous news already.

The thing is, Black people have been telling us for centuries that the police have been killing them unfairly, brutally beating them for nothing, treating them as subhuman, and just generally making them all live in constant fear. We ignored and disbelieved them until there started to be videos, Rodney King being the first one I remember seeing, of police viciously attacking and often killing people of color, mostly Black men. Many of us still argued that every instance of police brutality caught on camera was just a bad apple, that most cops were good and fair, and that we shouldn’t hold it against all police officers just because a few were brutalizing people. Eventually, as the videos of police brutality piled up and formed an undeniable indictment of the police state, the Black Lives Matter and Defund Police movements were born, but conservative voices didn’t allow these movements to gain much political traction.

Ignoring and discrediting the cries of Black people has brought us to where we are now, facing a Gestapo force willing to brutalize anyone who gets in their way. ICE officers are being unleashed on blue cities with deportation quotas, immunity, and a license to be as brutal as they want to be—and we are stunned to discover that means they are now behaving violently toward and killing us white people, too.

I urge you all to read this Dear White People essay by a fellow Substacker, Ohun Ashe, in which, after the outpouring of activism that followed Renee Good’s murder, she angrily observes that “White people are tasting what we have been choking on for decades — it’s a, for lack of a better term, a “mind-fuck” to watch an unjust murder happen so clearly on video, while others break it down to make the victim the villain. It’s manipulative isn’t it? It’s traumatizing, right? Now multiply this times1000 for the amount of Black names we’ve had to do this for.”

Later in her essay, Ashe notes, “You're experiencing what happens when you have a closer proximity to Black, Brown and Immigrant bodies. They are willing to harm you if you get too close to caring about us.” We can, at anytime, just go home to stay safe—while people of color will be left in harm’s way.

Now that another white person has been murdered by ICE, suddenly Democrats are saying they won’t support the Homeland Security funding bill. Why has this murder awakened their conscience in a way that all the other brutal acts ICE performed this week did not? I am glad Minnesotans are galvanized and calling for a general strike to start on Monday. I hope all of the U.S. goes on general strike until this regime is taken down. We all need to do SOMETHING to stop this Nazi takeover. But it shouldn’t be because white people are getting killed — it should be because our federal government agents are brutalizing and killing all kinds of people. We shouldn’t need it to be white people before we object to what is happening.

This week I had my third poem published by Second Coming, a Poem-a-Day Substack by Michael Broder that publishes poetry against the Trump regime. You can see my poems here, here, and here (though the middle one is my favorite). But I encourage you to subscribe and read more of these poems than just mine; poetry is proving a lifeline for me during these insane times.

Sadly, Trump’s filthy fingers are all over our poetry now, too; this article explains how a longstanding program called Poetry Out Loud was taken over by Trump’s neutered NEA, so now the only poems in the Poetry Out Loud anthology are old (in the public domain, so all more than 70 years old). This anthology contains the poems students memorize for a nationwide competition—and this year, there are no contemporary poets in it. As the article states, “That’s no accident. The POL anthology, for the first 20 years of the program, was a rich trove of classic and contemporary poems—everything from Shakespeare and Donne to recent poets laureate Billy Collins, Joy Harjo, and Ada Limón. Then came Trump 2.0 and his attempt to lasso American arts to his ideological mission.” The new Poetry Out Loud website is a “nationalistic shadow of its former self,” sporting an American flag and words about “the nation’s indomitable spirit.” Nearly all political poems have been removed, and the vast majority of the remaining poems are by old, dead, white men.

So many travesties, so little time to notice them all…

In my last post, I talked about Sascha Riley, a man who was sexually abused and trafficked as a child. Someone commented on my post with an essay that thoroughly discredits many of his recollections, and I am grateful for her journalistic take:

YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO BELIEVE WHAT I JUST LEARNED ABOUT SASCHA RILEY

I read some delightfully distracting books this week, including two twisty suspense novels that featured no gore or terror or women in sexual peril, which is a rare plus for this genre.

The Missing Half by Ashley Flowers is really good for the twisty-thriller type of book that it is (which is to say gripping and fast-paced with more plot than deep character development—though in this case, the character development was part of the plot). Two women whose sisters disappeared seven years earlier band together to find out what happened to their sisters, one younger, one older. They start to fill the missing-sister hole in one another’s hearts. Then their search results in the revelation of several shocking secrets. Things get crazier from there. If you like suspense novels, I recommend this one.

You Deserve to Know by Aggie Blum Thompson was another nice surprise! So many twisty suspense thrillers have shock turns in them that defy all credibility -- but not this excellent novel. The final twist at the end made me kind of whoop with delight; I did not see it coming, but it was a completely believable commentary on point of view that just wrapped the whole novel up nicely.

The plot centers on three families living in a cul-de-sac; the moms are all friends and the couples and their children barbecue and vaction together; all the children play together. Then one of the husbands is killed in a hit-and-run accident and the investigation of his death slowly unravels many secrets about the marriages and the friendships. We hear the story from the POV of each of the moms and learn about their petty jealousies and deeper concerns. Revelations mount. I can’t say more without giving anything away, but this is a fun read. If you like suspense thrillers, I highly recommend it.

I also read just before Christmas but forgot to mention (I think?) Unworld by Jayson Greene, the author of a powerful memoir about his two-year-old dying when a brick fell on her head as she ate ice-cream in New York City. (The memoir is devastating but ultimately hopeful and I highly recommend it.) Unworld is Greene’s first novel, and he does an excellent job weaving together a tale about technology and grief (though in this case grief for an older child, a teen who died by suicide). In the near-future world he builds, families have AI entities who merge with them to complete tedious tasks, freeing up their consciousness for higher-level issues. (Writing this review is making me want to read the book again to think about what this says about class and who gets to be in the leisure class. But I didn’t think of that much while reading the novel.) In any case, one of the entities bonds with the son, though we don’t find this out until later in the novel, and the book raises lots of questions about AI humanity and whether humans could have real relationships with AI entities. This seems highly timely given all the people having relationships with AI right now. Some of this is a little bit of a spoiler, as the reader is not fully oriented in what is happening in the novel until fairly far along, but because I would have enjoyed the novel more if I’d been situated earlier, I feel good letting you know. Also, I realize I am somewhat childlike in my loathing for feeling confused when I read; I get mad at a text I can’t understand.) But I recommend this novel and would love to talk to anyone who’s read it. My Goodreads’ summary: A fascinating exploration of grief, humanity, and love, set in a near future when people can upload a second consciousness that is then tasked with completing chores that don’t require a body (eg, balancing ones checkbook, looking over a child’s homework, inventorying the pantry to make a list). An excellent read!

And I’m almost done with Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats by Courntey Gustafson, which I am enjoying so much more than I expected. Gustafson does a beautiful job of moving back and forth between describing how her life, upon moving in with a boyfriend for the first time, became overtaken by feral cat care and earlier parts of her life in which she struggled with grief or loneliness. The cats help her move from friendless to surrounded by friends and community, and the story of how that happens—interwoven with stories about the cats — makes for a beautiful, moving read.

Finally, Renee and I just finished season two of Love is Blind Germany. My main takeaway is that there is so much less toxic maculinity in Germany than there is in the United States. Which is somewhat hopeful for our country, since Germany was full of Nazis not that long ago, and now their men seem kinder and more able to express their emotions than our men do. As I’m typing this, one of the men in the reunion show just came out as gay. He got a great round of applause and such support from the other men in the cast. So a lovely season. We watched it with dubbing and captions both, and we found it fascinating how different the translations were between what they said and what was typed on the screen. (I think having both gave us an enhanced understanding.)

I will close this with the best sign I’ve seen since Renee Good was murdered. I intend to make one for myself. It so sums up our feelings about the thug who killed her and how we know there are too many men out there who’d like to be able to shoot any women who talks back to them. I have always hated people who say they’ve reclaimed a slur; I don’t like the word bitch. But I am reclaiming “fucking bitch,” as a response to that killer. Fuck him; I don’t want to carry the fear he wished on us.

What have you read so far in 2026? Or watched? Or listened to? Please tell me in the comments. Also would love to hear what you’re doing to be part of the resistance.