The theft of human beings is fundamentally wrong.
This principle, is well established in human history. If a human being is free, their freedom is actualized in their sovereignty. To steal a person, is to violate their sovereignty in the most foundational, intrinsic way.
It is in all ways, anti-freedom. It is unfreedom in practice. It is enslavement. And it is wrong.
In places of genocide, there is often the theft of human beings. Even amongst war, it is truly terrifying.
When the Lords Resistance Army was sweeping through Northern Uganda, their focus was on the theft of human beings. Night after night, small bands would raid villages, and steal children. Rip families from one another’s arms.
When M23 commits raids in towns across eastern Congo, their focus is also on human theft. The children for fighting, the fathers for working, and the mothers for the unspeakable.
When the Gestapo was at their height, their highest form of expertise was in human theft. Finding us, wherever we hid. And taking humans to untold destinations.
The modern Cartel is feared for many reasons, and their capacity to wage violence and cause pain, is extensive. But the skill that strikes fear into people’s hearts, is their propensity to do the unimaginable.
Human theft.
A horror of horrors.
There are many who speak of it so casually in the united states. As though there is a time and place when human theft is right and righteous, and if we keep workin at it, we may just find it.
Nearly a decade ago, I lived in a beautiful neighborhood in east los angeles, where many immigrant communities live, and where many families who have undocumented family members, work and send their kids to school.
The neighborhood surrounds an expansive park, and is full of friendly, kind, hard working people. There is good food, good shopping, good schools, and good folks.
When trump was elected, it changed. Surely Obamas administration had deported as many as anyone before, but still it changed. Dramatically. Severally. Immediately. The wanton disregard for human life. The deplorable lack of respect for human dignity.
The pain. The fear. Families torn apart. At school. At home. At night. In the mornings. Grandmothers ripped from babies arms. Fathers taken from their families. Children sent away, from everyone and everything they love.
The cries could be heard, echoing across our little hills. From every generation. Weeping for stolen lives. For stolen, human lives.
Deportations are a staggering evil.
There really is no other word.
If evil exists, this must be it. To steal a person, is to enact a grave and generational violence.
It is violating every sacrifice made by every elder who came before, and brought that person to that specific moment in time and place. And it is violating all future generations, who may come from that human being.
Our little neighborhood filled with immigrants from across the americas, became an active conflict zone. We watched it happen. Heard it happen. Felt the weeping with our souls.
Choppers overhead at all hours. Surveillance on the corner. Camps formed on the border.
It’s real.
It’s real.
These forces.
ICE is a paramilitary operation. On our soil. In our neighborhoods. In our schools. In our institutions. In our homes.
Just a few neighborhoods away, folks had no idea it was even happening. We’d talk with people from other parts of the city, and life was continuing as though nothing had changed whatsoever. But for us. In our neighborhood. With our community. With the families we cared about. Everything had changed.
The expertise of ICE is in one thing and one thing only.
Human theft.
Call it was it is.
When someone breaks into your home, and tears your family from one another, there is no other word.
Human theft.
It follows a long lineage of human theft on this land. Surely the children of Africa know this evil, as well as any human living. As do the original children of these lands, who were also stolen from their families, so “American” families could live here instead.
The Doctrine of Discovery gave European Christians a legal foundation, to invade any continent, steal their resources, and steal their people.
Human theft.
The Colonial Powers claimed much of Africa, and much of this hemisphere as well. Most of the livable lands on the planet, were claimed in this way. The same Doctrine which created the “legal” theft of the Congo by King Leopold of Belgium, also created the legal foundation for what became the united states. The theft of Natives and Africans and Asians and the peoples of the Islands, is woven inseparably into these continental collisions.
Human theft.
The entire program of Boarding Schools and Residential schools, which litters the United States in unmarked graves, was built by stealing Native children from their families.
Human theft.
European Christians have been building legal justifications, to remove peoples from this land, since they arrived.
And it has always been wrong.
Always been evil.
Always been without conscience.
Always been without defense.
But surely we have tried.
The expansive fear among white people today, of being replaced in America, has created an ideology which is rooted in justifying human theft. And it is utterly unjustifiable.
We have always been guests here. Always needed to ask. Always ought to have shown respect. Always should have acknowledged the languages and symbols and cosmologies and peoples, and nations of this land. Just because our ancestors didn’t do this foundational work, doesn’t mean we cannot. We can. We should. And whether now or at some point in the future, we most surely will.
The fundamental argument of modern conservatism, is no different than the argument of Colonialism. They have always believed this land is for white Christians, and no one else. This was their explicit position for centuries, and no matter the illusions of plurality many of us were raised with, clearly still is.
It was this example from which the Nazis gained their greatest inspiration. And today, even the Nazi Party is having their comeback moment in Germany. A right cheers to the good ol’ days.
The goal of the Nazi movement is to maintain power for White Christians in Germany.
The goal of American conservatism is to maintain power for White Christians in America.
The tactics of the Nazi movement were to steal people and send them to unaccountable camps.
The tactic of ICE is to steal people, and send them to unaccountable camps.
American conservatives speak of deportations, with contemptible cruelty. They laugh. You laugh. We see you. Whether in this life or the next, in this generation or the next, that kind of cruelty finds a way back. The very nature of the universe, won’t have it any other way. In the meantime, all people of good heart must now choose how to respond.
What is conservatism, but colonialism in polo drag? It is supremacy for one race and one faith, and contempt for everyone else.
It is the righteous indignation, of the conquering class. It is anger at anyone, who challenges conquest. Who sees them, for exactly who they actually are.
It is the powerful and those who wish they were, fighting with every breathe of might they hold onto, to ensure they keep it. To ensure they are never subjected, to that which they have subjected others.
It is those without charm or talent or curiosity, using scale and systems of dominance, to ensure they never need to grow and expand as people. As families. As communities. As a nation.
It is the petty among us that we all must experience, who believe in their hearts they are better than us. That they are Gods chosen vessel for truth, and we are all projects which must heed their knowledge and power and dominance.
It is the disregarding of traditions and profound knowings, with the arrogance of theocracy. It is the disgust for pluralism, and an adolescent addiction to religious supremacy.
To be right.
As a child wishes, to be right.
This is what they wish for most of all.
To be right.
The Right.
Wishes to be right.
That anyone would challenge them, or challenge their claim to supremacy, is the deepest affront to their psyche. To their depths. To their inner teachings, that God chose them.
And herein we find our most lasting challenge.
How does one exist alongside someone who believes they are intrinsically better and more righteous? How does one build a beloved community, with those who have been taught that loving their neighbor, is dominating them?
Dr. King talked of the Beloved Community. A place we all hold some version of in our hearts.
There is an America, who wishes to welcome generations of European Americans into the circle of life and community. This america has always existed, whether in the wreckage of San Miguel de Guadalupe, where the people of this land rescued Africans and lived with them for nearly a century before Jamestown. Whether in the Maroon Colonies where Africans went after fleeing slavery, and often lived together with the Indigenous people of this land, as well as the Europeans who had escaped colonial society.
Benjamin Franklin observed that no European who lived among Native communities, “can afterwards bear to live in our societies.”
This remains true.
For many of the European Americans who served at Standing Rock, it was the beginnings of profound learnings. Anyone who visited or served, was touched in a way that made returning to colonial society challenging.
This desire to create a Union on this land, rooted in respect for the original peoples, the original creatures, the water, air, land and soil, and all the journeys of all the peoples and beings which brought us here together now, is not new.
It is an old desire.
One held over the centuries.
Carried in the wombs of grandmothers.
Whispered in the corners of revolution.
Of a land, where all life is free.
Of a generation, who finds liberation.
Of a day, when there is peace.
Perhaps we will be the generation, to see it true. Perhaps not. If any war of any past has ever been worth our lives, surely the great dream that there would be freedom on this land, is worth our lives today.
Every day we see the fabric of the Colonial regime splintering before our very eyes. Every day we see the morally reprehensible, normalized in front of us. This regime was built on enslavement, theft, deception and death. There is a new union waiting to be born.
The Great Law of Peace guided the original democracy of the northeast lands. It was the source material, which inspired generations of europeans to champion freedom, discourse, and decision by Great Council. In the work of building a future democracy to organize these lands, we can look back for guidance. It will only be in honoring the truth of our roots, that we will begin to find our way to a mutual understanding, and balance on this land.
For today, I send all my strength and prayers to the brave souls in Minneapolis and around the country, defying the legalized theft of human beings. We know in our spirit it is wrong. When the structures of power kill us in cold blood, steal our babies, defy habeas corpus and the foundational precepts of the common law, then it falls upon every day humans to defy the law. To become outlaws in our own land. To shake the heavens with our sounds, to awaken the spirit of revolution lying dormant in each of us, and to find the courage within, to take a stand.
Stand up. Stand out. Stand together.
The forming of nonviolent civilian militias, continues to be our most immediate tactic for resistance, and the protection of our neighbors. What Minneapolis is doing in subzero temperatures, will guide the way for every city and town, sure to face this oppression.
May the whistles singing on the streets, pierce the fabric of our hearts, awakening a mass rejection of the war machine, and unity toward systems built for liberation and life.
Freedom friends. Now and forever.
sdc
