Ruben: How are you feeling Aaron? My heart has felt heavy with the news from Minnesota. I’ve been trying to make an effort to connect with those heavy feelings for a change. When I think about what organizers have pulled off there, I’m inspired. At the same time I’ve felt overwhelmed by the horrific cruelty on display by ICE and CBP. The stories and images make me feel a pit in my stomach and tightness in my chest and throat. And at the same time I’m feeling gratitude for the organizations I’m connected to like Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Hands Off NYC and OWMCL who have helped me find clarity and purpose in the chaos and are helping me take action against ICE in my own community.
Aaron: To be honest, it’s a struggle. There’s a real dissonance of going through everyday life with my family while watching federalized immigration enforcement abduct and kill people through their neglect or their deliberate violence to any kind of resistance. I saw a video of Alex Pretti’s execution while at my daughter’s ice skating practice. And I felt a visceral and immobilizing rage in my body. I was slowly rocking back and forth and trying to take deep, steadying breaths. All while life around me in an ice arena in the suburbs of Washington, DC continued. I eventually realized I needed some movement and got up to walk outside, unprepared for the 9° temperature. The walk settled me enough to continue on with my day. I checked in with our Spokes Council signal chat and I talked to my daughter about her practice and we went home to prepare for the winter storm. It’s felt like this for a while now. Going through life, trying to hold on to the rage while not letting it consume me. The connection to people, as you mentioned, gets me through. Showing up for my wife or daughter or son or my friends or OWMCL help ground me and channel the rage.
Ruben: That feeling of dissonance resonates with me Aaron. It feels related to questions I’m grappling with: How do I fight off despair? How do I channel my feelings of grief and rage into tangible actions to protect myself and my neighbors from this authoritarian onslaught? And how do I do this while also making time and space for my feelings. I often find myself so caught up in work, organizing, making time for friends and family, that I realize later I haven’t faced the immense grief brought on by genocide abroad or murders at home. I know also that this tension has been a fact of life for communities targeted by the United States for generations.
Aaron: Fighting off despair is so important. Turning that despair and grief into tangible actions is something I’m struggling to do at this moment. I mostly channel these feelings into being present for my family or doing work in OWMCL. My local organizing work is fairly limited so my actions and my values feel misaligned a lot. And I think feeling that grief is different work. I think that’s part of what my rage is. It’s connected to grief. Grief about the consistently broken promises of a so-called land of the free for myself, my family, and my comrades and neighbors. I wrote about living in the belly of the empire and what that means for ignoring genocide at home and around the world a while back and that continues to feel relevant as we see ICE commit atrocities across the country while the IDF continues to commit atrocities across Palestine. One of the things that I try to do is practice hope (as Mariame Kaba reminds us to). You mentioned gratitude at the start of our conversation, but I’m curious where you are finding hope these days?
Ruben: The actions of ordinary people continue to give me hope. It is clear that nobody up top is coming to save us. But we have seen remarkable heroism from regular people like Alex Pretti, Renee Good, and so many others (led by organizations like Defend 612) willing to fight fascism by showing up with phones and whistles and their bodies. I’m also finding hope in the wisdom of veteran organizers like Kaba, Kelly Hayes, Dean Spade and the wisdom that has been passed down from fights against racist authoritarian violence throughout history. I’m also grateful to writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Erik Hane who are able to describe this moment with beautiful, righteous anger. The clarity they are offering, when so many media outlets default to obfuscation, gives me hope as well. Lastly, I aspire to create hope through action, as Kaba would instruct us, by plugging into efforts in Brooklyn led by Hands Off NYC, so that my neighbors and I are prepared when DHS inevitably invades our community. How about you Aaron? Where are you finding hope?
Aaron: I think my hope comes from, as you name, the ordinary people. I’ve seen stories of people from all walks of life out in the streets of Minneapolis to resist the abductions. So many people have whistles and have taken up an active role in defying this operation. That fuels a lot of my hope because it reminds me that ordinary people can always rise to the occasion with an invitation. I draw a lot of hope from seeing other white men out there opposing the violence of ICE. It reminds me that there are so many white men who are looking for an invitation to a space like OWMCL to build relationships and learn to take action together. There’s a lot of energy out there because I think a lot of people recognize that this is fucked up. There is more awareness that this is connected to the United States’ centuries of violence and they know there’s another way and they’re out there trying to make it happen.
Ruben: Amen. The decision for white men is stark as ever. We can choose the path of ICE officers like Jonathan Ross or ICE resistors like Alex Pretti. So many of us are ready to take the path of solidarity. I hope that OWMCL can play a role to help more white men find that path and walk it together.
Aaron: This reminds me of what Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò said in Reconsidering Reparations when talking about the choices that white people face. “Many white people are descended from slaveholders, colonizers, or collaborators—but many are descendants of abolitionists, conscientious dissenters, and their collaborators. Their responsibility is no different from anyone else’s: first, to decide which of those paths are available to follow. Second, to decide which of those lead upward, toward justice, and what actions they can take today to make the advancement of that path real—if not tomorrow, then perhaps the day after.” Let OWMCL be a home for white men on that path toward justice.
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