Walls are closing in on me

But I haven't lost hope, yet

“I AM AN AMERICAN.” A striking image from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division to mark the anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishing the War Relocation Authority to oversee the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

“Government photographers documented the process of the forced removal of residents, many of them citizens, from their homes and businesses that spring. This sign, photographed by Dorothea Lange in March 1942, had been placed outside of one such business a few months prior, at Eighth & Franklin Streets in Oakland, Calif., immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack. The Japanese American family who ran the store were among those sent to War Relocation Authority camps.

The owner, Tatsura Matsuda, a University of California graduate, was housed with hundreds of evacuees in War Relocation Authority centers for the duration of the war.”

History repeats itself. Sometimes, really unqualified adversaries rewrite history in really terrible and shoddy ways, adding insult on top of our injuries.

That’s how 2025 feels.

First, they picked up Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident, aka a Green-Card holder. Then they came for Rümeysa Öztürk. Just abducted them in broad daylight, with no charges, no indictments.

Language matters. It matters more to me since English is my second language.

Let me just correct all the wrong words being used in this royally fash mess we find ourselves in…

These are not arrests. These are abductions and kidnappings.

Oh, and the deportations are not deportations, either. Deporting would mean returning an immigrant to their country of origin. When you fly people to random private prisons, that is called “extraordinary rendition.”

So, by the time they got Rümeysa my heart stopped. My brain stopped functioning.

I have not been able to write or speak about the unspeakable things.

I thought going out to the weekly local protest would rejuvenate me. I was also sadly mistaken about that. Some fash Barbie in an SUV yelled at me and an older dude flipped me off. In my sleepy, liberal college town.

I broke in ways I did not think were possible, imaginable before.

My PTSD from being a domestic-violence survivor came back with a vengeance. I became afraid of going to my back alley to take the trash out or going out to my car on the street when I saw cars I didn’t know.

Fear. Fear started creeping into my heart. I wiped my phone clean. I started rethinking my decision to stay on social media platforms and writing a blog.

I immediately hated myself for letting my reptilian brain taking a hold of me.

Decades of therapy—techniques to rise above fear & shame—went down the rusty drains of my bungalow.

I was in “Freeze” mode and my system locked down everything.

Then April Fool’s Day happened. In the most wonderful, non-foolish way.

Senator Cory Booker just smoked old racist Strum Thurmond’s record for speaking on the Senate floor. Then the Good, Cheese People delivered a polite Midwestern spanking to Apartheid Andy.

My spirit just started to wiggle a wee bit. Then, my heart woke up and poked my brain.

I have yet to read the full transcript of Booker’s epic speech. At one point on April 1, I heard his quote about, “If your heart isn’t breaking for America right now, you don’t love her enough.”

That sentence liberated me from my fear and shame. Finally someone knew why I was so heartbroken and articulated it.

I cried off and on all day on April 1. Which isn’t an anomaly these days. But, finally, these were tears of joy.

The joy of being understood, the joy of someone, somewhere “getting it.”

Of course, the Internets were not kind to Booker, at first. They never are. “What is he doing, talking, nah, I’m not interested,” they said. The purists and the puritans speaking from their bully pulpits had no time for a Black Man trying to undo the historical record of a segregationist, rapist Dixiecrat.

To me, it was pure poetry. Poetic Justice. It was brilliant and just what the doctor would have ordered, if this were a civilized, developed nation with healthcare for all, but I digress.

Booker was doing exactly what Obama did in 2009, begging citizens to be better citizens.

But in 2009, WASP voters were busy patting themselves on the back for not being racist anymore… So we got the Affordable Care Act, instead of Medicare for All.

Fast-forward to 2025, and now the country is under siege from the inside… Oh, and how are people responding to this? By questioning protests, boycotts and even filibusters by Black Senators.

Good job, darlings, continue to do nothing and criticize everything. So. Many. Hot takes. From Dudes.

I can’t with it. I don’t know what it is, could be the menopause or could be the fascism—a toss-up, really.

So many people that I love have been asking me what they can do.

If you love me, get in the streets on April 5.