I cannot enunciate more completely the simplicity of this sentiment. Get the masked, incompetent, and unaccountable state police off our streets, off the payrolls, into court rooms, and in community reconciliation. Recently listening to a podcast, a therapist made the point that one cannot fix systemic oppression individually.
One cannot individually practice enough wellness strategies to end the stress of being profiled, assaulted on the street and in one’s home, pulled from one’s car, snatched off of a plane en route to one’s family, locked for months in an overcrowded facility not designed for human habitation, or murdered by uniformed slave catchers claiming a moral righteousness as they enact inhumanities upon us and in witness of us with the backing of the arsenal of the United States. The best one can do with individual therapy, in my view, is recognize where individual agency ends and collective action begins. Ultimately, the goal of any therapy would be a well-adjusted individual in a supportive environment free of chronic violence and full of guarantees for our universal human rights.
Thus, I must speak up, “ICE Out!” Sometimes the most important boundary to set is “¡Ya Basta!” or “Enough Already!” We do not have to know the solution to declare that this violence must end now. We are all humans and deserve dignity, compassion, and safety regardless of who we are, where we are from, and why we are in our current circumstance. The somatic experience of this moment should be unsettling because it is breaking the web of life and community that makes us whole, capable, and loving individuals. The somatic experience of wholeness is the right of all humans.