Adrift | I am sickened by these ICE Escapades

||| ADRIFT by LIN MCNULTY |||

It was a big treat as I was growing  up when I got to see the Ice Capades in Seattle. Somehow, I owned a pair of ice skates, which never got used. I knew I could never skate like they did in the Ice Capades; there was no ice skating rink nearby, anyway. But I was enthralled, and still am.

The governmental ICE Escapades of today are unacceptable, unAmerican, atrocious acts. People are being snatched from schools, from their homes, from their places of business, even their places of worship. And then, in most cases, deported to some third-world gulag.

My mother’s best friend in high school was carted off to a WWII internment camp. I was obliquely aware of the trauma that haunted my mother for years afterward with the loss of her friend. 

Now it’s rampant throughout our Democracy, as people are whisked away, and, as far as we can tell, possibly never to return home. Parents are taken by masked marauders, leaving their children behind, or in some cases deported with their young children. I’m not sure which is worse, having children deported or merely leaving them behind, with no parent. There’s no easy answer to that.

The following YouTube video illustrates more than we want to know, yet it is imperative that we not shut our eyes.

Let us not forget this powerful poem by Pastor Martin Niemuller:

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me