I am struggling to write about all the mayhem in our world today that can largely be attributed to one man. But of course, the degenerative manner in which ICE has been conducting itself has been top of mind for most Americans, myself included. The level of impunity with which they conduct themselves has now reached such a level that it has angered Americans of all tribes. I use the term “tribe” intentionally because too often we tend to react exclusively to harm toward our own particular group, be it ethnic, racial or religious. (I write extensively about this mentality in my memoir and the tendency for humans to lack empathy for ‘the other’). When you zoom out, in the early days of ICE’s aggressive and often unlawful enforcement in Los Angeles last year, the assaults were largely in immigrant communities, directed at individuals who were profiled simply by their race and occupation. The protestors then were mostly, and I’m generalizing here, immigrants and brown folks. The Supreme Court made matters worse when it adjudicated that it was somehow lawful to arrest people based on racial and ethnic stereotyping. I honestly thought we had won that war a long time ago… but we’re back to square one! After the cold blooded murder of two white folks in Minneapolis, blocks away from where police murdered George Floyd in 2020 and Philando Castile in 2016, the general population has once again awakened to the injustices of our system that have for so long unrelentingly targeted Black and brown folks. The tide has changed, it is receding, punctuated with the release of a song,“Streets of Minneapolis” by Bruce Springsteen, the iconic WASP rockstar. That being said, what has not been covered in our mainstream media, including many independent news outlets, is how the surveillance technology being used on us in America is the same technology that has been tested and perfected on Palestinians by Israel (funded of course by US tax dollars), and that DHS and ICE training is influenced heavily, if not in its entirity, by the IDF. Our society has so much more waking up to do when it comes to the abuse of these spyware and facial recognition technologies. Wake up! We can only rise up when we show up for each other, regardless of what tribe you belong to. Together we go… Onward and upward… Ani Zonneveld Founder & President, Muslims for Progressive Values |
