Those of us who are speaking out are not people who make trouble. We are generally easy going, accepting and loving people. We are not generally prone to anger. We have proven our calmness in high stress jobs that demanded that we keep our heads cool. We are not agitators or members of organized groups wanting to overthrow the government. We are peaceful people who take care of people and understand that sometimes we have to speak up or watch others suffer because of our silence. 

The truth is that ICE is a very dangerous group of people who have not been trained in the normal ways of enforcing laws. They are hurting people as evidenced on one video after another. One among them murdered a woman in cold blood and tried to claim that he was in fear of his life when all of the evidence points to her keeping calm and doing her best to drive away from him, not toward him. Now our government is lying and blaming it all on her and even going so far as to investigate her spouse to determine if she belongs to a treasonous group. 

A young man lost his sight from ICE. He was attempting to help someone when ICE fired a rubber bullet into his eye. Now the twenty one year old will be permanently blind in one eye and once again the government is insisting that he brought it on himself, that he was a lawless agitator. 

We keep hearing ICE and the president fomenting trouble, making up lies that we can prove wrong with our own eyes. We have not yet been blinded. We see what is going on and it flies in the face of everything that we have ever believed about our government. Telling us just to comply does not hold water because even people who cooperate are taken away and sometimes never seen again. Young people are being arrested at work even as they protest that they are American citizens. Old people are being shoved to the ground. Schools are being raided and ICE officers are invading homes. 

ICE is doing the kinds of things that the British soldiers were doing in the colonies when the American patriots revolted and let it be known that they had had enough. They knew that simply complying would only feed the king’s lust for power over them. So too are the protestors of today on the whole attempting to protect their neighbors and to shed light on the travesties that ICE is inflicting on immigrants and even American citizens. 

When our president lies in the face of videos that clearly show that he is wrong it is disturbing. Dictators and fascists use such tactics. They lie to the people so often that many come to believe what they are saying while ignoring the evidence that leads to the truth. Tyrants turn innocent people into enemies. They use fear to control the populace. Anyone who thinks that the president is actually trying to do something to help us all is being fooled. It is beyond apparent that he only cares for the power and riches that his actions accumulate for him. He is not kind or loving or caring. He is a bitter man who bullies much of the population and pretends that he is only doing what is best for our nation.

I am weary of waking up each morning and wondering what terrible thing he will next do or condone. His vindictiveness is on a non-stop power trip. He shows his true colors when he pardons rioters who trashed Congress, killed and hurt police officers and attempted to stop the legal hand off of power. He calls them patriots, good people but when the harmless people attempt to protect their fellow citizens he turns them into monsters and sadly many of his follows continue to believe him. 

I am sick of hearing that we will all be okay if we just comply. Do we comply like the people did in Germany when their neighbors were loaded into boxcars and sent away? How did that work out? Should we comply when he murders people in boats based purely on theories about what they were doing? Should we comply when our Constitution is being trampled and when he says we just have to trust his morality? Should we comply with a man who thinks he can do anything and get away with it or do we voice our concern, our anger?

I will use the voice that I have that is guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. I will protest with others who like me understand the stakes. I will keep warning even those who do not agree with me. Mine is not hate. Mine is a deep and genuine love of my country. This I know,…if we do not find a way to stop the horror now we may reach a point of no return in which we no longer recognize our democracy and we no longer have our freedoms. 

What is happening now is WRONG! The good guys are the ones trying to help us see what is really happening. We should all do everything possible to save our nation. Never before have the stakes been so high. Those of us speaking out are not the trouble. We are the solution!