Yesterday, an ICE agent shot and killed a 37-year-old woman.
And before anyone rushes to frame this as a shocking escalation, I want to say this plainly:
This isn’t new violence.
What’s new is the size of the audience.
Black and brown communities have been living inside this reality for generations. They didn’t wake up yesterday to a changed world. They woke up to a familiar one.
They have been forced to memorize a choreography that the rest of the country pretended not to see.
Hands here.
Voice calm.
Movements slow.
Eyes down, but not too down.
Compliant, but not threatening.
Obedient, but not emotional.
Still human, but not too human.
They were told this choreography would keep them safe.
It never has.
Reaching for a brush has been enough to end a life.
Crying “I can’t breathe” has been ignored while breath was taken anyway.
Existing in the wrong body, in the wrong place, at the wrong moment has been fatal.
This truth has been spoken until voices went hoarse.
Protested.
Documented.
Filmed.
Grieved.
And still, much of the country clung to a comforting fantasy:
That obedience equals protection.
That violence is an exception.
That if you just do everything “right,” you’ll be safe.
And that when violence occurs, it must be deserved.
I don’t pretend to know the right thing to say or do.
I don’t know what the correct response looks like.
I do know that I’ve done too little.
I’ve waited for clearer leaders. Better words. A moment when I’d feel certain instead of complicit.
That waiting was its own choice.
What we’re witnessing now isn’t a sudden moral collapse.
It’s the collapse of denial.
The violence was always here.
The difference is that it can no longer be hidden behind plausible narratives or selective attention.
Though I see people still trying to do so.
Arguing for the choreography.
She should have done this.
If only she’d done that.
She fooled around and found out.
For some people, this moment feels destabilizing because it interrupts a story they were allowed to believe.
For others, it’s just another day of watching a truth they’ve always known finally be acknowledged, too late and at great cost.
This isn’t about law and order.
It’s about whose bodies have ever been afforded the presumption of innocence.
And whose never were.
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