I had the privilege of meeting and listening to speaker, Max Glauben, a Holocaust survivor. He passed away in 2022, but something he said fourteen years prior really reinforced a type of ethos. More on him later.

This is partially inspired by what Skyler posted on Facebook and Lavish Made, but also is something that has become part of my internal EDC (especially from the aforementioned 2008 experience.)

With everything going on, domestically and globally, it seems like the logical thing to do would be to support one another rather than demonize the "other." Maybe that would be too straightforward.

Right now, undocumented Americans are under attack being arrested with no regard for due process and in some situations just straight up  get kidnapped by ICE. That's bad enough in the self-declared "Land of the Free," but to add on top of what is basically an open hunting season that this current administration has declared on undocumented immigrants, the net they've cast includes so much more. They're simply dropping dynamite into the water with no regard for what rises to the surface. Indigenous members of the population, the longest residing people of this land, have been detained. American born citizens that just so happen to be of Latin descent are indiscriminately lumped in with the "designated targets." The homeless and unhoused are now being included in this to simply meet quotas. Basically, anybody deemed impure by white hegemony or ableist or classist standards are to be unseen and unheard from ever again if they get their way.

"They're leeching from hardworking American taxpayer money!" 
is something you have undoubtedly heard any number of times by now. They're "leeching" no more from government assistance than documented Americans. As a matter of fact, they receive less help than their "legal" counterparts and still pay taxes. Undocumented immigrants paid $96 billion in 2022. Yes, billion. With a B at the beginning. 

On top of their contributions going towards the pot of money of taxpayer money while receiving only select assistance, many undocumented workers are paid what amounts to slave wages for work that is just as if not in some cases more difficult or skilled as any job held by someone considered to be "legitimately" here. So, yes, they may receive some assistance while holding a job, but they often start at so much more of a monetary disadvantage than those born here. 

Some people migrate to the United States in hopes of living the "American Dream" that has been propagandized for decades now. Others are forced here, because perhaps someone's parents were murdered and have no other family or community, so they go north to seek refuge. Often times through rugged and dangerous terrain and methods. For example, 1,107 people drowned crossing the Rio Grande between the years 2017 and 2023. 

What you're seeing on from the current administration and select media is an attempt at manufactured consent. They are purposeful in their word choice to influence you. Things like the frequent emphasis on the word "illegal" or calling them "invaders" as if they are an evil entity straight out of a flying saucer movie from the atomic age. All of this is done with the intent to divide and other those who have a different background. The "Us vs Them" dynamic that is needed isn't legal vs illegal, white vs brown, American vs Mexican, or any other number of combative combinations. With willful refocus what it should be every time: the underdog vs the big bully. 

What is legal ≠ always = what is right.

So, rewinding to Max Glauben... A Polish man who from the ages of 12 to 17 was subjected to living in the worsening conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto, enduring the Majdanek death camp in Lublin, working in the Budzyń forced labor camp, and finally outlasting the Dachau concentration camp before it was liberated by Patton's army tank division. He lost family and friends during the genocide perpetrated by the Nazi Party. 

It wasn't just the capital "N" nazis who were responsible, though. It was those who were at the time unaffected by the misfortune of the targeted that let it happen. As Max said to a room full of students in his longtime hometown of Dallas, “Let’s all become upstanders, right, because don't be mistaken, bystanders were as responsible for what occurred.” This was something already embedded in my mind and soul by my parents and grandparents in a vaguer sense, but having it recontextualized during the Holocaust really hit the point home for little kid me in a really profound way.

Just as ICE agents are "just following orders," so were the Nazis and just as whoever gave up Anne Frank's whereabouts to the Gestapo is no different than someone calling an ICE hotline to squeal on their kid's friend at school for potentially being undocumented. Furthermore, those who stood by and did nothing are complicit in those kinds of atrocities. Atrocities that continue to this day despite the wish that they happen "never again."

Don't be a bystander...