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REDQUEEN IN LA - When I was diagnosed with cancer 44 years ago I was angry, angry at the universe for this thing I couldn’t touch, which was unfair and unreachable. It was like the universe played monkey-in-the-middle holding my head, letting me swing fruitlessly at the empty space in front. No one did this, or not in close-enough succession to a chain of events that could warrant any specific blame. You just swung in anger at the void ahead but the blows didn’t connect.
I am filled tonight with a comparable fury but this time there is clear agency. A clear fault to assign and blame to trace. We, the ruling class here in America, are meting out such destruction on ourselves, our society, our people, the people. It is outrageous, it is gratuitous, it defies comprehension, like a parasitoid that kills its host: why? How?
Nearly a year ago while canvassing in Arizona to flip the house blue I met a young family that was so compelling, for the intensity of the mother’s interest in politics, in learning, in understanding, for doing right and doing the right thing; the child so incredibly cute, the household so arresting. I indulged fantabulous daydreams of bootstrapping and college, of scaling social and political heights. When this Dad was abducted by ICE it was only my dreams they crushed; even while it is the real lives, means, future, life and promise of his family they have actually pulped. There is no sense, no care, no reason for why this man, married in true love to a US citizen, father of a special needs and very special little darling girl, should be aggressed by our federal government.
Yet here we are. After three months and three court hearings, we, America have deported this Dad back to a place from which he long ago fled, leaving emotional and psychological and physical wreckage in his wake. To what end? There is absolutely no up-side to this. Imagine the wreckage of this family’s lives: an autistic child cleaved from a highly attached parent; an emotionally dependent mother severed from a psychological lifeline which enabled care of this child; an extended family stretched to breaking in accommodating a shattered status quo, formerly just stable-enough to proceed day-to-day, yet engulfed now in ruinous legal bills, overwhelming medical needs, financial, emotional, and societal insecurity.
For this family, this father’s abduction is cataclysmic, and it is inflicted by us, our society, on us, our people – not just on these many individuals, but upon a great, reflecting, radiating fabric of networked people – influence entwined, effect expansive.
Just imagine the damage to this child, irremediable. Gratuitous. Imagine the damage to this mother, unjustifiable. Collateral. But spare a thought for the destruction of our society, divided. Unglued.
My rage is boundless, without an edge. No target, no trajectory. This is senseless destruction, self-inflicted by us on us. And I don’t know how to stop it.
I hope you will vote for Prop 50 on Tuesday, vote for Mamdani, vote to undemolish the White House. Our political system, our society was undeniably flawed, limping under severe constraints. But it was, still, a system where the people figured. Where civil rights, autonomy, purpose had standing. This new iteration has no use for people beyond that of literal steppingstone en route to an apex unscalable by the rest.
For all the past system’s flaws, it strove to iterate an incrementally improving system of regulation, protection, checks and balances, fairness even equity. Why would we vote to destroy our common best interest. Why would we send away a strong, loving, supportive familial pillar?
Vote our common best interests in November. Bring back our own best interests. If you have a desire or ability to help this family in dire need, please consider donating to defray their plight here.
(Sara Roos is a biostatistician from northern New England living in West LA. Raising children from private to charter to public schools provides a front-row seat to the microcosm of electoral politics that is education politics. She started blogging this experience at redqueeninla.com, eventually co-publishing the LA Education Examiner. Sara is an elected delegate to the LA County and state Democratic Party Committees since 2020. Her monthly constituent newsletter and essays can be found at redqueeninla.com.)
