Rabbi's Week in Review Blog

This past week, I experienced one of the most emotional encounters during my rabbinate. I participated in a Clergy Convening in Minneapolis to support the extraordinary citizens of Minnesota in a general strike day last Friday. The call was for people to come together—to not work, to not attend school, and to not shop. Instead, they would gather in a unified protest demanding “ICE Out of Minnesota.” The demand at that point in time was motivated, in part, by the murder of Renee Nicole Goode, but also by others who have been subjected to violence, denial of basic human rights and Constitutional rights, and understandable fear, as they have had their everyday lives disrupted—literally being shuttered in their homes.

My emotional state shifted from acute sadness and anger to hope and the joy that comes with sharing space with others of compassion and courage, and back to sadness and anger—the latter when I returned home to Kansas City and to the news of another murder by ICE agents, that of ICU nurse for the VA, Alex Pretti. So first the information and part of the experience that elicited anger and sadness.

In addition to the recent murders by ICE agents of which we all are aware, I heard stories from parents in which their children are seeing classmates abducted by ICE. There are stories of a relatively new ICE tactic of detaining children and using them as bait to draw out their parents. We already know of family separation as a standard ICE tactic.

Daily life is disrupted. People can’t go to work for fear of abduction by ICE.  Of course, this means that they don’t have money for rent or food. Some schools have shut down or, at most, are holding classes on Zoom only. People are afraid to go out for a doctor’s appointment. There are now reports that ICE is skipping local detention and putting those abducted directly on flights out.  The city is under siege.
My time of hope comes from a pilgrimage to the neighborhood where Renee Goode and George Floyd were murdered (and of course last Saturday, Alex Pretti). The neighborhood, actually a community connection of four neighborhoods, have come together in extraordinary ways, primarily because they have made the effort to get to know each other and to stay connected.

Each and every day, for years now, they have a community meeting spot outside of an abandoned convenience store where neighbors meet twice a day, to catch up on community activities, to see who is need of mutual aid that day, and to share other information to keep them connected and keep them safe.  Everyone knows everyone and they always greet each other. This was a pervasive dynamic - that power within the city is  de-centralized. No one is waiting on one leader. Rather there are many, many compassionate and courageous people supporting each other.

A couple of occurrences swing my emotion back toward the negative. The obvious one is the murder of Alex Pretti, such a good and decent man whose life was senselessly was cut short.

The other is the understanding of who or what ICE is. They are clearly being led to believe by people like Stephen Miller that they have license to act with brutality.  We have seen it not just with the murders of Rachel Goode and Alex Pretti, but for many who have not died but have been treated with violence.  All reports are that they are under-trained, and those who have spent their lives in law enforcement have found ICE methods outside the bounds of proper law enforcement. 

ICE is supposed to be patrolling borders, and not performing an urban assault. Their methods illustrate a lack of knowledge in proper crowd control, and the understanding that proper law enforcement requires de-escalating tense situations rather than escalating tension.

Also it is now become clear that these roundups have nothing to do with enforcing immigration laws. No one “rounded up” is checked for their immigration status, and, contrary to stated promise, whether or not someone has committed a serious crime is not a criteria for being an ICE target. The recent “offer” by attorney general Pam Bondi that, in return for the state of Minnesota turning over all of its voter rolls, Medicaid roles, etc., the administration would end the violence amounts to political extortion.

So, back here at home, how will our community respond? We have lessons we can take from the extraordinary work done by everyday residents in Minnesota. We can educate and train our KC area residents, neighborhood by neighborhood, in ways they can connect more strongly amongst themselves, and have the needed tools to protect each other. Clearly and unfortunately no one’s safety can be guaranteed one hundred percent.  However, we, as a community, can make our streets safer.

Finally, we should not have to be having this discussion as to how we keep residents from the threat of physical harm or death. We should be talking about a sane and compassionate structure as to how we facilitate good and decent people of refugee status who just want a better life for themselves and their families. We need good immigration policy that leads with compassion. After all, we as Jews all got here because the country welcomed us in.  Let us be cognizant of our own immigration history and the history of a better time in our country,  a time in which we lived up to the words on our Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."