“It’s tragic, but it’s not our fight.”
I’ve heard this phrase, or something along the lines of it, countless times over the last few months of rising discrimination and violence against Hispanic communities under our current administration. Most recently, I heard it from the mouth of my father — an African-American man born and raised in Los Angeles — the night before the National Guard was called into my home county to “address the lawlessness” of Angelenos protesting recent immigration raids.
That Saturday, as my train from Santa Barbara rolled into Los Angeles Union Station, a childhood friend sent me a message detailing the alleged ICE raids that had sparked protests at a Home Depot in Paramount, just a few streets away from my father’s place of work, and a few neighborhoods over from where my childhood friend and my family currently reside.
Earlier that year, my friend had confided in me their fear of having to self-deport for the safety of their family under Trump’s presidency. Their efforts, like many, were paused due to the level of danger they would possibly face in the region from which their family had migrated from. Paralyzed in fear, they didn’t know whether to leave or stay.
As we’ve been shown, having the proper documentation or a past free of crime is no longer enough to prevent inhumane detainment or deportation. Every day since January, many Hispanics — documented or undocumented — have lived in fear of possible violence.
The next day, we drove past a chilling clash between protesters and police officers on the 101 South near downtown L.A. People waving the Mexican flag spilled into the freeway as teargas canisters and shots exploded around. Our community was in chaos.
“It’s tragic, but it’s not our fight. ”
This phrase, to me, signals a concerning amount of dissonance between the perceived struggles of oppressed communities in America. It says: “Our struggles are not the same. My responsibility is to look out for my own community, and my community only.”
Yet, the violent clashes between protesters and law enforcement in L.A., spurred by the increasingly aggressive immigration sweeps disrupting life in Southern California, bring back memories of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Under the first presidency of Donald Trump, the brutal police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many more catalyzed volatile protests across the country, coloring the summer of 2020 in scenes of resistance and police violence, tear gassing and rubber bullets. Media coverage was an endless cycle of the chaos a community in pain can produce; what happens when our people are harmed without reason or repercussion.
As I bask in the remembrance of Juneteenth — the celebration of the long-awaited freedom from slavery — I reflect on the similarities of these two struggles, and what it truly means to be free.
If this is not our fight, then what is?
When I see childhood friends desperate to keep their families safe and intact as ICE violently detains mothers and fathers without criminal pasts, leaving their children parentless, I feel the same sorrow that I felt watching police officers break into the home of Breonna Taylor and end her life without reason — seeing law enforcement make war zones of cities that dared to speak up.
It is harrowing to see many in this country express indifference to the value of human life.
“It’s tragic, but it’s not our fight.”
As Americans, we are asked again and again to be disillusioned by the image of competition that exists between us and those who are different. Particularly in times of great economic and political uncertainty, we segregate, denigrate, and isolate in an effort to be on the winning team.
But while this administration claims to be targeting “crime,” it violently disappears community members without due process. The “crime” is and always has been the same: being born in a body of the “wrong” color.
If our government can distort the law to justify arresting innocent people, the militarization of civilian communities, and the detainment of people in inhumane detention centers — how are any of us safe?
How can this not be our fight? For Black people who faced similar experiences during the Black Lives Matter protests. To white Americans grief stricken by the violence in Gaza and Ukraine. To Japanese Americans who hold the memory of Japanese internment camps. To queer people who’ve watched the daily attack on the existence of transgender people. What do we gain from turning a blind eye to injustice under the presumption of “othering.”
Because even if it is not your fight now, history shows us that it will be later.
Maya Johnson is the author of “Searching for a Black Writer” and the Indy’s social media coordinator.
