My heart is broken

I post this, my voice, for those who

know me, and those who are

protesting in harms way. Although I have

been a citizen of the U.S.A. now for

forty years, I still feel a discomfort.

I still feel the angst that surrounds

our every day existence because of the  

hate and overt vitriol against my ethnicity

and people of color. The unfair distribution and

application of community standards are being

amplified with prejudice. I carry with me, in my

car a copy of my citizenship papers. Many

innocent lives will and have already been

disrupted. Does ‘America’ still have

a heart? Does Lady Liberty still welcome,

still embrace? 

In the last couple of days I’ve seen a

mother extricated from her children, in front

of them. A son removed from his home

in front of his dad and family. In both cases

they were ‘dreamers’ or at least non-criminal

individuals that had been given assurances

by our government that they would be okay if

they maintained a good citizenship. This promise

was distressingly broken by ‘our’ government

His face, the son's, is my face. Her face, the mother's,
is my sister’s face. He looks like I did at his age. 
She like my sister. In their lives there was innocence 
and joy with thoughts of a ‘dream’ being within his 
and her grasp, now not to be, never to be witnessed.

Before this interruption, disruption, his and her faces,

Reflected unquestionable characterized mannerisms

of longing to be accepted by others, by America.

Accepted by even those who would feign a smile

The smiles would come with duplicitous sneers

of rejection along with that all too evident

disdain and prejudice just because of a

bias toward a different tone in skin color,

the black hair and the misunderstood language.

The attempt to assimilate has been made problematic

and challenging brought forth by the country,

the society they, we have so wanted to be a part of, 

wanted to love and be loved. Obstacles after obstacles 

have been placed before them, before us. A no longer

welcoming, embracing society.

Now, the evil representation of this government

with the evil one at the helm dictating the fascist agenda
has come to disrupt their worlds, my world.

They have violently extracted them and my, along

with many other hearts and souls from their mundane

normal of comfort while many others around are unaffected  
by this intrusion upon of their normal daily experience and

without the moment to moment fear, day and night
of being separated from brother, and sister, father and mother,
friends, neighbors...from life.

I know that there are some who are empathetic

but they battle their own personal unresolved  

attitudes compartmentalized that have been insidiously
inculcated in them as a result of a continuum of

bombardment with misinformation and demonization

of people based on ethnicities and nationalities yet the 

Latino face seems to be the one that has been posterized

as being representative of an ‘illegal’. One who has ‘dangerously’

and supposedly come to America, ‘illegally’, to rob you

and others of their riches and jobs. This having been,

subconsciously, implanted although, ill-conceived,

Those with still some compassion understand and

feel the disruption of life that has been taking place yet

they flail about not knowing what to do, how to respond
and support a fair resolution. All the while, the Latino 
victims and their families continue shaking in fear in
unceasing exhaustion from the sleepless nights. 
They are filling churches as their only temporary reprieve
from this Hell, while others, not so lucky, lay alone in a cold,
windowless cage, where the smell of iron-raw steel bars
is ever present and wailing cries are heard coming
from other containing cells of other children and mothers,

fathers and brothers, awaiting their destiny.

Welcome to America?