A New Era of Martyrdom

The nation’s eyes have been glued on the scenes of horrific violence coming out of Minneapolis. ICE and Border Patrol agents’ roving patrols have racially profiled Black and Brown communities, broken into homes and schools and workplaces without judicial warrants, dragged people out of their cars, smashed windows, and brutalized nonviolent protesters exercising their constitutional rights. ICE and Border Patrol Agents killed peaceful ICE observers Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in Minneapolis, Keith Porter, Jr. in Los Angeles, and Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez in Chicago. And this does not include the growing number of ICE detention deaths. Thanks to the courage of protestors documenting with their cell phones, we have video evidence of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Without this evidence for the nation to see, the depraved lies of Trump regime officials that they were “domestic terrorists” attacking ICE agents would have become “the official version” of the events. But we saw what we saw. Again and again. The truth is undeniable.

Much of the coverage has focused on the who, what, when, and where of these horrific incidents. This has been essential as we try to wrap our minds around these shocking events. However, there has been less coverage of the why of these brutal raids. Why is the Trump regime abducting immigrants, separating them from their families, quickly shipping them to concentration camps in other parts of the country, detaining them indefinitely in inhumane conditions, and if they don’t die there, deporting them back to the grinding poverty, gang violence, and systematic sexual assault they fled? ICE/ Border Patrol are doing this to make coming to this country a terrifying prospect. That fits the racist, anti-immigrant agenda of hatemonger Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of this policy. Trump and Miller have made it abundantly clear: they do not want Haitians, Venezuelans, Mexicans, Hondurans, Salvadoreans, Somalis, Afghans, and others from what Trump derisively called “s***hole countries” to be part of our social fabric. This is straight-up White Nationalism, racist and xenophobic to the core. The dehumanization and cruelty on display in American cities is rooted in White Nationalism.

We can rejoice that these deeply troubling events have been countered by a more powerful force. Thousands of ordinary citizens, clergy, activists, neighbors have shown extraordinary civic courage and deep love for democracy. They have displayed what Writer Adam Serwer has coined a term that aptly describes this phenomenon. He calls it “neighborism.” As he says, the Minnesotans who flooded the streets of Minneapolis were standing up for their neighbors, whoever they were. It didn’t matter to them whether they were from Minneapolis or Mogadishu, Chicago or Caracas. This inspiring “neighborism” originates in the best of the American spirit, epitomized by the poem emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free… Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” And ultimately, it stems from the moral teaching at the heart of the world’s religious traditions, the Golden Rule…”love your neighbor as yourself.”

The spiritual resonance of this moment was captured by Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire, A. Rob Hirschfeld: “Renee Good was bearing witness to American freedom and this is the kind of oppression and tyranny that the best part of America rails against. She was made in the image of God as was the ICE agent. We are caught up in a maelstrom of brokenness and catastrophe. The only way I can see through it is through peaceful resistance. That may mean many of us, some of us, give up our lives…in a new era of martyrdom….I urge the priests in my care to get their affairs in order, including writing your wills.”

This moment in our country brings to mind the many Palestinians I have known over the years. I have been profoundly moved by their witness to what it is to be utterly dehumanized by the Zionist ideology, told they do not exist, treated as non-persons, and how that willful blindness to their humanity has culminated in the American-Israel genocide in Gaza, now spreading to the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. Zionism, like the White Nationalism we are seeing in these brutal raids, is a racist, supremacist ideology. The same dehumanization and moral blindness is at work in both ideologies, and in both situations. But so is the same call to love our neighbors as ourselves, to stand with the downtrodden, to resist oppression, and to take risks for justice and peace. The Palestinian people and their friends the world over have honored the martyrs of Gaza. In recent days, closer to home, we have tasted what it is like to honor martyrs, knowing these will likely not be the last. An early Christian teacher, Tertullian, living in an era of martyrdom under the Roman Empire, said, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” May it also be the seed of democracy and peace.