Tony Chiado

I think more and more these days about what I might do, or what I might have to do. Or, also, what I might not do. I think on what my duty and honor will compel me to do. To be clear, it isn’t a fantasy. It’s a nightmare. A fear of shame that I might reject the better part of my conscience. No illusion of choice to fool me, I’ll either act or I won’t. The decision will be instantaneous.

The threat of mass deportations loom. Not over me but over so many in my community. Over some who were born here, others who naturalized, and surely others here against our laws seeking to realize the dream. Over some old enough to raise their children’s children, and some barely yet holding their first breath. Over some who own businesses, and others who own nothing but the shirt on their back. Some others who have worn the uniform, and yet others who push forward for civil rights. At the taco stand and downtown office, the schoolyard and the mercado. These are my neighbors, my friends, my family, my students, their parents. And a frightening share of America violently says they don’t belong.

I’m haunted by the choice that will confront me soon in the public square. That I might watch Border Patrol or the National Guard handcuff toddlers leaving the preschool at El Centro De La Raza, treating them as the enemy within. That I might watch, frozen, driven into paralysis by my lack of power in the situation.

And what haunts me more is that I have resigned myself to doing that the first time. But what about the second and third? While I have more time to reflect on what I ought to do. As it’s normalized and I desensitize myself to the horrors of an oppressive state. What about the fourth time when a young, green National Guardsman breaks the nose of a spirited Abuela while the surrounding crowd’s upset rings in my ears. Will I act then? Will I sink deeper and deeper into my prison of shame and guilt? Will I suppress my better conscience ever more for fear of embracing it on a braver day and accepting the consequences that would bring?

We all like to think ourselves brave, willing to confront injustice. I like to think my conscience is built with steeled fortitude. But at that moment, will I rise to the occasion? What would my protest, my resistance, for my community look like? Would it make a difference?

What of my wife and my duty to family? What of my commitment to supporting and being there for her? How would me getting locked up for being obstructionist or a disruptor of the “peace” against the oppressive state help anything?

So I sit here, listening to the talks of mass deportation of good neighbors and American citizens, and I feel angst and shame that my duty compels me, and yet I might fade into hiding amongst the faceless crowd.

I wrote the above in mid-December after my brother had shared with me a chapter from Milton Mayer’s They Thought They Were Free on Nazi Germany. It is perhaps this quote that sits most with me then and now:

“one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.”

I have no answers right now. Only thousands of questions. But I think that in itself is a valuable progression in it all. To interrogate yourself, to anticipate the paths open to you, and to weigh these things against the thoughts of others.

Just before I ended my teaching for Winter Break, my school district superintendent sent out an email that reinvigorated this self-interrogation. In it, he clarified that school board policy laid out strict guidelines for protecting students from immigration authorities. In that moment, I understood that I might not just be a bystander who can step in from the sidelines in the public realm, but that my very job may well put me into a situation where immigration authorities are threatening me if I don’t give them immediate access to students.

To be clear, the school board policy asserts that all immigration authority access to school buildings must go through superintendent approval and that all attempts at accessing buildings should be met with redirection to the superintendent. Sounds good in theory. Will immigration authorities care about school board policy? As they feel emboldened to bend the law, if not outright snapping it in half, will they consider me an obstacle to their objective? What happens if they refuse to redirect their request to the superintendent? What will I do in such a situation? How will I protect my students without endangering myself? Will I have to put myself at risk? More questions and self-interrogation floods in.

What questions have you begun asking yourself?