by Margaret Hasse
So alone, each of hundreds in our north
star state––beings sniffed out, run
down, dragged, tied up, shoved
in, head-cracked, driven, dumped
in dark places, disappeared.
So alone, the rest of us snugged at home
hearing news of atrocities, watching
videos of masked men in our home-
town toting machine-like guns, grabbing,
kicking, shooting, and we who knew
not or actually knew the taken, first feel
unbelief, numbing fear, geysers of inward
anger and sorrow for the numberless hurt
and the named dead.
We became roused and risen to
outward acts: deliver food, guard
school children, record kidnappings with
eyes and cameras as on the boy in
a blue bunny hat, send money, join
groups, trail black cars, shriek alerts
with whistles, light vigil candles, wield signs,
march, lay flowers on the bloody snow, say no.
A whole community besieged becomes
a whole community of care, protest and
resistance, a testing ground for whether
kindness and the Constitution can hold up
against the battering ram of govern-
ment run amok as we gather in our cold time,
our beautiful city under attack, to hold
hands with neighbors whether citizens or
citizens-to-be while spokespeople for
the outrage name-call and hob-gobble truth.
We here know what we saw and see,
and gradually then all at once, people
across the country are paying attention,
posting their support, writing the wrongs
to their leaders while Springsteen
sings his “Streets of Minneapolis,” a song
like a flag to carry, and Judge Biery near
the southern border in the lone star state
frees from detention a man and his young
son stolen from Minnesota, noting in
his order that “the case has its genesis
in the ill-conceived and incompetently-
implemented government pursuit
of daily deportation quotas... ”–– all
just and sympathetic action from all
over the country eases our city’s
isolation and bolsters hope
our democracy will endure.
