Scared Yet?

Over the weekend ICE picked up a protestor and disappeared him into the night. They are going to revoke his green card and deport him. Neither his wife (8 months pregnant) nor his lawyer know where he is being held.

He had been one of the leaders of the pro-Palestinian student camp protests on Columbia's campus last year.

This was after Trump cancelled $400 million in grants to the university because of the protests.

First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It's in the freaking Bill of Rights. It's in the very first amendment. That's how important it is. Freedom of Speech and of Assembly are bedrock. You don't have to agree with what someone says to agree that they have the right to say it.

The Right has complained for years and years that they were being censored. They weren't, study after study showed that they weren't, but it was one of their big complaints. Shadow banning! Limiting our expression! Oh no! Facebook and Xitter have made big productions out of being free speech absolutists now. It's their bread and butter. Grievance and victimization. Hell, Trump started his own social media company so he could post unfettered to restrictions.

I expect them to be very vocal about how this is completely unacceptable. But of course not. Trump is bragging on that very same social media platform that he did that. He took away funding and he is having someone's green card revoked and them kicked out of the country for exercising speech he did not agree with.

So we've entered the phase where they can designate you a terrorist and come lock you away with no trace as to where you are. And if your citizenship isn't firmly locked they deport you.

Are you scared yet?

It's almost impossible, I think, for people born and raised in America to fully grasp what is happening. To actually accept that the knock on the door could come for you. That the horrible things we read about happening in Germany during Hitler's reign could actually happen here. We just can't believe it to be true. Because it's never been true.

But it is true.

They've come for immigrants.
They've come for trans people.
They've come for protestors.

They're coming for all of us.

This is just the start.

I'm scared.

We all should be.