Tuesday 126: Brief aside

Here’s the main point, in the event that you have neither the time nor the energy to deal with this today: Please contact your local elected representatives today and demand the release of Mahmoud Kahlil.

I’m an American who doesn’t have much in the way of an ethnic identity. That is to say, largely an absence of any rigorous cultural, religious, or social structure characterizes the manner in which I grew up, and the way I have always encountered daily life in the world. How I live has always felt “normal,” which is of course itself a powerful and often pernicious structure, but generationally and physically removed from any form of marginal or particular social element, I’ve always fit in generally, and not specifically.

Some of my more ambitious geneological relatives have traced our lineage through a litany of sources. These specifics of origin feel both remote and intimate: Although they have no bearing on the way I move through the world, they’re an undeniable biological force, and there’s always some gnawing sense of obligation to those distant forbearers; I wonder what they endured, what they sacrificed, what they abandoned, who they became so that I can be “normal” today. What do I owe them?

Regretfully, none of this has any bearing on the current social and political reality in the United States. The word “fascism” gets thrown around a lot, and we’re usually fortunate enough to be able to play semantics, but there’s no other way to think about ICE’s terrifying detention of Mahmoud Kahlil. Mahmoud is a green-card holder, and his wife is eight months pregnant. He was a recent graduate student at Columbia University. He has not been charged with any crime. The other night, immigration jackboots barged into his home and abducted him because of the opinions he holds: Primarily, that the Palestinian people deserve life and dignity. If they will do this to Mahmoud, there’s nothing stopping them from doing it to me.

As a white American, I have never experienced oppression. But if the branches of my ethnic tree have a common trunk, it is that of the oppressed. It’s with the Sepoys in 1857, the Buffalo Soldiers in 1866, the Irish republicans in 1916. With Tecumseh, Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Geronimo, Brendan Hughes, Bobby Sands, and Leila Khaled. If I owe anything to the people who came before me, and if I can pass something on to the ones who will come after me, it’s to always and unequivocally stand on the side of the oppressed.

I’ve always thought it was corny and a little embarrassing for a guy like me to have some romantic fondness for his heritage, but sitting here today, I’m happy to embrace such a thread of spirit, even if not biology. I’m proud of, and draw strength from, whatever infitessimal genetic slivers of me are Irish, Indian, Italian, or Black, because I sure don’t like being an American anymore.

Please contact your local elected representatives today and demand the release of Mahmoud Kahlil. If you can, join a local protest. The scarier it gets, the more important it is for those of us who still feel they safely can dissent, to do so.