3000

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I worked at a hotel called the Fairmont Miramar, I noticed undocumented immigrants, who’d sleep in the basement overnight, of this iconic hotel. When I spoke up, in a Facebook post, tagging them, the manager would later indirectly, stage a conversation, outside the gift shop I worked out of, with a Mexican worker, so I can hear him say, “Undocumented workers,” here, get paid more than I do, the worker on the other side, stated clearly to me, “don’t get in our way.”

Five years later I moved to West Hollywood, and me having, a Latino background, I’d talk about these issues, with my partner and her friends no one seemed to care, her friend bought us a couch, for our moving in ceremony, and started chanting, “Arriba,” sounds to the workers who brought them up. Cringy. And I guess her contribution to the matters, I spoke of, was to have sex with a struggling Mexican drummer. Dido.

Now I live a single life, in Hawthorne, California, home of Space X, birthplace of Marilyn Monroe, The Beach boys and a large Latin community. I’ve recently got caught in a traffic storm, of I.C.E Trucks turning left, near my street, with their sirens on. Moving, like Nazi Gestapos. I’ve read the legislation, of rounding up 3000, undocumented immigrants a day, which is the agenda here, for this thirty-day assignment, tasked to agents. With its leader behind the movement, stating, “Round em up, go to Home Depot, go to 7-eleven.” It’s come to my attention, anyone can get caught, in the crossfire, legal immigrants, people waiting for citizenship, and decent human beings, who are not criminals just looking for work, these are the people caught up in detentions, and in this harsh system, created by our government. Is this not racial profiling, and racial discrimination?

“Round em up, go to Home Depot, go to 7-eleven.”

Caught up in the surroundings, of all this, am I wrong to feel, targeted, is this not racial discrimination? I repeat again because it seems as though it falls under deaf ears. Is this not racial discrimination? No one knows what it is like, the irony of being locked up in a cage, for living a life you felt, was holy and righteous, seeking help, and then, becoming a number under false pre-tenses. It’s happened to me, I been to jail, I see the way this system treats people.

Is Latino-Indigenous Advocacy a thing, in the United States? Because I don’t see it on television, on legislations? The North America and South America, I know, are rooted to indigenous, people, who lived here before the system was set up. Understandably, there are criminals, you are seeking to move out of America, but also there are migrants, who probably are running away from another land, colonized, destroyed by Europeans. No one really knows, what is like to be Indigenous blooded, to speak English, Spanish (European languages,) and be told, we are connected to indigenous tongues, no longer practiced or existing, because of European settlement and colonization, and my people are running, for the most part, from systems of abuse, to more systems of abuse, and instead of advocating for the good ones, you make their lives harder. And here’s what you must know, some people run, because our whole life is a lie.

Why don’t, Indigenous tribes, connected to the Southern America’s, have rights? For all the colonization, placed on them, through England, Spain, Portugal, France? We have been practically wiped out in the Northern hemispheres, we didn’t have a say, in any of the constitutional matters, we were slaughtered, for refusing to be slaves, and now we are indirectly discriminated against. Labeled, monsters, not all of us have college degrees, not all of us work in politics, the trauma, from years of colonization, has affects, and that’s not an excuse, for coming to this country “Illegally,” but neither shall it allow, abuse of power.

If I want to make a claim, for indigenous recognition, getting the government, to recognize my tribe, The Taino tribe, which Europeans, massacred, I must hire a lawyer, pass a petition, wait ten years, to see if congress finally recognizes us on paper. But Donald Trump, can deport, my Latin brothers and sisters, overnight.

Me personally, I can no longer be labeled a Taino, Native American, instead I have rape and Spaniard colonization in my blood, and I speak English, and I know nothing about me because, it is ripped, distorted, and left in traces, over an island, in which people with European blood, killed. This traumatic colonization is rooted, in the monsters and criminals, you seek to deport, who’ve been running for 500 years.

There is no push for Latino-Indigenous advocacy, in the United States, those woman and men working on farms, for less than minimum wage, how about we push for them to get get equal pay, and invest in the farmers, instead of, putting all the money into I.C.E? Why is it the sole purpose, for this administration, to attack, attack, attack, and ignore what is truly going on. A white man commits a mass shooting, shoots Donald Trump in the ear, the rhetoric isn’t these people are monsters. And that kills me. As a boy, growing up in government housing, being Latino, I have always felt, scared of myself. Scared, of the Fox news reporter, Glen Beck, who preaches, “A revolutionary war” is coming when A Black man “Barack Obama.” Runs for presidency and gets paid millions of dollars to say these things. So I quit trying to be a writer, for the over all demand to fact check, because none of our leaders do, and so, I get a degree in visual arts, because I rather paint the picture for you clearly.

3000 we turned society into a numbers game, 3000 a day, 3000 a day, we’ve turned into robots, we call people monsters, but don’t see the monster within. Stephen Miller, issues the I.C.E. task force to round up 3000 migrants a day, like Latinos, are parking tickets, and if you are a little too brown, too Southern American looking, you might be one of the 3000, how the fuck is anyone supposed to feel safer? Thanks, for Making America Great Again?

And if I’m wrong, if all this is exaggeration, if the sirens and detentions and basements of iconic hotels mean something else entirely, then I’d like someone to tell me what exactly it is we’re witnessing. Because facts—like trauma—have a way of clinging to the walls long after the news cycle forgets them. In the end, it is not that we didn’t know. It is that we did, and chose a prettier version of the story.

“Just the criminals,” they say. Just the criminals.

Just the man picking oranges in Bakersfield—criminal.

Just the woman cleaning your mother’s hospital room—criminal.

Just the teenager riding the bus to community college—criminal.

Just the children learning English in a classroom built on stolen land—criminal.

Just the fathers, just the mothers, just the bodies, just the brown, just the broke, just the breathless—criminal.

Just the criminals, they say. Just the criminals.

—Just the criminals. Because you can’t say human without choking.

You have to come legally,” they say.

Legally—like the Pilgrims did, right?

Legally—like Columbus with a boarding pass?

Legally—like genocide had a visa stamp?

Legally—like treaties meant anything once the gold showed up?

You have to come legally, they chant,from houses on Tongva land,on streets named after Spanish murderers, eating tacos while calling ICE.

Legally, they cry—with a flag stitched from slave cotton, under a Constitution no "Indian," ever signed.

Legally, legally, legally. Say it like a prayer. Say it while standing on stolen dirt.

Say it while your history books lie to children.

Say it to the mirror—and try not to laugh.