ICE murder

Hanging out with a few cats on my day off, I pick up the phone. “I need a passport,” my Very Anxious client blurts out. “I’m thinking about leaving the country. Trans people are being put on a watch list. FBI agents are showing up at trans activists’ doors.” “I know a lot of trans activists and I haven’t heard that,” I told him. “But I’m sure they’re putting lots of people on lists.” “You’re on a list for sure,” he says, referring to my activism. “I have been for a long time,” I tell him, thinking of how during the most active days of Fed Up Queers we were told by a sympathetic insider that our names were on the wall at the Manhattan DA’s office. “I could go to Mexico with my aunt,” he says. “Not all of Mexico is gay friendly,” I tell him. I had a gay migrant client from Mexico who had been gay bashed and then refused treatment because of his HIV status. “I would want to be in Mexico City,” he says. “I really want to go to the Netherlands - Rotterdam not Amsterdam.” “The last I heard, they weren’t granting asylum for trans Americans, but there is advocacy going on to get them to do it.” “But what about Odie?” he asks. I explain that you can take cats internationally, but you need special certification that only some vets can do. He’s getting wound up, so I reel him in – “let’s start with the passport,” I say. “We can make a passport appointment when I’m in the office tomorrow.” Reassured, he goes back to his day. I have a few things I want to get done, giving Geoffrey Ream some comments on his chapter about best practices for serving LGBTIQ+ homeless youth; scheduling a three-way conversation between those of us who were teens in different ACT UP chapters for Mattilda’s book; putting together a signal group for people interested in remembering Mark with an action. I turn on the computer in full going-to-be-productive mode and the first thing I see is info about an emergency action for the activist killed by ICE in Minneapolis. I groan inwardly. “This means clothes on my day off, “ I text Ben. But there is no way we can let the murder of an activist, - who could be any one of us - go without response, so I go. Foley Square is not my favorite place for a weeknight action. I know why people choose it - it’s right by 26 Federal Plaza - but it’s surrounded by government buildings and courts so after 6pm there are few pedestrians. We wind up talking to ourselves, the press - who are unreliable messengers at best - and the guy selling overpriced pretzels from a cart. I’m also not a huge fan of rallies, although at least the speakers were audible at this one. When you organize a rally, especially if you are working in coalition, you don’t want to offend anyone so you can easily wind up with way too many speakers. Tonight the speakers lasted over an hour, representatives from various orgs and way too many politicians. I was glad to see Kayla Santosuosso, Bay Ridge’s brand new Councilperson up there, though she didn’t speak. Getting a democrat elected is still a heavy lift in Bay Ridge. Most of the speeches were similar, condemnations of the murder, of ICE, of Noem, of Trump and exhortations to take action, stand together, protect our neighbors. Jay Walker of Rise and Resist took a different approach, talking about how all of this is part of Proj 2025, and how Trump may be a lunatic but the puppeteers controlling him are not, and how ICE is full of white supremacists. I can’t stand for very long without my leg turning to jello, so I sat on the statue despite the chill of the cold marble through my pants. I often know a lot of people at these rallies, and most of them are my age and older, but from my vantage point I was glad to see a lot of strangers, most of them young. One young man was distributing white roses and he handed me one. At some point I glanced down, and was struck by the juxtaposition of the white rose and Fuck Trump button on my coat. Gina wandered over, camera in hand, and I said to her, “here we are again.” “I was finally going to set up my new printer,” she said, “I’ve been waiting two weeks.” “Nobody said activism was convenient,” I said and then she moved on, searching for good angles to shoot. We finally got to the end of over an hour of speeches, and the last thing before marching was a multidenominational prayer. “Our streets remind us that what happens in one City happens in every City,” said Rev Thorne. Just as Rabbi Abby Stein began to lead the Kaddish, the prayer in memory of the dead, my phone rang. I didn’t answer, but I glanced at it just as the voicemail transcription scrolled across the screen. As the Kaddish faded into the background, I felt a rush of alarm – the message was from the mother of my Very Sick client. Since I have never spoken to her in all my years of working with her son, my mind immediately started insisting that he was dead. I made my way to the edge of the rally where it was quieter and called her back. “The hospital won’t give me any information, they say I’m not on the list,” she says. I start to breathe again, the cold air flooding my lungs. She’s not on the list because she is not a reliable presence in his life, but she’s not forbidden from having information, so I carefully explain about the blood infection, low blood pressure, ICU, etc. I leave the suicide part out. He can tell her that if he wants to. “Sometimes they will talk to me, but this time they won’t,” she says. “I think it depends on who you get, some people have more of a stick up their ass than others.” She’s not expecting that from me so she starts to laugh and now I know where the client gets his laugh from. I tell her I will see if I can authorize them to talk to her, but that I might not be able to reach the right people tonight. By then the march is about to start, but my leg has had it and I want to follow up on this, so I head south toward City Hall and get on the R.