"HOW DID WE GET HERE?" TRUMP DID NOT START IT..

I won’t take you back through the history of this country. Many will acknowledge the many horrific moments but yet it isn’t as visceral because you may not have been alive at that time. You couldn’t possibly know what you would have done, because you didn’t live it.

So I’ll just take you back about 23 years ago.
How did we get to this moment?
Raids, kidnappings/abductions of Muslim neighbors in the post 9/11 era. Thousands of men across the country stripped from their families, and especially New York City. I bore witness.

The creation of the Department of Homeland Security - a consolidation of federal agencies to counter terrorism which led to the creation of ICE. They sold the American people a lie that they were going to find the “enemies within” code language for Arabs and Muslims and eventually they didn’t because there weren’t any and unleashed the resources on the southern border and other non Muslim black and brown immigrants. I bore witness.

Special call in registration program where over 200,000 Muslim/Arab men who came on visas complied and more than 10% were deported and separated from their families for doing what the government asked of them.

An unjust and unwarranted war based on lies in Iraq where over a million Iraqis and 12,000 American soldiers were killed. I bore witness.
The passage of the Patriot Act twice - an Act that allowed for broader and unwarranted surveillance, including wiretapping and access to personal records, that infringed on civil liberties with limited judicial oversight.
Entire departments of local police - i.e., NYPD Intelligence - found to be engaging in blanket surveillance of Muslim New Yorkers, mapping every facet of their lives with no oversight and an influx of federal resources - chilling free speech.

Guantanamo Bay! A torture chamber (similar to the prisoners of El Salvador) on an island where many men most of whom were never charged/convicted of any crimes who languished there for decades with no due process. Guantanamo is STILL OPEN.
Extrajudicial killings of Americans abroad. Drone attacks

There’s so much more. This is how we got here. We were primed for this moment. The American people were silent, they didn’t loudly oppose any of what I laid out because they were willing to forfeit the rights of some citizens so as long as they weren’t directly impacted.
And now we are all learning the hard way - once we allow it for one community, we allow it for ourselves.

Let’s sit with our shortcomings. Sit with the mistakes we’ve made and commit to doing better. Let’s take some responsibility. Silence is also violence and complicity and there are communities who suffered while the rest were just glad it wasn’t them.