Reflections on the Take Action to End Criminalization, Detention, & Deportations Rally and March

I had the pleasure yesterday of joining my fellow Chicagoans yesterday in denouncing the current Immigration policy of the Trump regime, the southern border concentration camps, and the impending ICE raids here in Chicago.It was a morning full of hope, full of amazing speakers, and while the mayor wasn’t there, I was happy to see she actually was out in communities talking with community leaders and the police about reaction steps to ICE raids.When I let my emotions get the best of me, I draw a hard dichotomy between the right and the left. I like to think that in 2019, we can all agree that it is never ok to treat fellow humans like animals, but then, while marching, I had an "aha" moment. The highlight of the march for me, actually, was seeing marchers stop outside the ICE office at Clark and Wells, and then looking up and realizing that the inmates at the Metropolitan Corrections Center there were looking down on us. The people all started waving and offering sentiments of hope and upliftment.  That's how we should treat people who've made mistakes, who find themselves in a bad way.  We should hope for their rehabilitation and upliftment...right?I stepped off to the side, and thought while I don’t know how much “yard time” they get there, they were all spending it at the bars, looking down on us, waving and receiving waves back.And it dawned on me,“we treat people like animals everyday. Putting kids in cages is every day business.”Sometimes I forget I guess. We put people in cages,  together, with little to no education, job training, counseling or rehabilitation, and then let them out with every metric telling us they are likely to go back in, and then we let people make millions of dollars off this cycle. That is as American as apple pie. And it’s fucked up.The crisis of Trump immigration policy and concentration camps isn't extraordinary...it's an extension of business as usual.We can do better, that I have no doubt. The fact that there were so many people there yesterday leads me to believe that I’m not the only person with those thoughts.Resist. All day. Every day.