On the U.S. Born Citizen’s Limited Imaginary

The System in You

My elder, a medicine woman in Ciudad de México says, Kindness and love, shumarí. I implode. How—when the U.S. born citizens measure our criminality like the US Government they critique so much. It’s scarier so, considering the US born citizens are walking amongst us, know where we live, and have an American trained sense of justice. The system is an abstract until its citizens perpetuate the law. Are all of ya’ll complicit in this? No. But everyone—especially naturalized citizens who have lost themselves to the institutions—read this.

US born citizens claim to be our allies, yet there is always an uncertainty in us that you all may flip: be the call that deports us or be the reason why you deem a survival need for a criminal act. US born citizens have a plague—obliviousness and victimhood. There’s a desire for proximity to be more oppressed because you can not swallow the fact of your first protection: CITIZENSHIP. There is no accountability to us because they are not accountable to their positionality. In other words, the wold revolves around their identity politic and who’s the louder and most hurt activist.

Who’s televising the revolution? Them. Are we on the mics? No. (For safety reasons of course, but there are many of us, formerly undocumented folks here to speak on behalf of those who can’t for more immediate dangers). Do we have a safer space to strategize and lead the overthrow. No—we’re also fatigued—it’s what being hunted does to you. Citizen don’t believe in an overthrow of the system or a new world—they believe we will seize to exist here, on stolen land, because in their imaginary we will all be gone, defeated by the forces that be. Doesn’t that sound like what the news broadcast about us?

Citizens do not see the new world because they are not embodied in it. Proximity to our lived experience will never equate our happenstance. We, the (un)documented live embodied because we don’t have a choice. We are vulnerable, yes. We need a ring of protection and that’s where you come in, yes. But have you asked undocumented folks what and how they need? Or did you just go ahead and make that print, sticker, T-shirt for some citizen coin? This is ya’lls show, while we just care to be regular and unbothered. Ya’ll sensationalize our distress for your new poetry collection or fiction novel, and we just want to shake our ass without the fear of deportation. While you’re worried about how IG has suppressed your protest footage and invaded your first amendment (lol) we are home in silence because it’s better not to go out with ICE raids on every other block. You ask yourself: what should I do for undocumented people?—then bolt in your jump suit and cape, no mask because you want people to see what YOU did on this day at 11:24pm during ABC Protest. The question you should be asking is: where can I position myself to aid the vision and needs of undocumented people. How can I help center their strategy?

And reflect: who’s calling the shots ya’ll are blindly following?

Everyone is a reflection of you, my elder says. I implode. Okay, so these privileged citizens emulate the ways in which I am privileged in some ways and may be unaware of said privileges. Check, cool. I can empathize and lower my gun. But this urgency of now…where was it thirty, forty, eighty years ago?

Is any social justice warrior perfect? No—we all have faults in our politic, sure, okay, but why does my Black trans homegirl always get it right? Or my Pilipinx sibling, formerly undocumented, always get it right? It’s about positionality. It’s okay to have limited sight on experiences not your own, but it’s about how. You. Make. Up. For. That. Ignorance. It’s about dropping that main character syndrome and us the privilege you have to roar, tremble, spit fire when we can’t. The system is n all of us. What have you done to remove it from within your psyche? You say you have, but if you did I wouldn’t be laboring across this keyboard to share what undocumented people really think about your heroisms.

Undocumented people should be angrier. Louder. But listen, we are sowing the new world and I, person ally, have poetry, comics, novels, songs, and performances to get done so I can serenade my undocumented people. The only nicety I’ll offer is this: pay me, a formerly undocumented trans woman, to coach you to be the allies we’ve never had. We need ya’ll, but get some help and do it right.