I cannot get Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's DAVOS speech out of my head. (Haven't read it yet? Here's the full script. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/ I think he's brilliant, and wise, and we would all do well to listen and heed his words. Oh, Canada!)
We are all greengrocers, and we have signs in our windows that announce our complacency. Some of us have big signs that take up the whole window, and some of us only have a sticker in the corner by the door, but too many of us have tried to stay out of trouble about what's going on in America and the signs are visible.
John Lewis is someone I admire greatly, and his "Get in trouble. Good trouble," advice seems spot on, as usual.
Where do I fit on that scale of greengrocers to Lewis? I spoke up (and marched, and protested, and donated) through the Black Lives Matter movement. I've lead the Students Organized for Anti-Racism club at our school, and the Pride Club too. I vote. I donate to various causes, including the ACLU because I believe that our Constitution needs to be honored. I teach rhetoric, and I try to show my kids how to use critical thinking to analyze all of the messages they're receiving, with the skills to parse out the rhetoric from the facts, and hope it creates a generation of thoughtful voters. I pick up garbage on the beach every time I visit. I try to reduce my carbon footprint. I buy toilet paper that is graded A+ for its low environmental impact because it's recycled fibers and not virgin boreal forest (thanks, Trader Joe's!). I tell myself sometimes that this means I'm doing the right thing.
I try, but often fail to do anything meaningful. My tiny ACLU donation and my handful of plastic removed from the beach and my teaching are so small. I never tell the kids what to think - I tell them that if they have all the facts, and they vote their conscience and it's different than mine, I'm at peace. That's true: teachers need to teach critical skills, not tell kids what to do. But is it enough? Am I really at peace?
So I am wondering if my sign in the window isn't as big as some, but if it's still there.
ICE has murdered two Americans this month in full public view and on camera, and it feels very Brown Shirts. It shouldn't matter that they were citizens ("with liberty and justice for all" doesn't refer to citizenship and murder is murder regardless of citizenship), but it shows how there isn't even a pretense that immigration officers are dealing with immigration issues.
Florence + the Machine has a fabulous new album, and the lyric (from Sympathy Magic) that will not leave my mind is "I do not find worthiness a virtue; I no longer try to be good. It didn't keep me safe, the way you told me that it would." We all want to be safe - I know I do! - but the thing is that going along with things and keeping quiet and putting up our (metaphorical) signs isn't actually keeping us safe. We strive for the gifts of worthiness - safety, comfort - and find that we've been sold a bill of goods, that it was always at the whims of those in power to protect us or hurt us, no matter what we did. Those stupid signs in the window never protected us, and those who demanded that we place them there never wanted to protect us anyway.
***
I signed up for some non-violent resistance training today, and then I signed up for a webinar about immigrant solidarity. I gave a small donation to an organization that is doing the work.
It's not a lot, but it's something, and I'm chipping away at the corners of my sign in the greengrocer's.
Alex Pretti held a phone, and tried to help a woman, and got ten bullets. Ten! And by the time he was shot, he was unarmed. ('m not crazy about guns, but the people who shot him seem to believe in concealed carry, and yet they shot him anyway.) And our President is holding the line that he was a terrorist. An ICU nurse for the VA?! A man holding a phone, lying on the ground, with so. many. bullets. pumped into his restrained, flattened body?
Renee Good had stuffed animals in her glovebox, an image that shouldn't mean anything but means everything. She's me 15 years ago, living the mom life.
No. No, no, no, no, no. This may be America but I do not agree with this vision of America.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I am descended from Germans who fought for Hitler in WWII. They wore Hitler Youth uniforms, and grew up and then they wore swastikas. My grandmother told me that it was fun to participate in Kristallnacht. My grandfather said that he was a prisoner of war for most of the war, but when I sent away for his records the German government directly answered my question about that: no, he was never a prisoner. He was a guard in a concentration camp (one of the lesser known ones, a work camp where people died by the thousands of starvation and overwork and injuries from work, but does it matter to them that it wasn't an oven?). I don't know what the rest of their families thought about it, but I have to imagine that if they put their children into Hitler Youth uniforms then the signs in their windows proclaimed their allegiance, too. As far as I know, they were just ordinary people, stuck in a war that the didn't control. I have no idea what they really thought, but I know this: swastikas are not a good look.
There is no excuse.
None.
Because their blood is in my veins, I carry this knowledge with me with every heartbeat. I am descended from perpetrators who participated in great evil, caused unimaginable harm. I am not them, but I burn with shame to think of what the humans who bore my name before me did to the world, and to their own souls. I don't know the extent of the damage that they did - how many did they personally hurt, kill, steal from? - but does it matter? They put themselves over everything that is right or true, bought into the lies, and go down in history as perpetrators. It doesn't matter that they weren't the masterminds, because they also weren't part of the helpers.
I do know that it's scary. I want to protect my job, my little family, my safety. The President just posted on Truth Social that the reason that Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti died is because of sanctuary cities. I - I have no words for that. Does he know what "sanctuary" means? (Rhetorical question, because obviously it's not a part of his vocabulary.)
I'm looking at the pictures from Minneapolis, and everyday people - a nurse who was killed, a doctor who ran from his apartment to help, and then had to leave after the victim died and the teargas was coming into his apartment. These people are the helpers; they swear an oath to do no harm. They want the rule of law - the Constitution! - to be followed. And Trump would say it is them? I see gray hair, and young people, and everything in between. I see bulky winter coats in the cold, and practical footwear for ice and snow. I see people carrying signs about justice, and the Constitution, and decrying murder. I don't see terrorists. I see people weeping, and showing up anyway, tears streaming.
A photo of a woman kneeling in front of a makeshift memorial, her hands over her face, clearly distraught. She looks a bit like me - I think I had that coat once. I feel her pain.
And that picture of a five year old child with a sweet face and a tiny school backpack being arrested... I want to scoop him up and tell him that it's okay, he's safe; but he's not okay, and he's not safe.
I could go on, but you get the point. These are not isolated incidents.
Believe your eyes. Watch the videos - there are more, and more, and more of them, because in a large crowd everyone starts filming. Decide for yourself!
Audrey Hepburn delivered messages to the resistance on her bicycle on the way to her ballet classes. Miep Dies brought food daily to the Frank family in hiding. Ordinary people can do something! (Hepburn was ordinary when she did this, despite her extraordinary accomplishments after the war.)
I want to chip away at my sign in my window. The future will judge me, will look at history and will judge my actions. I want them to - let the facts speak for themselves!
I don't support fascism. I HATE IT.
fascism
Americannoun
(sometimes initial capital letter) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.
(sometimes initial capital letter) the philosophy, principles, or methods of fascism.
(initial capital letter) a political movement that employs the principles and methods of fascism, especially the one established by Mussolini in Italy 1922–43.
Surely Dictionary.com is a neutral source? Can anyone read "forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism" or "emphasizing an aggressive nationalism" and not see America today? Our allies are gathering to talk about how to deal with us, to proceed without us.
It takes courage to speak truth to America - Canada is large in land and national resources, but doesn't have anywhere near America's clout, and it's dangerous to speak up against an ally who has gone mad. Carney and the Canadians who support him (I think I'm going to try to be brave, even just a little bit, and speak up.
Rest in Power, Renee Good and Alex Pretti... and Anne Frank, and John Lewis, and Audrey Hepburn, and everyone else who stood up and said "No."
Claudette Colvin didn't arise to the same level of fame as Rosa Parks in the national memory, but she was 15 years old when she, too, refused to move seats on a bus, nine moths before Ms. Parks. (Parks was deemed a better "face" for the organization, so Colvin was to take a backseat -argh!- to her, but her name was on the famous lawsuit.)
I don't need to be a Parks, a Lewis, or a Hepburn. But surely I can be as brave as a 15 year old girl on a bus, unpremeditated, just sure of right and wrong.
I'm looking for ways to support my community, to use any power or privilege I have to support the America I love: the one that is about a separation of powers, and unalienable rights, and people being created equal.
(And I'll keep fighting for the ERA, because it's PEOPLE, not men, despite what Jefferson wrote. His words reveal the fatal flaw of that document, both beautiful - equal! - and horrific because of how he defined equality to leave out so many.)
Immigrants are people, too. As a Canadian (naturalized American), I'm an immigrant, too. When I walk down the street, I'm unlikely to be pulled aside, my white skin and middle age and middle class and education and location protecting me.
Or am I safe? Good and Pretti should have been safe, too.
But it's time to step it up, to scrape the glue off my sign to remove it.
Please join me. https://waisn.org/ I'm starting here, but what are your favorite places to engage? What are you doing to speak up, engage others, and try to turn this thing around?
Because we can't just move to Canada, even if we want to!
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