The Ones Who Walk Away From Our "Perfect City"

In Ursula K. Le Guin's haunting story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," citizens live in a perfect city of prosperity and joy. The streets are clean, the people are happy, children play in sunlit squares. It is, in every way, an ideal society very similar to what many Americans wish our country to be.

Except for one thing.

In a basement beneath the city, a child sits alone in filth and darkness. This child's suffering—deliberate, ongoing, and known to all—is the foundation upon which Omelas' perfection rests. Every citizen eventually learns of the child's existence. Most find ways to justify it, to accept it as necessary. They tell themselves the child is somehow different, perhaps even deserving. They focus on all the good their beautiful city provides.

Some cannot. These are the ones who walk away.

The Empty Chair

Last week, regulars at Buona Forchetta, a beloved Italian restaurant in San Diego's South Park neighborhood were stunned. On Friday, May 30th, heavily armed ICE agents in tactical gear, more armed than some soldiers that fought in Afghanistan or Iraq, entered the restaurant, and detaining four workers out of the 40 employed there. The operation involved 20+ federal agents using assault rifles and flash-bang grenades to arrest people who didn't have proper identification.

The restaurant couldn't open that night. "We have a lot of reservations but our employees were traumatized and they don't want to work tonight," said the general manager. I am sure it was less of wanting and more of they just couldn't after being traumatized by the military style raid in broad daylight.

Three hundred miles away, in the small Missouri farming town of Kennett, customers at John's Waffle & Pancake House kept asking the same question: "Where's Carol?" Ming Li Hui, known to everyone as Carol, had been their waitress for nearly 20 years, serving pecan waffles and giving hugs to the breakfast crowd. In late April, she went to St. Louis for what she thought was a routine meeting to renew her work authorization. Instead, ICE detained her.

"I voted for Donald Trump, and I feel like I made the best decision for the economy, but I believed him that he was going to take hardened criminals — but they took Carol," said one customer, tears in her eyes. "What happened to the hardened criminals? I look at Trump differently when I see him on TV."

The regulars felt something they hadn't expected. Not relief that "the system was working," but loss. Genuine loss. Because these weren't statistics or policy abstractions. These were people they knew. People in their community.

The Promise

We, the American people, were told our "perfect city" required this. We were promised that deportations would target "bad hombres," gang members, criminals who threatened our safety. We were assured that good, hardworking people had nothing to fear. The policy was surgical, precise, moral.

Many believed this because they wanted to. Because it allowed folks to support border security and law and order while maintaining the image of everyday Americans as compassionate people. Some believed we have both: a safe, orderly society and a clear conscience.

Just like the citizens of Omelas, we were told the suffering was limited, contained, justified. Different from us that were law abiding.

The Basement

But now we see what was always true. The Hong Kong waitress who fled and built a quiet life serving coffee and waffles while learning English—she was in the basement. The restaurant workers who sent money home to their families while cooking our meals—they were in the basement too.

Our "perfect city," with its promise of safety and order, requires their removal. Not because they are dangerous, but because their very existence here, without proper papers, is deemed incompatible with the America some want. Their dreams, their families, their integration into our communities—all of this must be sacrificed so the promise can be fulfilled and American can have the ideal, or at least the appearance, of law and order.

We didn't see them before because we weren't meant to or didn't want to. They worked in restaurant kitchens, cleaned office buildings at night, picked fruit in distant fields. Their suffering, being underpaid, overworked, living in the shadows, was kept at a proper distance, like the child in Le Guin's basement.

But now we know. The regular customer asking "Where's Carol?" can no longer pretend this is about MS-13. The family whose children played with the deported mother's kids can no longer believe this only affects "bad people."

The Choice

In Le Guin's story, once citizens truly see the child, they face an impossible choice. They can stay in their beautiful city, finding ways to rationalize what they now know. Or they can walk away into the unknown.

Most stay. They tell themselves the child's suffering serves a greater good. They focus on all the wonderful things their city provides. They argue that changing the system would destroy everything they've built.

But some cannot live with what they've seen. These are the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Today, we face the same choice. Now that we see who really pays the price for our perfect city—the waitress, the cook, the cleaner, the person who was part of our daily life until they weren't—what kind of people are we?

We can rationalize. We can focus on laws and procedures and the greater good. We can convince ourselves that their suffering is necessary for our safety, our order, our ideal America.

Or we can become the ones who walk away.

Le Guin never tells us where those people go when they leave Omelas. She doesn't need to. The important part isn't the destination—it's the choice to stop participating in a system that requires innocent suffering.

The waitress is gone. The restaurant workers have vanished. The empty chairs at tables across America mark the spaces where our neighbors used to be.

Now you know they were there. Now you know what our "perfect city" costs.

What kind of person does that make you?