Rally

They do it because they’re afraid,

and afraid of being afraid,

but that’s not an excuse—

especially not when it plants

seeds of strife in our children.

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When you throw red meat to fearful bulls, you end up hurting the children.

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Rally

The immigrant families had lived with fear so long it had settled into their bones. They rose before dawn, patched streets, bent shingles, hauled trash, and kept one eye out for the vans. The thin man kept his head down like the rest. If it were just him, that would be one thing, but his family needed to stay safe too. Today, though, his work detail brought him to the fairgrounds, where red flags and banners whipped like laundry on a clothesline in a hurricane.

The man on the platform was swollen with his own voice. He promised to show them the enemy. His arm slashed the air and his finger pointed at the worker. “There!” he shouted. “There’s the invader!”

The crowd convulsed. Red hats bobbed like rooster combs. A can whizzed through the air, landing at the workers feet. A woman screamed something foul. The worker bent his head but raised it again, as if the he just couldn’t bear being silent any longer.

“I mend your roofs when storms tear them. I lay your bricks when the floods wash through. You pay me to do it. Is that theft?”

The words were plain, unemotional. For a moment the noise died, as if the mob had tripped on its own feet and knocked the wind out of itself.

The speaker’s face turned the color of an infected wound. He pounded the podium, spittle flying, bellowing slogans faster. “He’s illegal, he’s illegal, deport him, deport them all!” The crowd lunged, howling. Masked agents cut through the pack, guns drawn, and dragged the worker off by the feet. The cheer that ascended was shrill, triumphant, like the squeal of demonic hogs at a trough.

They dragged him out and flung him down just past the gates, as if discarding a bag of trash. The chants swelled behind him, bestial and frenzied. He knelt in the dust, bent over like a man about to be nailed down, and the children at the gate would remember the look on his face forever.