The para-military group known as ICE has killed another, Lorenzo Araujo, on our soil. Our communities, our streets, our cities, our neighborhoods are occupied.
He was the same age as my father. Fifty-two years old. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. He was killed by ICE, murdered by a paramilitary group that occupies our streets. Going down, his last words as he choked on his own blood: "I can't breathe."
Lorenzo was driving to work, a construction job. But not only was he driving to work—he was picking up his crew members. Just from that little detail alone, we can see much about the character of this man.
My father worked blue-collar construction: carpentry, plumbing, odd jobs, skilled trades. Essentially, my entire childhood. Self-taught in every capacity. From carpeting to flooring to drywall to roofing. He knows each angle.
My father comes from poverty. Not the poverty where you don't get a new iPhone for Christmas. Real poverty. Delta Basin poverty. Single-wide trailer poverty. I've been told stories by my father about having to camp in the summer. Can't afford rent, can't afford electricity, school's out. A tent becomes the family home. My father didn't graduate high school. He had to drop out to care for his sick grandmother. And at every turn throughout his life, he sacrificed for those around him.
He's not a perfect man. No man is. But he's a man that understands hard work, gumption, and seeing your people better than they are. I can promise you that Lorenzo was the same kind of man. A good man. A kind-hearted man. A hardworking man. A man that contributed to his community. A man that saw his people better than they are. Because that's why he was picking up his crew.
You're about to go bust ass and do 12 hours of back-breaking construction labor. Trimming floors. Building walls. Laying linoleum. Installing counters. Hard fucking work. It's nice to save that gas money. It's nice to ride to work with your crew. It's nice because the boss buys everyone breakfast. It's nice because the boss is bringing you lunch. It's nice because that's one less meal to pay for, one more meal in your kid's stomach. It's nice because the boss is working right alongside you. An independent contracting construction company. Ten guys doing the best they fucking can for each other.
Is that not the American dream?
Thirty-five years in this country. Working from poverty. Building, brick by brick, two by four by two by four, square foot of carpet by square foot of carpet, building a life for his people. Day in and day out, toiling, coming home from work in the dead of night, children already asleep, walking into their bedrooms—the same children that he would put through college—telling them goodnight stories they can't hear, and going to work the next morning to do it again.
That was the life Lorenzo led.
A shot killed him, ICE murdered him in the street in cold blood, unjustifiably so. They will say that he tried to flee, that he hit the gas pedal, and the officer, standing in front of the vehicle, had no choice but to murder him.
If you are faced with an outcome that will break your family and leave you in a concentration camp, you have every right to flee. You have every right to resist. There is no justification needed. No potential argument for why this murder is acceptable.
ICE, as an organization, has no mandate. ICE, as an organization, is younger than me. And Lorenzo was in this country longer than I've been alive.
The Fox News, the Rupert Murdoch propaganda machine, the CNN, the NBC, the Trump News Network—they'll run every story they can to justify this murder. Just like they ran every story they could to normalize the occupation of our communities by this paramilitary group. They pitched it as going after the criminal. And then they made everyone who is Hispanic a criminal.
If you think Lorenzo was a criminal simply for the color of his skin, then you have no place in the new American vision. No place in the world we're fighting for. No place on this land.
The killing of Lorenzo is the killing of any of our fathers, any of our brothers, any of our uncles, any of our people. Think about how many lives a man like this touches. From the crew members and their families, to all the clients he had good relationships with, to the church he may have attended and donated to. Dozens upon dozens of lives changed forevermore so that Stephen Miller and his Nazi sycophants can have their day of the rope.
When Stephen Miller says that he wants to deport 100 million people, he means it. He wants to see every person of color dead or in a camp. That is the directive of our government now. It is not our government, though. It is the government that occupies us. It is the regime that intimidates, that exploits, that tortures, that rapes, that plunders, that destroys families. It is the anti-life regime.
From the National Guard troops that prowl the streets of Memphis looking for their next Black victim, to the ICE soldiers that hunt down Hispanic people in our streets. We are not represented by this government. We are not supported by this government. Our lives are not made better by this government. We are extracted from by this government. Families destroyed, children in concentration camps.
The two parties that have power—the left hand of capital, the Democrats, and the right hand of capital, the Republicans—are strangling the working class, while moving lockstep with their vision of a white supremacist America. But their vision is more like a dream for the past.
The tactics that ICE are employing are familiar. The National Guard prowling the streets of Memphis and other Black-majority cities is familiar. It is an extension of the settler-colonial system. First it was the Natives, now it's the Hispanics. The same colonial forces that killed Sitting Bull killed Lorenzo. There must be an enemy, there must be an outgroup, there must be a people to genocide, lest this entire plantation system fall apart.
Before, they would use the language games and the propaganda and the hopes and the change and the Obamas to sell us an illusion of what we are, to sell us the possibility of progress in a system that demands death, first abroad, now at home. But now, the regime has no mandate. The will of the people, the will of the masses, the working classes, demands the regime be rebuked, demands proper representation, demands tribunals for those who have wronged us.
If ICE occupies our cities, if the National Guard prowls our streets, killing good men like Lorenzo, killing our fathers, killing our brothers, killing our uncles, then who is the opposition? Who are the true representatives of the people? We must find them. We must build beyond those who have trapped us in their wage slavery, their exploitation. They kill with impunity because no one has challenged them. Soon, we will challenge them. Only when we challenge them will the killings stop.
We have had 250 years of this system of death. We will not stand for 250 more.
Rest in peace, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and to all of the other fathers, brothers, uncles, siblings, and sons that have been killed, taken, and tortured by our regime, by ICE, by the National Guard, by the U.S. military. Your martyrdom will not be in vain.
