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1/ Some things keep me awake, others keep me on edge. Yesterday I talked about the "empathy shock" or the "alterity crack" with @rogerdodger1180 . Today is my daughter's birthday.
2/ I never mention her name or location on social media, I am scared to death that someone will touch her and it hasn't changed much for the past 30 years. I told Roger that I remembered seeing many copies of her, except they were Kurds, when Saddam Hussein attacked them.
3/ All those little dead bodies were copies of my baby and the shock of seeing that was harder than dealing with real children in extreme poverty in the slums of Brazil. I held many. I wasn't a mother yet, though.
4/ Later on, when she was about 7 or 8, we stopped for bathroom and drinks on our way to see my sister. We lived in Blacksburg, VA where I was a visiting scholar and the road crossed the Apalachians.
5/ We stopped at this place where a dozen men wearing hats and women on flowery dresses turned their white heads to look at my brown child. The alarm reactions kicked in instantly. A mother will kill to protect her baby.
6/ When she was about to be born, I threatened the physician. He was trying to get me to accept the common maternity baby room when we had an agreement that I was in the common room program (mother and child in the same room).
7/ He was scared. My daughter's father was scared. Then she was born and they put the crib a few feet from my bed. I forced them to put it right next to it. My baby - my rules. I also remember paranoid thoughts about what to do if somebody tried to steal her.
8/ "Is it possible to insert a chip in the baby's body so that we can locate her at any time?" People looked at me a bit scared. This lasted just a couple of days. I didn't let people hold her except my close family. I didn't allow visits during the first month.
9/ Then, during the last Carnaval, the fascist police attacked her party block in Brazil. She was hurt. The policemen were put on leave and the district is being sued. They will lose. Good. But that day and the days that followed, I felt helpless and desperate.
10/ When I see the cages at the South border, all the kids look like my baby to me. Why? No clue. The image of innocent refugee children murder, the little girl with a pink blouse, looks exactly like my baby. I can see her.
11/ That's the alterity shock. The victim is you, or, worse, your child. You need to do something about it. And yes, that also comes with anger, powerlessness and hate: I hate the ICE agents. I know that I wish they were hurt.
12/ I am a good social scientist. The USCIS agreed with this, too: I have the whore-visa.. oops, sorry, the EB-1A visa (the one Melania screwed up for us). I know that the proper definition is "concentration camp".
13/ It goes beyond that, though. I will think about my baby the whole day today. It's her birthday. Yesterday was the funeral of a boy who killed himself here in Red America. It was also supposed to be the terrorist ICE raid against immigrant families ordered by Trump.
14/ The empathy shock creates dark thoughts in my mind. I will try to focus on my baby's birthday and on the hope that some day Trump, Nielsen, Miller and their crew will be sitting at the International Court at the Hague answering for crimes against Humanity.
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@EaterSouls please share with your party people
