Birth and death are among the most profound events that all beings experience. Kittens and hamsters and other little pet creatures are often our first window into the great mystery of birth and death. And, of course, the baby bird fallen from some nest that we tried to keep alive, not really knowing enough about all that it takes to raise an orphaned bird. We begin to learn about the pain of attachment, love, loss and the fact that so much in life is simply beyond our control.
The great mystery of birth and death remains central to our existence. No one knows what we will discover when the veil is finally pulled back and we get to see what awaits us on the other side. Some people think they know that nothingness is all that awaits us. Others swear by an afterlife full of rich rewards or punishments for what we did while alive. Most people just admit that they don’t know and won’t know ahead of time. No subject of art and poetry and literature has occupied so many creative minds over so many generations as this one.
Most of us are attentive to news of tragic deaths on our highways or the occasional local crime of passion that often sounds like a Shakespearean tragedy as people lash out in rage, jealousy or greed. There are also deaths that touch a great many of us, when some long time local champion, a generous patron of community or a devoted public servant, someone who awed us with their achievements dies.
And then there is the death on the public stage that touches the hearts of many millions of people. Martyrs across the political spectrum. My elderly generation had such a collective moment when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. We all know exactly where we were at the moment we first heard the news. It was also one of the first times that our nation collectively mourned, in small family groups at the time at home in front of small screen black and white TV sets. For subsequent generations there would be other moments, such as the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, that many thousands of children watched in horror live on TV screens set up in classrooms.
There are deaths that stir controversy. The day John Lennon was shot and killed there were people who cheered the news while others wept. It was a time of polarization after the Vietnam War. Some veterans right here on Whidbey Island chose sympathy that day, while others chose manly toughness and contempt for a weirdo peacenik who rubbed them the wrong way.
The streets of Minneapolis today are the scene of daily life and death struggles as the politics of our nation boil over from heated contests at polling places to street brawls stoked by masked gangs of federal agents. Most residents of Minneapolis are horrified by the agents snatching people off the streets, the arrests of undocumented as well as documented immigrants, often profiled due to their brown or black skin. A surprising number of U.S. citizens also get caught in ICE’s net.
There are videos circulating of pregnant women knocked to the ground and dragged in handcuffs into ICE vans to then be transported to some ICE concentration camp. There are also grim videos of two observers with cell phones, who drove or walked too near an ICE operation, and who so offended agents that it looks like they were executed as a warning to others.
I checked in with my friend Dave in Minneapolis again this week. He told me that he had finally walked the mile from his house to the site where Alex Pretti was killed. He told me: “all over the city people are being extra friendly far from the Alex Pretti site. There is a wonderful feeling of solidarity and warmth versus the cold. We are tired and sad, but determined to see things through to as positive a conclusion as possible.” Dave also mentioned that a young friend spends several hours of his day driving immigrant co-workers safely home from work. One of the many unsung heroes out there today.
And on Jan. 17 a Minneapolis mother was captured and sent off to an ICE concentration camp, leaving her children, including a 3-month-old baby, on their own. Fortunately, an activist neighbor named Bri stepped in almost immediately to help, including with breast milk for the baby. One of so many stories today out of Minnesota that are almost biblical. As in the story of the infant Moses or the baby Jesus, we see strangers protecting and cherishing an infant not their own. The resistance to the federal government’s war on the people of Minnesota seems to know no limits. Not even the threat of death at the hands of ICE agents deters those defending the most vulnerable among us.
Michael Seraphinoff is a Whidbey Island resident, a former professor at Skagit Valley College and academic consultant to the International Baccalaureate Organization.
