NIIMBY

No ICE In My Back Yard

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

Pastor Martin Niemöller

I’ve always hated NIMBYism; it represents such a selfish point of view. And truthfully, it’s horrifying what we’re all willing to tolerate as long as we don’t perceive it to be “in our backyard”, so to speak. For a long time, we’ve¹ tolerated sweatshops for cheap clothing, wars in other countries to “protect our interests abroad” (even though the “our” in this case certainly does not include most Americans), all manner of human rights violations across the globe, and the destruction of the environment because it was not in our backyard. For that matter, we tolerated all of those same things here in the United States, because they were not happening in our backyard. Why else would we have allowed our BIPOC neighbors to live under the threat of a police state that has done everything to murder, imprison, and subjugate them since the country’s inception? Why else would we have allowed our LGBTQIA+ neighbors to be terrorized and abused by bullies and bigots? Why else would we have allowed our neighbors and their children to go houseless and hungry? Why else would we have allowed entire cities to go without drinkable water for years?

Why do we keep forgetting we can demand better? No, this is not “the way its always been”. No, we don’t have to just learn to live in a shitty world run by shitty people who make our lives so miserable we become shitty to each other. Whatever “rules” and currencies and systems we have now were created. There is no literal capitalist “machine” somewhere. There is no amorphous “military industrial complex” that exists outside of us. The dollar is valuable because we say it is; it has no inherent value. Politicians have power because we say they do. Laws are just words on paper unless they are enforced by someone. Celebrities are famous because we give them our attention. Corporations make money because we shop with them and work for them.

I am not telling you this to point a finger or lay blame; I am telling you this so that you understand your individual agency and our collective power. I am telling you this so that you understand that what you say and what you do matters.

I am telling you this so that you understand that you matter. I am telling you this so that you understand that we all matter, and you should start treating yourself and everyone you encounter with the respect and dignity that we all deserve as fellow humans.

It means picking up your dog’s poop and throwing it away when you walk them. It means not littering. It means doing what you can to avoid businesses that use their profits to hurt people in your community. It means saying no when someone asks you to do something unethical, even if it is your boss or your friend or your family member. It means standing up for what is right even when there might be repercussions. It means helping others.

In short, it means you must ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

And in the context of NIMBYism, this means that your neighbor’s backyard is your backyard.

I want to give you a little context for “First They Came”, the poem by Martin Niemöller I quoted at the beginning of this post:

Initially an antisemitic Nazi supporter, his views changed when he was imprisoned in a concentration camp for speaking out against Nazi control of churches” (Holocaust Memorial Day Trust).

You will be safe until you are not. But as you watch the dominoes falling ahead of you, you must consider that eventually you will also be knocked down. You may not be an undocumented immigrant, you may not be BIPOC, you may not be trans, you may not be a leftist, you may not be Muslim . . . but one day, if things continue in this fashion, none of that will matter. There will be one party, and that party will demand unwavering, unquestioning obedience from you. And if you do not offer it, they will take you too.

The question you must ask yourself is: is there a limit to your obedience?

ICE is not an idea or an abstract concept or a building or a policy. ICE is people. People who say yes to an order to detain other people because they were told to. People who say yes to an order to separate pregnant women from their sisters, children from their parents, and husbands from their wives. People who say yes to an order to invade neighborhoods and terrorize civilians because they want to cosplay as action movie villains and play with military toys. People who say yes to an order to destroy the lives of people in their own community, because they are vampires who choose to uphold a white supremacist state, even when it is people who look like them who will suffer.

The Nazis were also just people following orders. At Nuremberg, some tried to defend themselves by referencing “superior orders”, claiming that “even the thought of disobeying an order would simply never have occurred to anybody, and somebody else would have done just as well if I hadn’t . . . I really never gave much thought to whether it was wrong”. Some claimed that they were afraid of what might happen if they did not, but historian Doris Bergen disputes this, saying

Germans were not forced to be killers. Those who refused to participate were given other assignments or transferred. To this day no one has found an example of a German who was executed for refusing to take part in the killing of Jews or other civilians. Defense attorneys of people accused of war crimes have looked hard for such a case because it would support the claim that their clients had no choice. The Nazi system, however, did not work that way. There were enough willing perpetrators so that coercive force could be reserved for those deemed enemies. (Facing History & Ourselves)

ICE are willing perpetrators. They are not doing this because they have no other choice. They did not have to apply for this job. No one is forcing them to continue to do this job. And even in the face of public opposition and the tears of the people they disappear, they continue to choose to follow orders.

Many people have called ICE Nazis, and while the comparison is apt, the United States has no need to copy the Nazi playbook — the Nazis copied ours.

As Whitman shows, the Nuremberg Laws were crafted in an atmosphere of considerable attention to the precedents American race laws had to offer. German praise for American practices, already found in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, was continuous throughout the early 1930s, and the most radical Nazi lawyers were eager advocates of the use of American models. But while Jim Crow segregation was one aspect of American law that appealed to Nazi radicals, it was not the most consequential one. Rather, both American citizenship and antimiscegenation laws proved directly relevant to the two principal Nuremberg Laws—the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law. Whitman looks at the ultimate, ugly irony that when Nazis rejected American practices, it was sometimes not because they found them too enlightened, but too harsh. (Hitler’s American Model)

Perhaps what we are witnessing now is a long overdue comeuppance. The reaping of seeds we have sowed all over the world and in our own communities. The rotting roots of an empire that corrupts everything it touches. For decades we have been warned about climate change, fascism, surveillance, etc., but like overworked underpaid exhausted frogs in a pot of boiling water, we assumed someone would do something about it. Instead the leaders we elected continued to shift the Overton Window right, continued to erode our rights under the justification of keeping us “safe”, and forced us to vote for them by squashing alternatives even as they continued to vote against our interests.

There are no more warnings. Fascism isn’t coming — it’s here. Concentration camps aren’t some distant memory or worrying future — calling them “detention facilities” does not change what they are or what they’re for. When they write about this period of time in the history books, historians will not be writing about Nazis and the SS — they will be writing about Trumpism and ICE.

And yet, while Trump has given rise to a cult-like nationalism and maintains an absurdly devoted following, this is ultimately not a Trump problem. Perhaps this is why the Democrats were so focused on Trump as a scapegoat for so long — it allowed them to be perceived as “good” simply because the alternative was so evil. But as we witness Democrats continue to support genocidal policies against Palestine and vote alongside Republicans against the interests of their base and publish books and go on talking tours to make money and get re-elected, it is increasingly difficult to see their value as an “opposition” party.

The Democrat’s focus on Trump as the “big bad” obfuscates the real issues at hand, which are the ideologies that allowed someone like Trump to be elected in the first place. Our unwillingness as a country to address our history because it would mean questioning our present has led us to this moment. Just as Nazi ideology continued on without Hitler and Confederate ideology continued on after they lost the war, Trump’s version of evil will continue on with or without him. And while Trump has made disturbing² promises to “make America great again”, Democrats oftentimes seem to wish that they could just go back to the Obama years when they didn’t have to think so hard about politics. But Obama or Biden or whatever administration feels “safe” to you, was not safe for everyone. And the same people who are being hurt now were being hurt then. You were just able to ignore it because it wasn’t in your backyard. In any case, going back to 2008 or 2012 will still eventually lead to 2016 and 2020 and 2025 if we don’t address the ideologies that led here.

There is no going back. There is only forward.

It is the ideologies of hate that must be destroyed. The hierarchical ideologies that some people are better than others based on race or gender or sexuality or religion or class or whatever bullshit made up categories are designated by those in power to be “less than” must be eradicated. We cannot tolerate intolerance any longer.

Your neighbor’s backyard is your backyard. ICE is in your backyard. They are knocking down the door and they are coming to destroy your community.

You cannot speculate about what you would have done in Nazi Germany any longer — you must act against the injustices that are happening right now in your backyard.

You must ask yourself: what is my comfort and safety worth if it comes at the cost of other people’s lives?

Find the transcript here.

Find articles about ICE by clicking the arrow.

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• ICE launches ‘military-style’ raids in Los Angeles: What we know
• ‘Needlessly reckless’: Local leaders, community condemn South Park ICE raids
• ICE agents mistakenly detain U.S. marshal in Arizona
• Massachusetts student arrested by ICE on his way to volleyball practice has been released
• ‘Bring Carol home:’ ICE snatches rural Missouri mom at immigration check-in
• I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped
• A sweeping new ICE operation shows how Trump’s focus on immigration is reshaping federal law enforcement
• Stephen Miller has set his sights on new targets to find undocumented migrants: Home Depot and 7-Eleven
• ICE Immigration Jacket Becomes ‘Best Seller’ on Amazon
• Ice director wants to run deportations like ‘Amazon Prime for human beings’
• Immigration arrests in courthouses have become the new deportation tool, stripping migrants of a legal process
• Migrant children suffered ‘severe’ sexual abuse under housing provider’s care, DOJ says

1. I mentioned this in a previous post, but I feel it bears repeating here: A disclaimer about the use of pronouns like “we” and “us” and “you” in my writing: I’m using these pronouns to show how we are all collectively responsible for the world we are creating together, regardless of individual actions and inactions. As a species, as a people, as a country, we have created this situation, even if individually we may have varying degrees of responsibility in accordance with our privilege and context. I am not using “we” and “us” to assign blame, but rather to ask that we take accountability for the world we live in and where we need to improve if we are to create a better one. ↩︎
2. “Disturbing” because whatever time period he’d like to go back to implies erasing the progress and rights of women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, etc. ↩︎