I am but a voice in the wind. I’m not even sure more than a handful of people read these notes I leave behind, but I write them anyway because silence is the easier lie. I am a Caribbean-born American citizen, arrived here in 1973. I have been the government worker and the government contractor. I have paid the taxes, done the overtime, watched the flags rise and the budgets fall. I am also the family of immigrants who helped build this economy with our hands and our hope.
In my own bloodline runs the proof of what America claims to be. My sister and her husband once faced the Virginia laws that barred their son from a private school because he was Black because literally, Blacks were not allowed to integrate. Their story told here in this short film is not just family history; it is a measure of the struggle that forced open the classroom doors of the 1970s.
And so, I cannot reconcile the politics that now pass for patriotism the sound of a nation arguing over who deserves air while the house itself burns. The shutdown isn’t just a headline; it’s a ledger. Federal workers count down to rent due, prescriptions to refill, kids to feed, while Congress debates which programs deserve the first oxygen mask. Somehow, detention gets it.
The Money That Never Stops
When the cameras pan to the Capitol, the story is told in votes and sound bites. But somewhere off-screen, the money still moves. Two names The GEO Group and CoreCivic don’t trend on social media, but they keep the lights on when everything else stops. They are the private corporations that own and run many of America’s immigration detention centers. Every new policy that expands enforcement, every budget that funds “border security,” runs through their balance sheets.
