i haven’t shared this yet, it’s taken a bit to truly sink in, process.
my mom was captured last month, currently jailed, with an ICE detainer facing her afterwards. we scraped the money we could to hire a lawyer, but it’s clear deportation is on the horizon, delayed, impending.
the emotional rollercoaster has been complex. anger, at this juridical system, at this country, at her. compassion, for her journey, her fight to keep everything together, stable enough; for her struggles while in capture. stress, for suddenly becoming project manager for this process. fear, that she’ll (we’ll) never get released from this closed loop.
a closed loop enables forward movement, only to return to the same position, our rightful/assigned place. this is the repeating structure of racial violence, the founding grammar of modernity. the shape of futurity, of time llegalized, of people illegalized.
people assigned to closed loops can feel a sense of progress or regression, feelings produced by the ability to move directionally - forward, backward - not realizing the path is a fractal structure of endless repetition. this is the curse modernity has placed upon its global Others, a circularity infused into the operations of the educational, legal, political systems we’re forced to navigate- each rehearsing the myth of our rightful place. that’s what makes it a grammar, a kind of implicit language that structures what is thinkable, what is ethical, who’s valued, who’s disposable.
it became clear to me a decade ago that we must value the life of “the criminal”, now i better understand why:
criminality is our closed loop.
in closed loops, we’re all recidivists.