Immigration Standoff

This title is not mine. It is the way CNN describes the negotiations in D.C. around budgets and DACA. Please. Driving through New Mexico today, NPR runs a story. Here for the first time the phrase (and legal outcome of a successful appeal to an order of deportation) emerges: "withholding of removal". This double negative presents a laughable (if it weren't ridiculous) gesture. It insists on suspension. A drama that plays itself out in the social sphere and over the head of immigrants. A stay, as it were. Immigrants. What would be too many times to mention "we are a country of immigrants"? When the language of otherness, the language of raciscm, confronts itself. When will it be possible to live in contestation rather than in and towards the illusion of compromise? When we Revolt, She Said. (January 25, 2018)