06/03/2025
Disturbing: ICE last week sn**ching a Milford high school senior and school volleyball star just days before his graduation - right out of his dad's car. They took him away. So now, instead of receiving his high school diploma with his friends on what should have been a glorious day, a hallmark of a young life well lived (he was beloved by his fellow Milford High students and his teachers), the boy's now in a holding cell somewhere, behind bars. TERRIFIED FOR HIS LIFE. For Donald Trump and his Barbarian S**t Show he's an example for other young people: not as a kid who achieved good things, whose primary language was probably not English and yet he GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL READY FOR WORK/COLLEGE, but as a "criminal." A criminal who broke the law and whose fate must serve as a terrorizing reminder to other young people in similar circumstances. Teens who should be having fun with friends working at Shake Shack this summer or lifeguarding at the city pool or surfing at the beach but are now hiding from an ICE that has seeped into every nook and cranny of American life. Feeling un-free in the land of the free!
The young Milford man - now 18 - was apparently pounced on by an ICE police force that seems to be able to track down people on a micro-, Stasi-level: on the streets where they live, outside the high school basketball courts where they shoot hoop, at their work sites where they toil for s**t wages paid under the table and in their worker's vans ... in this Milford high school senior's case, his dad's automobile! How very Secret Police! How chilling FOR US ALL. I'm just betting Trump will use his loyal security goons to everyone's detriment when he refuses to leave the Oval Office in '28!!
This "kidnapping" was traumatic for the young man's family, his high school and the Milford community. To witness something straight outa N**i Germany in your small town, after the annual Memorial Day parade and wreath-laying ceremonies, the cookouts with hotdogs and hamburgers, at the cusp of beautiful summer when we honor America's military heroes FOR THEIR BRAVERY and SAFEGUARDING OUR FREEDOM. FOR FIGHTING AGAINST the GROUP THINK and VIOLENCE OF HI**ER and the BRUTAL DICTATORS OF WW II's JAPAN and ITALY ... and later Iraq, Korea. Our American heroes - men and women who died for our Constitution and Flag and the very IDEA of America - they must be turning over in their Arlington Cemetery graves at this Stasi life! This sick surveillance of kids! Trump wants us to be playing Taps for the American Dream this Fourth of July!
The Milford high school senior was brought to this country when he was just five years old. He was an innocent, a child whose fate was decided for him by most likely loving parents who were trying to keep him safe in America. Lucky kid, thought his parents: American high school, college, freedom, opportunity...maybe a house in Milford someday. Now those hopes and dreams have been shattered. Now his father, who works, who is a productive member of society, hides in the shadows from ICE because ICE was looking for him when they arrested his son! Now double sorrow. Now Milford cries at the cruelty and neighbors protest and vow to stay strong and cohesive.
Why the resistance? Why telling ICE to F**K OFF and flinging bodies of cruiser's hoods? Because America has always been home to the free, home of the brave, and this doesn't sit well with most Americans. America is home to immigrants and more often than not the outliers, the dare devils, the brave hearts, the outsiders who come here willing to gamble it all. And blow on the dice once more and throw them hard, again, if lady luck disappointed them the first time. We ALL have an American history that is checkered, fraught, freighted with love and sometimes violence and rule-smashing. Very American! My immigrant grandfather - Sabino from Northern Italy - was a bootlegger during Prohibition. He wore spats and was the cruel ladies man who broke my grandmother Maria's heart, mother to his 10 children, by bringing gifts to his mistress who lived right up the street from the little house that he built with his sons up in Worcester's Summit neighborhood. I lived in a car for 17 months with my two dogs, Lilac and the late great Jett, my beautiful husky mix! I peed in the bushes and prayed to the lights stop the lampposts that I wouldn't get r***d and that I would soon find an apartment, home. The Block tenement building in Green Island's Worcester neighborhood was where many Polish immigrants lived in the early 20th century. It was a true ghetto: squalid, packed with many tough desperate people, and still my late mother dreamed there as a child. As a young adult she planned on college/careers for her three daughters, and we all graduated from college, too! Plus I got to run InCity Times and write columns about the city for 23+ years. Often my stories were about my Polish immigrant grandparents, honoring my Bapy and Jaju who couldn't speak 10 words in English but whose Catholic faith and love of family kept them steadfast and true to each other.
The American cowboy's life was dirty and puny. The California Gold Rush miner toiled a world away from his Swedish roots. Homesteaders being scalped by Native Americans and doing the same to their perceived enemy out of deep grievance and vindictiveness. Nothing about us Americans, our history, our STORIES is close to perfect and by the books. Yet we keep loving messy America as it unfolds its crazy-quilt beauty. For so many of our families it's been minimum wage for life. Under the table tens$ and $20s to keep families going. It's been hardscrabble. Under the wire. Faked IDs. Faking it until we made it. In America. Which is why I think ICE is having the opposite of its intended effect - neighbors, co-workers, fellow students are horrified, hurt and enraged when ICE comes crashing through a fellow American's car windshield or banging on their front door to take a good friend or nice neighbor away. Dragged kicking and screaming from the American Dream WE ARE ALL SO INTIMATE WITH ... and love no matter what comes our way!
- 🌹 Rose
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Pic by Rose: album cover of Sly and the Family Stone's THERE'S A RIOT GOING ON ...
