Given the fear and chaos that currently has a chokehold on my home state, Minnesota, around the murder by federal agents of two innocent people, I had to think outside of the box — of a way for me to beg folks to see just how wrong this is.
I readily admit I’ve never written an op ed, and am certain this will be my last. So when I sat down to write about my response to the ICE murders of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, I had to ask myself, why would anyone listen?
Here is my advantage. I’ve had the privilege to live and experience things a lot longer than most.
Fear and I are old acquaintances. As I am a 76-year-old Black man who has lived long past his predicted expiration date, fear has been a long-time nemesis too.
As a child of the South, I knew others who wore hoods. Those were the masks of the day. I remember the vitriol, the epithets, the “strange fruit” meant to cause fear, to intimidate, to subjugate an entire race. Such fear induces trauma, and that leaves life-long scars.
Fear followed me all the way to Vietnam. Not just fear of the designated enemy. Fear of the enemy within, too. The same hateful, divisive scarring sentiments, from so-called brothers.
Now, as a senior citizen, an elder who for a long time has felt, “I’ve done my part,” I have been forced to reinvent myself.
I have to do so to make my voice heard, in opposition to ICE and their brutal operations. I spoke out first after the killing of Good. I continued to speak out after Pretti was shot dead too.
I have to do so in order to make it clear: fear and hate are insidious and infectious, multiplied by racial hatred.
Kidnapping children, separating families, and spreading fear are not the values that myself and many just like me fought for.
If this continues, we will no longer be the self-proclaimed Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
If that moment comes, every soul that has made the ultimate sacrifice will have been shown to have died in vain.
- Ronn Easton, former Specialist 4th Class, United States Army, served in Vietnam. He is a participant in the Home of the Brave campaign, amplifying the voices of brave Americans speaking out against the Trump administration.
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