This is the sole thing that keeps me down. My spouse is a first generation American with brown skin in a Republican state. If any attention is drawn to us, her, her parents, her autistic brother, the lady that cuts my hair, the grocery we visit down the road, half the parents in our neighborhood, I'm the only person in my community that isn't currently represented in the ICE victim pool. If I rock the boat every single person I care about gets a plane trip to a foreign prison.

Every day it gets worse. Eventually, it won't be plane rides, it will be ditches. Even if I don't attract the attention of the government, it's cultists yell racial slurs in as they drive lifted trucks past my community. They gnaw at the bit for a chance to cut loose and remove this stain from their white city.

I've seen the local protests, 10 people with signs on a busy intersection a mile from the courthouse. The police point and laugh as commuters throw drinks at them from their cars for thinking that human rights belong in a red state.

What the fuck do I do? What can I, standing here, actually do to change anything? There isn't a single action that I can take that does not threaten to burn down my community and leave my child an orphan, and even still I'm here asking how I can solve this problem.