This is truly amazing. I’ve had calls and messages of support and I’ve seen people starting to share on social media. Wherever we are at the time my turn to speak comes up at the council chambers, this is the beginning. Three days ago my friend Luis, a corn vendor, was abducted in my neighborhood without warning, and less than twenty hours later he called me from Tijuana. He told me he was strongly “encouraged” to sign papers he did not understand without a lawyer present. Luis is a humble, hard-working young man, father to a cute little girl. His wife and child will be relocating to Mexico as soon as they are able to. With that we (collectively) lost a hardworking person with great work ethics and entrepreneurial spirit. We lost a family who values education. We lost young workers, a tax base to help fund the social security benefits the rest of us enjoy. We lost people who value stability and progress. And we sent them back to a life of poverty. For what purpose? Social media is awash with calls for “getting rid of the criminal element” while statistics point out the opposite. Meanwhile our government will soon be starting to review every asylum case granted by the previous administration. Guaranteed that many, if not most, will lose their permanent residence status. Citizens of a certain skin tone have already been deported. There is no question that our and our local government’s silence is complicity. Niemöller’s poem comes to mind, “and there was no one left to speak for me.” So, I scream at the top of my lungs, for Luis, for me, for you.