I moved to Nashville about three years ago. It’s been a big change from Philadelphia. It’s weird living in a red state, even in a blue dot. Sometimes I feel out of place as hell. Sometimes I wonder what the fuck am I doing here?
And then I see something like the image above, posted by a friend of mine who was there when ICE tried to haul away a neighbor who happened to be undocumented. I blurred the poster’s name, because who knows what vindictive shit might result from resistance to this low-rent putsch by a Gestapo that’s somehow even more banal and mentally deficient than the original.
The Nashville Scene has more on the day Nashville said no:
Angela Glass, who lives across the street, tells the Scene that one of her neighbors told her to come outside after seeing the ICE agents and police vehicles. She says they were not going to let ICE take their neighbor away.
“These people, they’ve been living there for 14 years,” Glass says. “They don’t bother anybody. Our kids play with their kids. It’s just one big community. And we don’t want to see anything happen to them. They’re good people. They’ve been here 14 years, leave them alone. To me, they’re considered Americans.”
Another neighbor who’d been on the scene all morning could be overheard saying, “They came to the wrong community on the wrong day.”
Read the whole thing. These people are goddamn heroes. With any luck this Facebook livestream of the entire incident will work for you (the hilariously inappropriate music was automatically applied by Facebook). If not, here’s a report from the local news:
Sometimes it’s weird to live in Nashville. In many ways, I’m a fish out of water. But today I could not be prouder to call that city my home. Love thy neighbor, y’all.
