The use of violence

Watching the many protests against ICE recently in the United States, moves me deeply. Watching their violence too, because life isn't black and white. Would there be so many so called illegal immigrants, if everyone were sponsored correctly? Whose fault is it then, but the American public's own? It is so hard to see, because it stirs up so many memories, both good and bad, so many emotions, both loving and fearful.

How could it go so far? How could an ICE-officer get so upset that he shot and killed a reuglar American woman through her car window, in his pursuit of illegal immigrants? Yes, he had been harmed before so maybe he reacted more strongly because of that. But when will the Americans understand that it's not a crime to be an immigrant in itself. It's pure administration, paperwork, bureacracy. Based on political decisions, based on the state of the world and all its conflicts. Are the ICE-officers just as scared as the immigrants? Perhaps they are.

When is it just to use violence? It can simply never be, when wearing a uniform in a civil society, your own society. To defend yourself, sure, but to actively shoot and kill someone, no. It must be a matter of not feeling heard and respected. If you think about it, the killed woman in Minneapolis didn't feel heard and respected, or she wouldn't flee. The ICE-officer didn't feel heard and respected, or he wouldn't have shot her.

Most anger is according to the book The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren simply a way to defend ourselves when we feel and are under attack. Again, when we're not feeling heard and respected. It's so easy to. To just read the documents in front of you, to answer to what they are saying, to hear from all parties, to conclude what the real problem is, and what the most favorable solution is. What would ICE and the university have lost on letting me work, so I could pay more tuition and sustain my own living, legally?