Democracy Shines in All Our Hearts

P.R. Dyjak

When I used to think of what America means to me, I thought of Halloween and Thanksgiving, football games and Barbie dolls. A melting pot of peoples that was more of a chunky stew held together by a gravy of belief in democracy. Now I think specifically of The Rule of Law—due process for all, warrants for searches and seizure—foundational, bedrock things. I think of the U.S. Constitution, the core of the American Ideal.

It’s a good ideal. Freedom of religion. A free press, unhindered by whomever is in office/power. Voting rights for everyone born here or naturalized. A rule of law that applies equally to everyone, rich or poor. And historically, a path to citizenship for immigrants.

Our current elected President appears to have different ideals from me. He has directed the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) under Homeland Security, to violently seize immigrants and deport them. The Supreme Court has ruled it is acceptable for I.C.E. to target people in the U.S. who are Latinx, or people with brown skin, i.e. “racial profiling.” So based on perceived race, speaking Spanish, low wage employment, and location, I.C.E. is targeting people for seizure. No matter that many U.S. Citizens identify as Latinx. Or are Green Card holders. Or have been working peacefully and paying taxes and not using government services. What are we as poets to do? We bear witness. We write about it. We speak about it.

Please keep in mind that being an undocumented person in the U.S. is not a crime. Let that sink in. While candidate Donald Trump and his supporters whipped up a frenzy against undocumented people who have committed crimes, just being an undocumented person is, in itself, NOT a crime. It’s a civil offense. The promised mass deportations by candidate Trump of criminal immigrants couldn’t go forward once Trump took office for there were not masses of criminal immigrants. There were some, but not “masses.” Thus the Trump administration’s shift to revoking sanctuary for some immigrants, and targeting all immigrants, documented or undocumented to fulfill his promise of mass deportations. We bear witness. We speak out.

Somehow, in this nation of mostly immigrants, some indigenous people, and descendants of slavery (I won’t go into our national sins of slavery and of how badly indigenous people were treated, but such racism is an historical, continuing theme in the U.S.), being an immigrant has become a crime. President Donald Trump’s mother was an immigrant. (Is he an anchor baby?)  I’m a descendant of immigrants. My Lithuanian grandmother was born on the boat crossing the Atlantic, fleeing Russian forces. My Polish and Ukrainian ancestors fled German and Russian forces. Peasants, all of them. The U.S. has welcomed immigrants for centuries. Candidate Trump and his supporters demonized immigrants, painted them all as depraved criminals, to scapegoat them. It’s so much easier to scapegoat a group of vulnerable people fleeing horrific wars, or gang activity, or natural disasters, than it is to actually make a plan to make the cost of groceries go down. Or create an alternative to the Affordable Care Act. It's so much easier to blame brown people than figure out how to manage the intricacies of agricultural markets. You’d probably have to read something, and it is widely known that President Trump doesn’t read the daily security reports, so he probably wouldn’t be interested in reading a book about Midwest farmers. Enemies of the United States have certainly noted how President Trump doesn’t read the daily security briefing. If only Homeland Security were focused on national security instead of quotas of deportees for I.C.E., we’d all sleep easier.

The extreme brutality of I.C.E. shocks and mystifies many. We, as a nation, have watched gardeners, mothers waiting to pick up their kids from school, men in Home Depot parking lots looking for work, and U.S. citizens—in one case a veteran—seized and detained by I.C.E. using great force and lacking warrants or even probable cause. We have seen videos of I.C.E. on a rooftop shooting a minister in the head with pepper bullets. The minister, Rev. David Black, was praying on the street below them. Remember: being an undocumented person in the U.S. is not a crime. It’s a civil offense. Imagine if a bunch of masked men, armed, in combat fatigues throwing tear gas canisters showed up at your door because you didn’t license your dogs.

So why is there this extreme, unnecessary force being used? Partly it’s because no Republicans will stand up and tell President Trump this cruelty is wrong. And partly, it’s because Donald Trump lies. There are no masses of criminal immigrants in every American city, justifying I.C.E. brutality. Numerous pundits have tracked the President’s exaggerations and out-and-out lies about conditions in cities that he deems require more I.C.E. agents, protected by the National Guard and/or U.S. Marines. I think we all remember President Trump’s comments about Portland, Oregon “burning” with “fires everywhere”: cue the video from multiple news sources showing peaceful  protestors in inflatable frog costumes dancing in front of the I.C.E. building. Joyful frogs! Or Portland protestors’ Emergency Naked Bicycle Ride. Trump lies. Many courts have not bought into the falsehoods of the Trump administration. The wannabe king can be contained. Portland reminds us of the joy of being a democracy, and the provocative nature of laughing at a bully. Write about it!

The lack of warrants, lack of due process, the lack of standard operating procedures, and the excessive use of force by I.C.E. against members of our community is an attack on American laws and values.  Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the pre-dawn raid of an apartment building in Chicago on September 30, 2025. There were no warrants in the hands of agents. I.C.E. agents arrived in Blackhawk helicopters—military helicopters—WHY? Doors to apartments were kicked in or removed; residents’ possessions were trashed. People were zip tied and brought outside, some without clothing. Children were zip tied together and brought outside, separate from their mothers and families. The people who lived in the apartment building were brown skinned and black skinned. This is racism in action. We bear witness. We write about it.

Has restitution been made to these Chicagoans for the destruction of their belongings? The trampling of their civil rights? Their trauma of being treated as though their apartment building in America’s Heartland were, instead, a foreign nation the U.S. was at war with? Their trauma at being treated like enemy combatants, the indignities of being subjected to searches?

We are all Chicago, now.

If it happens to one of us, it happens to all of us. U.S. laws cannot be subverted because some people deficient in respect for the law and basic human dignity, decide to play soldiers, decide to target some U.S. cities because their residents elected mayors who are Democrats, not Republicans. What happens in one U.S. city, happens to all of us in the United States. We stand together. We believe in the Rule of Law, in due process, in basic respect for all people, in helping our neighbors. Warrants are required. People living in Democratic Cities who are brown or black are not to be seized as though they were enemy combatants. They are our neighbors, our friends, our family.

We are not going to turn on each other. We will bear witness. We will protest peacefully. We will vote out the Republicans in Congress who have stood silent and enabled this lame duck president to trample on the U.S. Constitution. This administration will pass. We will write about that, too.

We the people will survive, as strong as the idea of the U.S. Constitution. It is in all our hearts. It cannot be deported or seized and detained.

We the people celebrate our democracy, as joyous and hopeful as a protestor in Portland, Oregon wearing a frog costume and dancing. Our democracy will survive because it is an idea, an ideal we each of us carry in our hearts.

The cover art of this issue of Bramble shows Ruth Bader Ginsberg as depicted in the Trailblazer Mural by artist Jessie Fritsch, located in Stevens Point, WI. Supreme Court justice Ginsberg stands as a beacon of respect for the law, for the U.S. Constitution. If you look closely, you can see a bunch of people protesting comprises her crown: we the people rule, for we the people are democracy. This was evident in the No Kings rallies held across the U.S., in every state of our great nation. Seven million people showed up to celebrate our constitution and the rule of law: there are no kings here. Democracy shines in our hearts. No wannabe dictator can change that. We shine.

P.R. Dyjak [aka Patricia R. Dyjak, aka Pat] is a poet and recently retired professor who taught creative writing, ethnic literature, literary theory, and composition at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.  “Compassion” and “And it harm none” are her watch-phrases. The spirituality of the web of life and social justice issues are of great importance to Dyjak. She is a lyrical poet trying to be brave enough to push her language and silence to do more. Pulitzer Prize winning poet Carolyn Kizer called Pat’s poem “Killing Angels” “brave.”  She lives with her ghost dog Zoey and living cats Flora and Chianna in the very green city of Stevens Point in the very white, northern part of WI. Her chapbook Symphony for the Cutters (2013) is available through Kattywompus Press, Boston. [“Dyjak” is pronounced DEE-jack].