An Open letter to the Latina who arrested me,

I’m really sore today. My husband says it’s because I need to work out the lactic acid that built up while I was holding my body so tight for so long in the face of too many rows of police in riot gear, tormenting us with barking dogs and disorienting our vision with flashlights. You came with the first group of militarized police. Us—students, faculty, staff, community—locked by arms and legs into a human chain for hours. We were 150 deep circling that grassy hill, our anti-colonial resolve held lovingly by the Munsee Lenape land. We were sitting on the ground to protect our encampment, singing Solidarity Forever, chanting WE WILL NOT MOVE and FREE PALESTINE, some shouting I LOVE YOU WE WILL BE OK as helicopters and surveillance drones buzz above us. You, and the other officers, were looking down at us. Standing. Waiting. Threatening. I did my best to look away. You, holding the line. Me, inhaling deeply and holding my breath, knowing the sight of your militarized line would activate my fight or flight response. And I, we, will not be moved. And then I felt your gaze. Our eyes met. You leaned over, reached out your hand to me, and said, "It’s not too late for you. You can walk out of this." I would usually tell you to f*ck off, pig. I’m real familiar with my fight response; we have survived a lot of abuse. But that’s not what happened, fight did not show up. Instead—armed with the radical love radiating throughout our camp and buoyed by my feminist study in healing, trauma, abolition, and transformative justice—I called you in. 

"So can you! You do not have to do this!," I replied. And you look…disappointed? You step back in line. I am…disappointed? But not surprised.

I’m really sore today. My husband says it’s because I need to work out the lactic acid that built up while I was holding my body so tight for so long in the face of too many rows of police in riot gear, tormenting us. That's when my student activated your shame, directing her anger toward you and asking in Spanish "where is the solidarity, sister?" Maybe it was because you are Brown. Maybe it is because you are feminine presenting. Maybe it is because we assumed you are Latina. She would not relent. I worried you would rip her from my arm, drag her into the darkness to silence her admonishment. Given the decades of experience between us, and my personal experiences with police violence as a diasporic Puerto Rican, I told my student that she should not expect your solidarity; this was your job and you had made your choice. I advised her to save her strength. But she repeatedly demanded your acknowledgement, your solidarity, anyway, hermana. 

I’m really sore today. My husband says it’s because I need to work out the lactic acid that built up while I was holding my body so tight for so long in the face of too many rows of police in riot gear. As my student continued to demand your recognition, I saw something that made me feel into you. I felt that you did not want to do what your job and your training convinced you that you must do. I saw you refuse the baton handed to you by your white male colleague. I saw another officer force it upon you. I saw when you looked away—far away—clearly uncomfortable with how the other officers taunted us, perhaps disassociating from your own body because you knew, as well as we did, that they were eager to use those batons. When you looked back and our eyes met across a space thick with anticipation and pain and anger, I saw your anguish. I saw the might of colonial violence strangling your capacity for radical love. It's why I'm writing this letter only to you, and not to you and the white woman who arrested me, nor to the president of my university, nor to the chief of police or the governor of New York. This letter is for the part of you that did not want to arrest us and the part of you that did.

I’m really sore today. My husband says it’s because I need to work out the lactic acid that built up while I was holding my body so tight for so long in the face of too many rows of police. Mostly, but not all, white. Mostly, but not all, masculine presenting. Most, but not all, the kinds of bodies that make my body tighten with fear in an everyday context. Some with smiles because they couldn’t wait to hurt us. Because they couldn’t wait to tear us apart, because they were eager to interrupt the coalitional energy pulsating in that sacred circle. Because they couldn’t wait to destroy everything that the students built through their commitment to Palestinian lives, to an end to genocide. Your body, different from most, was directly in front of mine but provided no relief, no release, no safety, no solidarity. Your body dragged mine into the darkness.

I’m really sore today. My husband says it’s because I need to work out the lactic acid that built up while I was holding my body. I have some light bruising on my arm probably from the thick hard zip tie you and the other officer affixed to my wrists. Our students trained us to go limp when police detain you, to reduce the likelihood of more injury. So, that’s what I did. The video of my arrest was on the news. I look like a corpse and you, like a colonizer. I think there were knees on my back, but when my body went limp my soul found escape and I was only partially there. You escorted me across the quad to join the queue of peaceful protesters being processed for trespassing on our own campus. As we walked, I noticed you did not squeeze my arm with the same intensity as the white woman on my right; it took her longer to soften when handling me. After a while in the processing line, you left, and I didn’t see you again. 

I’m really sore today. My husband says it’s because I need to work out the lactic acid that built up. But my study in decolonial thought, bodily liberation, and the practice of radical dharma helps me recognize and accept that the pain shooting through my limbs is the ancestors in my veins showing up—colonizers and colonized alike—battling it out to control my response to everything that happened. Hatred and love. Rage and care. Revenge and forgiveness. Holding on and letting go. Hardness and softness. I teach my students that we don’t throw people away. Does that include cops? Agents of the state? In class, we return, again and again, to the question of violence in anti-colonial liberation praxis. Isn’t violence a master’s tool? Is it necessary? Do we become what we want to deconstruct when and if we use it? We don’t come to conclusions. We stay in curiosity. I've never experienced compassion for a police officer before and I am not sure why I do now. Maybe that’s what I saw when I saw you: a shared, messy, constrained desire for compassion. 

I’m really sore today. I want to be clear that my care—Latina to presumed Latina—does not release you from any accountability. You were the muscle of fascist violence that night, and every time you put on the uniform of the overseer. I hold you accountable to the choice that you made to enact violence for an employer—accountable to me, my students, and everyone who witnessed that choice. I also hold you accountable for yourself, your community, your ancestors; our community? Our ancestors? We both received and made an offer to one another. We both made the choice we felt we had to make as women of color surviving a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. I like to think—and this may be foolish, and I can hardly believe I am typing it—that the reason you joined the force was to make a living, to have health insurance and a retirement plan, to maybe show that not all cops are brutal. Maybe. Maybe. But becoming the oppressor to soften the oppression against your own community is not possible. You cannot be a "good" cop.

Perhaps it is unfair of me to expect more from you simply because of an imagined connection, based on colonial categorizations like race and gender, experienced in a moment of extreme traumatic violence. My disappointment in you certainly confuses me, surprises me even. I told my student that she could not expect your solidarity. But I guess, like her, I can’t help but repeatedly demand it anyway.