I recognized that scream.
I have been sitting with this for days. Running through what I could say. What should be said. But the only thing that keeps replaying in my mind are the screams.
I’ve watched the videos. Read the firsthand accounts. I’ve cried more than once. But it’s the screams that pierced something deep in me. Not just the sound—but the knowing behind it. The desperation. The rage. The grief. The horror of watching masked white men rip a mother from her child with no names, no warrants, no accountability. Just violence cloaked in lawlessness. The kind of lawlessness that has always existed in this country for Black and brown people.
And I recognized that scream.
I heard it come out of my own body on November 25, 2023—the day Daniel died. It came from a place I didn’t even know existed. Visceral. Guttural. Primal. A sound born from a grief that words could never explain. A body begging the universe to rewind time.
That’s what I heard in Worcester on Eureka Street.
Masked ICE agents abducted a woman in broad daylight. With the full assistance of the Worcester Police Department. A child—her child—watched it happen. And for the crime of trying to hold on to the last person she had left, that child was brutalized. Slammed face-down into pavement. Surrounded by grown men who didn’t see her humanity. She was charged with child endangerment. The projection is infuriating. The cruelty is intentional.
And then came the statement from our City Manager.
Eric Batista—you had the opportunity to lead. To condemn what happened. To stand with your community. But instead, you regurgitated the narrative ICE and WPD wanted you to tell. That the crowd was unruly. That the police were restoring order. You made the abductors the victims and the community the threat.
This isn’t leadership. This is cowardice. This is complicity. And I say that with the full weight of disappointment because I wanted to believe you could be different. But you’ve shown us, time and again, that you are exactly who they needed you to be: a yes-man who smiles in our faces while giving the green light to our oppression.
And now, in a move straight from the authoritarian playbook, WPD is calling for an ethics investigation into City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj—because she dared to stand with her constituents. Because she showed up. Because she did her job. The job that too many of her colleagues have refused to do: represent the people who elected them.
Let’s be clear: this is a political hit job. This is how they discredit and attempt to eliminate people who speak up. Straight from the fascist playbook.
And it’s happening because Etel continues to show up. Week after week. Not just with words, but with her body. With her votes. With her actions.
Councilor Khrystian King, like so many of us, witnessed a mother and child brutalized and traumatized—watched his fellow Councilor thrown around in the street of the very city they serve. He saw his constituents in pain, afraid, and under attack, and he responded the way real leaders should: with presence, with conviction, with care. And when I walked into the YMCA on Friday and saw our community gathered, I felt immediate relief. This is how we survive this. Community. Organizing. Showing up. Listening. Learning. Moving together in solidarity. That’s our path forward. That’s our power.
They represent the people, not the powerful. And that’s exactly why they’re under attack.
But here’s what gives me hope: we showed up too.
We showed up on Thursday. We showed up on Friday. We showed up for each other. We have continued to come together in the days since—not just to grieve, but to organize. To build. To plan. To resist.
Etel said it best: ICE, get out of our city!
This is the moment. We cannot keep letting people play in our face. We cannot keep accepting gaslighting as governance. We cannot keep allowing weak leaders to straddle both sides while our communities are crushed under the weight of their neutrality.
It’s an election year. And it’s time to remember that we decide who stays and who goes. No more platitudes. No more performative statements. We want action. We want accountability. We want liberation.
Because our lives depend on it.
Resources:
Beautiful stuff Jenn damn