We are human beings first, before policy, before labels, and before fear reshapes how we see one another. Yet our government is intent on creating separation.
Across the country, ICE enforcement actions have intensified in very visible ways. The death of citizens at the hands of ICE, raids, detentions, and the threat of sudden separation have created real fear in many communities. Families are changing daily routines. Children are missing school. Neighbors are staying home. Whether or not one agrees with immigration policy, the lived reality is this: fear and separation are spreading through towns and cities, fracturing the sense of safety that allows communities to function.
Fear changes the shape of daily life. When it enters a community, routines quietly unravel. Parents hesitate before sending children to school. Appointments are missed. Businesses feel the absence of familiar faces. Neighbors who once waved from across the street begin to keep their heads down. This is not abstract. It is how separation takes root. When people do not feel safe, connection thins, trust erodes, and the invisible threads that hold a town together begin to fray.
Before we are immigrants or Native or queer or neurodiverse, we are human beings. Every label we carry describes only a fragment of who we are, never the whole. Labels can help us understand experiences, but they never define the whole of a person. Neurodivergent minds are not diagnoses to be managed; it is a way of seeing the world. Immigrants are not categories but neighbors, colleagues, and friends. LGBTQ people are not exceptions but expressions of humanity itself. We are human beings with different expressions. When we remember this, separation loses its power.
What if ICE prevailed?
Lately, I have found myself imagining something unsettling. What if ICE prevailed? What if whole subsets of our community were taken away?
The kitchens quiet.
The classrooms missing stories and languages.
The workplaces understaffed.
The neighborhoods less alive.
The friendships broken.
The children carrying more fear.
What if Native and Indigenous peoples were no longer here?
No original stories. No intergenerational wisdom shared.
No living relationship with the land.
No memory of how to live in reciprocity.
What if our queer neighbors disappeared?
What if neurodiverse minds were missing?
What if elders, children, artists, healers, workers, and families simply vanished?
Very quickly, life collapses.
We Are Human Beings, Not Labels
I am a child of the 60s. I was born in San Francisco, California, and lived in the Haight Ashbury district. Our home faced Golden Gate Park. As a child, I lived among the people who created the Summer of Love. I was too young to understand the movements or the language of that time, but I absorbed the atmosphere. I absorbed what it felt like to be around people who believed connection mattered.
That early exposure shaped how I see the world, not because everyone around me lived without labels, but because I felt, even as a very young child, how damaging labels could be. My father reduced people to categories. He spoke about them as types rather than as whole human beings. And even at three years old, something in me resisted that way of seeing.
I did not have language for it then, but I felt the constriction. I felt how labels flattened people, how they erased complexity, how they made it easier to dismiss rather than to understand. In contrast, the world outside our front door was filled with people gathering, touching, laughing, and reaching across difference. The dissonance between those two ways of seeing stayed with me.
That tension taught me something lasting. No word can contain a person. No identity captures the fullness of a life. Labels may describe experiences, but they never define worth. I learned early that when we lead with categories, we lose the human being in front of us. When we lead with seeing their humanity first, something in us opens instead.
We stand for each other
This week, in the face of growing fear and division, my heart returned to something simple and human. Presence. Not to protest against the government nor one another, but for us to take a stand for one another. On February 14, a day long associated with love, our community in Taos will gather in quiet solidarity. We will stand together at the Taos Plaza from 12:00 to 1:00 pm. No speeches. No signs. No shouting. Just people holding hands. Being visible together. Choosing agape love as a public act.
February 14 is often framed as a private or romantic holiday, but at its core, it points to something larger. Love is not only a personal feeling. It is a collective capacity. It lives in the choice to remain connected, to care without conditions, and to refuse the erosion of our shared humanity. Gathering on this day is a way of reclaiming love as a public value, one that affirms dignity, belonging, and the simple truth that no one thrives alone.
This gathering is not about politics. It is about belonging. It is about reminding ourselves, and one another, that community is not selective. That safety for all of us grows when we refuse to let any group be erased.
All are welcome.
Native and Indigenous peoples.
Immigrants, refugees, and mixed-status families.
Gay, lesbian, and queer neighbors.
Neurodiverse and disabled.
Black, Brown, Latino, and Hispanic families.
People of faith and people of no faith.
Elders. Youth. Children.
Longtime residents and those newly arrived.
Come as you are. Bring nothing but your presence and your heart. For the heart is where we remember that we belong to one another. Love is a public act. Not romantic love, but agape love, the kind rooted in care, dignity, and shared humanity.
Wherever You Live, This Invitation Is for You
And if you do not live in Taos, this invitation is still for you.
If you feel called, gather in your own community on February 14. In a plaza, a park, a town square, or a place of meeting. Keep it simple. Keep it human. Let agape love be visible. Movements rooted in love do not begin with resistance, and they do not begin with force. They begin with remembering who we are to one another. When we hold hands, we remember.
We need everyone.
