What fires me up

I am an immigrant. I am Guatemalan. I am Latino. I am an American citizen. I am from Los Angeles.
All these elements make part of my way of thinking. All these elements connect me to immigrants, legal or illegal, Latinos, from the US or Latin America, to the rights of a US citizen, and the diversity of Los Angeles.
Today after my Chicano Studies 1A class at UCSB i was fired up more than usual. We watched a short video on how people cross the border into the border. Than I heard stories that took me by surprise yet they did not. The first story was that a girl, a US citizen her whole life, was raised in Mexico. Her and her parents (her mother a citizen and her father a legal resident) wanted to go the US for a vacation. At the time she was very young. At the border the border patrol did not let them pass because the mother forgot the girls papers. This to me is understandable but what happened next disgusts me. What happened next was that her father told the border patrol agents that they had a computer and can look her up. The response of the agents was to start hitting the father while her daughter pleaded to stop and yelled why they were hurting her father. He was ended up 2 days and jail and the girl left alone in Tijuana. I dont know where the mother was, In the US already was not clear. Luckily the father had a friend in Tijuana, and the little girl stayed with her. This same girl in my class then related to us that 2 years ago during the immigrant march in L.A., her and her mother were eating lunch near macarthur park. While they were having lunch they were chanting, Si se Puede, it can be done. While chanting this a police came up to them pulled out his gun and pointed at the mother. He demanded them to stop and to shut up. The mother asked her daughter what he said, and she told her that he had said to be quiet. The mother continued the chant and the cop was about to hit her when the daughter intervened. The cop told the daughter if she was undermining his authority, and she responded yes because the system does not always work and "FUCK THE SYSTEM, FUCK THE POLICE!" The cop started hitting the girl relentlessly, although the girl tried to fight back but she couldn't. She told us that if it was not for some dead she would have been beated to death.

She ended up in the hospital for a week in a half in the state of coma.

The next story that touched me was a dude said that his mother had came to Los Angeles illegally from Colombia. She used fake papers to attend USC, got her degree and became a doctor. After all the people she saved and treated, there was a wing in the hospital named after her. One day she went to Colombia, and was denied entry back into the US because of the fake papers. She was then diagnosed with cancer and passed away this past May. The son, the guy who was telling us the story with obvious pain questioned the worth of papers to classify one illegal or legal.

After that question he stated for that same reason of papers he has not even visited his mother's grave. His father had passed away when he was young. He then told us now, because of the class's tendency in getting in touch with one's self, he started to pray again.

I think of all this.

I share their story even though I never met them. My personal story is not as drastic or tragic, but nonetheless have a story. My story, our story, does not end now but chapters are still left to be written.

If you read this you could be sympathetic regardless of creed and race. Or you could oppose me and say who-knows-what.

Personally, inside me I want to say FUCK AMERICA, but then again I cannot. This country gave me and my family to prosper. It gave me the opportunity to education, a privelege that I am currently enjoying. I cannot say that, because America is too general. Not all US citizens are like those degrading Border Patrol agents or closed-minded laws. My point is that injustice is real. The only way to fight is with love. Martin Luther King Jr. said "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light cand do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." Another man I appreciate it is Ernesto Che Guevara who said the following: "If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine." The most influential person in my fight against this injustice is Jesus. I will fight with love, a comrade of Che, inorder to carry my cross.

Song: What goes around--Nas http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/What-Goes-Around-lyrics-Nas/5EEA5A2CE35D391648256B330043D915
Youtube link-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA6M7tUTfRc
Biblical Verse: We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. – 1 John 4:19-20