I was riding on a cramped subway car in some lonesome claustrophobic tunnel on the fringe of Brooklyn when burly looking men in camouflage and body armor approached a mother, a father, and their child. The mother and daughter huddled close to one another while the man brokered in broken in English with the agent in charge. Using what little words he knew, he tried to defend himself against the barrage of increasingly hostile questions from the agent. It escalated— they began shouting, the man was forced up against the plastered blue interior of the G line train while he was handcuffed, underscored by the screeching wails of his daughter. The man was forced out of the train, bound between two arms and assault weapons. We were yelled at by guards, now swarming the train to ‘stay the fuck away’ and to ‘let them do their work.’ The mother & her daughter were ushered outside another door of the train by a second pair of agents as the doors of the subway quickly shut closed and the memory of violence lapsed beneath the metronomic drone of fluorescent lights. Except I haven’t forgotten.
The year was 2018 and it was the first summer the current administration began its aggressive ICE raids in New York City. Over the course of that summer, over 300 immigrants would be arrested and detained in ICE raids conducted in NYC.
Since that day, I’ve played over that moment a thousand times in my head. I exercised an immense amount of privilege in not stepping off that train to be with that family, a decision that has come to haunt me as one of my biggest regrets in life. But in the moment I didn’t know how; it was as if my entire body were paralyzed.
Those living with privilege must be pushed beyond the bounds of comfort to empower justice and equity for all people. The number of deaths, detainees, and separations at the border, the number of people of color killed or incarcerated every year by law enforcement, the number of working people living without a home or stable finances— these numbers are real and they matter. And while data helps illustrate the severity of injustices in this country, it doesn’t always help people understand why they should care.
But stories can.
There are a scarcity of platforms in this country where vulnerable communities can safely transcribe their experience of disparity without being objectified. Rarely do marginalized communities get the opportunity to champion their narrative. Their likeness is capitalized in films, broadcast in headliners, and weaponized in politics while the cycle of suffering persists and they reap little fruit in its wake. Injustice thrives when it is allowed to remain unseen. In building platforms of communication that represent all people equitably— whether they be in media, in art or education— we can protect communities targeted by hostile policy.
That horrific day on the subway has become a tectonic motivator in the work I’m doing today. Stepping away from acting, I’ve come to recognize that there is an opportunity to help use my privilege to create those equitable platforms in media for communities divided by disparity.
For the family— I know I cannot roll back time and make a different choice. All I can do now is use my privilege to shield targeted communities and empower platforms that elevate the voices of vulnerable demographics in our society.