Make Everything Connected

When you stand for something, lock arms.

“It’s not what you changed. It’s what you stood for.” Pete, husband of Maura Casey, Substack, Casey’s Catch.

Henhouse on the farm with the far eavestrough cleared off.

On a recent beautiful sunny, mid-70s breezy day on the farm, I was inspired to tackle a rangy vine that had climbed up and woven around the henhouse downspout and was starting to compromise the eavestrough. It was one root, with some long tendrils going every which direction—climbing over and through the stacked pile of bricks in front of the henhouse and finding its way up the downspout. It didn’t look like much of a chore. It hadn’t taken over the spout like the wisteria and honeysuckle that had buried the rainspout on the other side.

I chopped off the branches from the root, and as I tried to untangle the sinewy vines, I soon discovered that the different tendrils of the vine seemed to have purposely looped up and down and around to entangle themselves with other tendrils of the vine, weaving an intricate Celtic knot. It didn’t make sense from the perspective of just growing (like maybe straight up?). I wondered if it was actually a survival strategy of the plant—because it was really effective. The crimps and curls of the plant entwining not only the downspout, but also circling back to entwine the other vine tendrils did make it very complicated to untangle which part went with what stem, diverging in crazy ways so they couldn’t be pulled apart and pulled through the crack between the downspout and the henhouse and disposed of.

The Gordian knot of vines around the henhouse downspout.

It occurred to me that this might be a good metaphor for a useful survival strategy to answer the perilous times we’re in. (Nature is very clever, you guys.) Fascist authoritarian bullies try to separate us, pull us apart, and isolate us, the more easily to pick us off, pull us through a system that leaves us with no recourse, and dispose of us. But if we entwine interests, if we link arms, if we pull in others, we might be able to build a knot as complex as a Gordian knot, which gets more knotty the more you try to untangle and separate the strings (but hopefully with a different ending, i.e., we don’t all get decapitated to unravel the knot).

The plight of Kilmar Abrego Garcia seems to be a good, and so far somewhat successful, example of this. It started with a father being pulled from his car, handcuffed, and taken away in front of his 5-year-old autistic son. You might see overlapping tendrils of interest here already. The obvious main tendril and possibly root, of course, is the immigrant deportation issue. Organizations and active citizens were already alerted about the abuse of the system of deportation without due process. So you have a tendril that was already fighting back. There’s the tendril of abuse of ICE “law enforcement.” We’re understanding that cruelty is the point, but taking away a dad in front of a vulnerable child and leaving the child unparented until help can be called, really?! That doesn’t sound like “protecting and serving” the community. I don’t know what tendrils connected the mother and 5-year-old to their community and probably services for the child, but I imagine there were some (church, school, work) and the indecency of the arrest must have activated the mothers and people of conscience.

That was probably enough to start vibrating a large enough web of connection to alert this citizen’s representatives in Congress. (Again, I don’t know the story here about how Senator Chris Van Hollen became aware of the issue.) But now we’re entangling the situation in a much larger web. Senator Van Hollen’s office was able to get DOJ/ICE to admit the arrest was a mistake. (I believe that person who told the truth about that was fired.)

While the White House continues to message that Kilmar is a terrorist that we don’t want on our soil, the fact and reality don’t support the contention. (If they can prove it, why not prove it in court?) The man has been in the country 14 years. He has no criminal record. He’s been dutifully fulfilling everything the state has asked of him—reporting to ICE annually, getting a court order giving him permission to stay in the United States for fear of being killed by the gang the administration claims he’s part of. Being a terrorist and having no criminal record are incompatible. Also incompatible with being a terrorist is being married to a citizen and being a union member, a breadwinner, and support for a family with challenging circumstances.

But now you’re engaging the political community, which in and of itself has long tendrils. Senator Van Hollen intentionally wove their two stories together. He called for the return of his constituent. He has an oath and a commitment to serving those he represents. When he went to El Salvador, he strongly entwined his fate with that of his constituent. That was an amazing display of courage and commitment to stand up against wrongs, in this case, arrest and deportment without due process. He also, now, brought in public opinion of the larger American citizen audience. Now the tendrils of the citizens entwine around Kilmar (and his wife and family). You saw this in the townhall with Senator Chuck Grassley when the Senator was asked about bringing Kilmar home.

Can you see how this is getting more tangled and hard to keep separated so it can be disposed of?

And another tendril wove around Kilmar when his union leader weighed in on their unity, including demanding the return of their brother Kilmar home immediately.

We now have a virtual magic carpet of interwoven connections that are holding onto this father and keeping him from being disappeared and beyond help. These tendrils are reaching into Salvadorean prisons—where Trump thought he could safely stash people beyond the reach of the law, justice, and human decency. These interwoven vines are supporting Kilmar not being lost in the hellhole of CECOT or whichever prison El Salvador’s President Bukele chooses to hide him in.

That gives the courts time to activate and take on the forces trying to cut him off from his home, family, and community. Yes, even the Supreme Court was called upon to weigh in to “facilitate” his release.

Let me take a passing swipe at other two other essentials—finding allies and finding fun or joy where you can. This is going to be a long haul. Exhaustion will not be helpful. When you are fighting back, don’t be shy about pulling in even unlikely allies—anyone willing to pull in the same direction, even if they have different reasons for it.

This is my rescue puppy, Ava, helping clear the brush. Ava’s only motive is having fun. Her interest is simply in tug of war. She loves capturing big sticks and pulling them, chewing on them, playing chase with them. I’ll take it. A silly analogy, yes, delivered with some sugar. But that is an essay for another day.

Hold on to those you hold dear. Entwine yourselves around each other. And I mean this in the largest sense of beloved community. Wrap your tendrils around those who are working to support our democracy, their families, our communities, who are coaching little league, raising children—theirs or others’, feeding the poor, standing up for the good and what they believe. Don’t let them go into the maw of injustice. Entangle your fates.