I am currently in my third year of trying to free Audrius Kazenas from immigration detention; to keep him here where his two little girls for whom he was the primary caretaker for over eight years live and prevent him from being deported to a country where he has been brutally tortured before and where it appears he could be tortured, even killed, if he were to return. He has a great deal of support in our community and is greatly missed by many. His continued detention has created havoc in my and my family’s life in ways I could never have imagined. Injustice has consequences.
Through it all I have come to learn that the fact that those of us who want Audrius to stay are all citizens, most of us tracing back to the early days of the founding of this country, means nothing. I’ve also learned that documents mean nothing, honesty means nothing and laws mean nothing. I’ve learned that when law enforcement in this country has to make a choice between enforcing the law or protecting one of their own, too many of them say to hell with the law as well as the people they are charged to protect and look out for other law enforcement officers instead. I’ve learned that a criminal who knows how to play the system and who works within law enforcement carries far more weight that a victim or witness who trusts the system and who is not a member of law enforcement.
I have learned many things that I did not want to know and that should not be. I was raised being taught that if you know of a crime or injustice and you stay silent, then further crimes or injustices committed by the same person or group are partially on you - if you do not speak up, whether through fear or just a sense that it is not your problem, then you have chosen a future for yourself, your family and for us all that is less safe and less just. I was raised to believe that I am my brother’s keeper.
And so I have stayed in this fight and I will continue to stay in this fight. Those who I oppose have publicly suggested that I should be handled by being shot. Well yes, that is what it will take to remove me from this and those people might want to seriously make plans to do that because I have “hit the wall” on my tolerance. Today I finally broke - I can take no more.
This morning I took my 15 year old scruffy alley cat, Joey, into the vet and had him put down. It’s the fifth animal I’ve lost this year. I’ve done animal rescue off and on for over 40 years, so putting an animal down is not new to me, I’ve had to do it many times and though it makes me sad, I manage okay. But animals do not tend to die in my house, they frequently live long past a normal lifespan so that I have wound up with a large number of geriatric animals. My cats that died this year were all very old - most were over 20 - one died in my lap. We lost our English Setter, Simi, too, a sweet dog who was left with his dead owner for days before someone discovered what had happened. He was only ten when he died, but he had developed a twisted stomach and with the costs of having someone in detention mounting, I could not afford the money for surgery - he had to be put down.
The vet said that my old alley cat probably had diabetes, that we could do something, but it would be costly, would mean many trips to the vet’s and Joey was 15 so there was that to consider. Joey was still full of life, but he’d stopped eating and without treatment he could not survive. Again I had to make the choice as, with Audrius still in detention, I neither had the money or the time to indulge my wish to save our beloved Joey. My son and I held him and pet him as he took his last breaths, and then I broke, the tears would not stop, I couldn’t stand straight, I felt that I just couldn’t go on anymore, that I just couldn’t take another hit - not a single hit more. I mentally quit, for a few hours I was not on the job - then I hired myself back.
Our vet and his assistant know what we have been going through these last few years, they have been following Audrius’ story closely. They have known me for a long time, we’ve worked on the same animal rescue cases before. They assured me that sometimes things happen this way - you go years without a death and all of a sudden you loose one after the other, but their assurances didn’t help. Our beloved Joey Kitters was dead and he could have had more time, maybe a year or two to take up two spaces on the couch, to follow me down the road as I walked the dogs loudly proclaiming that I should wait up for him and that he was a dog too. He didn’t have that chance because my finances and time have been stretched beyond the limits of both. He should have at least had a chance, but injustice has consequences - and most of those happen behind the scenes, a dead kitty or dog, a ruined Christmas, a child performing poorly, a young person knocked off onto the wrong path . . . life is made a little less every time that injustice prevails.
Simi Sim would have had a chance, would have had the surgery he needed to save his life if Audrius were not still sitting in detention. Joey Kitters would have had a chance too. They might not have made it anyway, but I could have afforded them a chance. This is wrong and I am tired beyond belief; tired of being patient and understanding and reasonable about all of what the powers-that-be feel I should be while they slowly twist and mangle what is left of our lives.
What does that mean? It means I am done making nice-nice with people who have done nothing but pervert our system of justice. It means the NH state correctional officer who publicly, in writing, suggested that I be handled with “justice at 1,000 yards” better get his ass in gear and do it - I’m giving him fair warning that that is what he will need to get the job done because he does not have the ability to handle me face-to-face without a gun. It means I quit being pushed around by supposed “law enforcement” who think their freakin‘ position gives them the right to roll right over the rest of us. Yup, I quit - which is another way of sayin‘ . . . I’m not gonna stop working to expose what has been done here as long as there is breath left in this body. Just sayin’ . . .
0 comments:
Post a Comment