September, 2026

In the affluent community where I live, I walk down the street wearing a t-shirt of the elite Jesuit institution I once attended. It’s as if I presumptuously assume that the t-shirt will alleviate the prospect of being seen by surveilling gazes. Yet, I am instantaneously reminded as car doors lock when I walk beside them, and as purses clutch when I pass by, that my body is rendered as a site of suspicion. I am reminded that my Blackness precedes my existence. I am reminded that my darkened body occludes the presumption of innocence. I am reminded that my dark skin has eviscerated my humanity and has turned me into an object of fear.

When Omar came upon the place in a neighborhood on the outskirts of town, he saw a white rosary hanging over the door and felt a sense of relief. He had been told it was a shelter run by nuns. He had been sleeping poorly for several days and walking in very difficult conditions. His feet were injured, his shoes were torn, and his clothes—which had been wet and had dried on his body over the past two weeks—were terrible. The smell was unbearable. His wife and two young children had been taken in three days earlier at another location, where they could regain their strength. He, being a man, was not allowed to stay in the same space; that was the safety policy they had explained to him.

Every political community arises, to some extent, from a promise of protection. But that promise cannot be understood in a narrow or reductionist way. Protection does not mean only defending against danger, containing threats, or neutralizing risks. It also means upholding the conditions that make a truly human life possible: belonging, recognition, education, work, health, participation, relationships, and rights. A society does not protect only when it prevents someone from being attacked; it also protects when it prevents someone from being abandoned, rendered invisible, or excluded from the community to which they belong.