Shannon Gibney: The KidLit community and the ICE invasion

Introduction

In the midst of what the Department of Homeland Security has called, “the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out,” it can be easy to forget that you write books for children.

By the third month that 3,000 ICE agents have descended on your modest Midwestern city, by the time two of your neighbors are abducted in front of your house at 6:40 am by two laughing agents, by the time you stop driving two children of a vulnerable family in your neighborhood to school because their grandfather was detained and their parents are so confused they can’t even think about school for their kids, after the abduction of a family and their dog one block from your son’s high school and their subsequent release from Whipple after members of your Rapid Response patrol group tracked them down and filed various legal documents swiftly, after you have helped form and lead a school sanctuary team and its attendant mutual aid arms for food and rent support, after you drive two different children from two new households in your neighborhood to and from school every day because their parents don’t want to get picked up by ICE, after you and your daughter visit the Ecuadorian family you are matched with for food support and realize from one glance that they likely haven’t eaten in days since they can’t work since they can’t leave the house, after you subsequently drive to the grocery store and buy them some basic staples until you can pick up more from the food shelf the next day, after about a fourth of your daughter’s elementary school classmates and half of your son’s high school peers opt for online learning because it is the safest option in an environment where kids and adults are getting snatched on the way to school, after ICE agents kill two legal observers about seven minutes from your house, after you are told that the feds are drawing down the occupying force by 700 but conditions on the ground don’t seem to be changing at all, after you wonder when this nightmare might finally end, when you realize that its ending for you and your community will probably be its beginning for some other children, some other families somewhere else, then and only then you may think about the novel you are writing about teens in post-apocalyptic America, the children’s picture book on watersheds you are drafting with your colleagues, the Black History Month reading you have at the local elementary school, and what storytelling and books mean in the middle of the end of American democracy.

When feeding people with words is not enough, feeding people with food becomes essential.

When you cannot fight for your neighbor’s humanity on the page, you are forced to do it on the streets.

This is what we have come to in Minneapolis.

I have some friends here who are writers who cannot write. I can write, but this is all I can write about now.

I wrote a children’s picture book about another flashpoint of tragedy and violence in my community about five years ago – or rather, a young Black girl’s journey through it. But I couldn’t write We Miss You, George Floyd until after the crisis had ended, and my nervous system had calmed down. And I had some perspective. I think it’s important to create space for children to grieve, and to process trauma. But they have to be alive, fed, sheltered, with their families to be able to do that.

I was asked to write something for this blog about what the KidLit community should be doing in this moment to support those of us surviving the siege. My answer to that is the same answer I have to everyone right now: Help us fight. Help us save ourselves and our neighbors in an impossible situation.

A friend told me that this is how powerful people and corporations win: They just wait. Because people on their own, without government to protect them, and in this case with government attacking them, grow tired. Their resources wear thin. While they resist, because they keep on resisting they become alone over time, and therefore begin to lose hope.

Minnesotans cannot write or share our stories adequately now because we are in the middle of a vicious occupation. Help us end it, so stories – for children, and for all of us – can flow freely again.

Shannon Gibney lives, writes, teaches, and organizes in Minneapolis.

Please support vital mutual aid efforts on the ground in Minnesota here: standwithminnesota.com

Also, consider supporting the upcoming Authors for Minnesota. If you’re not close enough to visit the participating bookshops, then scan the QR code and make a donation.

Thank you so much Shannon, for all you’re doing and thank you for finding the capacity to write this.

Be well, and do good

I

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