They’re Coming for Your Neighbors: Will You Stand or Stay Silent?

There has always been a "they," hasn't there? Always some faceless, remorseless force looming just beyond our vision, always hunting someone, always coming for some “other.” And we would do well to remember what Martin Niemöller tried to teach us after the horrors in Germany: "First they came for the Socialists," he said, "and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

But America has its own version of this story, though they don’t often tell it. Here, history is buried so deep in the books and films and archives that you wouldn’t know it unless you went digging. You see, they know that if they control historical information, they control empathy; and by controlling empathy, they control advocacy. Because if you don’t feel for your neighbor, you won’t raise your voice when they come to take them away. And if you don’t raise your voice, who will be left to raise it when they come for you?

So I ask you, what did your ancestors do when a mob of white men, outraged by the Chinese Exclusion Acts, decided the law didn’t go far enough and violently expelled nearly 600 Chinese people from Seattle on November 3, 1885  What did they do when Mexicans—Americans, mind you—were rounded up and deported in the early 1920s, their citizenship papers no shield from the indifferent, accusing eyes of white supremacy?

And tell me, where did your ancestors stand on September 11, 1851, when the Fugitive Slave Act came to Christiana, Pennsylvania? When a former slave owner—a forebear of a Supreme Court justice—tried to kidnap his neighbor, did your people turn a blind eye? Or did they stand shoulder to shoulder with their Black neighbors, like the people of Christiana, ready to say, “Not today. Not here”?

And what about when their Japanese neighbors were herded up and imprisoned during World War II, entire communities left to sit behind barbed wire and guard towers while their homes and businesses were ransacked or stolen. Did anyone protest? Did anyone make a sound?

And what will you do, America, when they come for your neighbors? Or perhaps the real question is this: Do you even know who they are? For if you don’t, if you’ve let yourself forget the face of those who came before, those who lived and died to warn you, then you’ve already given up the right to claim any outrage at all.

Because you see, there is a fear. A fear so deeply ingrained that it drives them, generation after generation, to maintain their grasp over a world that they’ve decided must forever remain in white male hands. And that fear means that they’re always coming for someone, for some "other," to remind them that they hold power. And in time, if history’s unyielding march is any teacher, they will come for you too.

So, I ask you, America—when the dark forces of intolerance, apathy, and hatred come, will you be able to say what your family did when they came for “them”? Or will your voice falter, searching for words and actions that were never taught, never passed down, because too many of you didn’t speak out when there was still someone to speak for?

And if you wonder what that kind of love and determination looks like, just think of that moment in the movie “Taken.” when Liam Neeson’s character says, “Hell, no,” and crosses every line and boundary to get his daughter back. And then think, who will be left to advocate for you when they come for you?

The answer, perhaps, is up to you.

Written By: Thulani Moore, Roots of Justice Trainer


​

---