we do not negotiate with terrorists

From a pure­ly cap­i­tal­ist stand­point, it’s counterintuitive.
And from a hu­man stand­point it’s a vul­gar dis­play of dehumanization. 

The 4th largest econ­o­my in the world.
Pow­ered by agriculture.
Pow­ered by mi­grant farm workers. 

I grew up in a mi­grant farm­ing town called Was­co, California.
Rose cap­i­tal of the world.
We have an agree­ment in California.
We grew up with these kids.
Eat­ing at their hous­es and hav­ing them over for din­ner at ours.
We hat­ed our teach­ers together.
Spent sum­mers swim­ming and skat­ing and play­ing sports together.
They are our neigh­bors and our family
and they pow­er California.
We are aware of their con­tri­bu­tions and char­ac­ter and we’ve al­ways pro­tect­ed them re­gard­less of what any pa­per said be­cause they are Californians. 

And we will con­tin­ue to. 

Con­ver­sa­tions about law are use­less when talk­ing to a law­less regime. This is where our val­ues and ethics come into play as in­di­vid­u­als and as a so­ci­ety. Peo­ple are be­ing kid­napped and ter­ror­ized by the peo­ple put in place to pro­tect and serve. In MLK Jr’s Let­ter From A Birm­ing­ham Jail he says, “One has not only a le­gal but a moral re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to obey just laws. Con­verse­ly, one has a moral re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to dis­obey un­just laws.”

In Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence, which be­came a foun­da­tion­al text for both Gand­hi and MLK Jr., Hen­ry David Thore­au, who was jailed for re­fus­ing to pay tax that fund­ed the Mex­i­can-Amer­i­can War and slav­ery, said “If the law is of such a na­ture that it re­quires you to be the agent of in­jus­tice to an­oth­er, then I say, break the law.”

Even Je­sus in Matthew 23:23 says “Woe to you, teach­ers of the law and Phar­isees, you hyp­ocrites! You give a tenth of your spices … But you have ne­glect­ed the more im­por­tant mat­ters of the law—justice, mer­cy, and faith­ful­ness. You should have prac­ticed the lat­ter, with­out ne­glect­ing the for­mer.”

There are con­ver­sa­tions to be had around im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy and how to keep a coun­try safe. But this isn’t that. This is do­mes­tic ter­ror­ism be­ing per­pe­trat­ed (in­ept­ly) by our own gov­ern­ment against the people.

Act ac­cord­ing­ly. Re­sist at every point. Let them know. 

WE DO NOT NE­GO­TI­ATE WITH TERRORISTS.

—A proud life­long Californian.

 

—an­dru defeye

Flom­mist An­dru De­f­eye is the Emer­i­tus Poet Lau­re­ate of Sacra­men­to. Copy­right © 2025 An­dru De­f­eye. Top pho­to @siangiizzphotography

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