Mister Rogers wasn’t wrong when he said, “Look for the helpers.” It was as instructive as it was revolutionary. If you look for helpers and don’t find them, you and those around you can and must become the helpers.

He never said, “Don’t be scared”. Instead, his advice points to the most fundamental truth: it’s better to be scared and together than scared and alone.

And what to do when Trump’s ICE goons shoot the helpers?

The answer is right back at the source. Look for the helpers.

The body of Alex Pretti, a helper, was escorted through the hospital by yet more helpers, veterans, nurses, scientists, and researchers. Alex’s legacy is clear in fighting cancer and helping veterans and loving dogs and loving their kids and community and writing poetry and showing up for neighbors and working for a better life and advocating for love. Alex’s parents and friends and family and associates and coworkers and neighbors write notes about the inspiring ways he’d led his life.

Renee Good was a loving mother and a poet whose wife said she “was made of sunshine”. Her family called her a “beautiful light” who was working to spread joy, kindness, and build community.

The Trump regime would have you believe that these two Minnesotans were not heroes for standing up to ICE. That they wasted their lives in protest. That they interposed themselves into situations where they didn’t belong. That is discernably untrue.

ICE and DHS policies are an existential threat to American democracy and freedoms. We are watching in realtime as they demolish the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 14th amendments. They do not care about due process. They do not care whether you are peacefully protesting, a US Citizen or legal immigrant, or just walking down the street minding your own business. The second they label you a domestic terrorist for some normal thing, they now feel they can violate whatever rights of yours they want – up to and including shooting you in the face – because you have become an enemy combatant.

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

George Orwell, 1984

We must know intrinsically to be a helper is better than to be idle – because we know it’s better to be scared and together. As dangerous as it may be to be a helper, it’s no more safe to be an idle spectator.

Keith Porter was shot on New Years Day by ICE officers because he had the audacity to be outside with a weapon in his hands. “My son leaves behind two beautiful daughters, ages 10 and 20. They were his heart. Everything he did, every plan he made, was for them,” said his mother.

Many more still have died in ICE custody including Geraldo Lunas Campos, Victor Manuel Diaz, Parady La, Luis Beltran Yanez–Cruz, Heber Sanchez Dominguez, and Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres.

We all held our breath because we believed Liam Ramos might be next, having fallen ill after being detained after arriving home from school with his father. Liam is not even the only child from his school that was detained.

We knew early on that the Trump regime was goose-stepping at record pace towards fascism and that we inch closer and closer to fascism each day:

• When Trump kicked off Day 1 pardoning all 1,600 January 6th rioters, then issuing an executive order that attempted to unconstitutionally nullify birthright citizenship, and classifying solar, renewables, and wind power as public enemy #1
• When the Trump regime began pushing lie after lie about the 250+ men deported to El Salvador CECOT – lying whether the planes were in the air, lying to judges who ordered the planes turned back, lying about whose jurisdiction the men were under, while gleefully cavorting along with their authoritarian buddy Bukele going so far as to say on Twitter, “Ooops, too late.”
• The MAGA crowd gleefully and incorrectly, as usual, tittered that illegal aliens (many of whom were not) did not enjoy due process protections under the Constitution. The UN’s human rights experts began to speak up
• When the Trump regime lost every legal battle to keep Abrego Garcia confined to CECOT, when Senators and Congresspeople stood up to complain, and when he arrived back in the US, the regime opted instead to try and convict him of what largely looked to be imagined crimes and to deport him instead to Uganda, a country where he has no ties
• When Trump allowed Elon Musk to gut the Federal Government agency by agency destroying an incredible amount of American ingenuity and accrued investment virtually overnight – including an agency whose key role is to protect consumers from abuse, critical ethics and JAG officers, and allowed Musk and DOGE to gain access to vast swaths of data on US Citizens which has now fallen into unscrupulous hands
• When Musk gutted USAID and sentenced hundreds of thousands of the world’s poorest, sickest children to death
• When Trump – without authorization from Congress – seized a sovereign nation’s leader, invaded its capital, and then somehow obtained billions of dollars worth of its oil, then set his eyes on Greenland over the objections of literally every ally the US has ever had
• When Trump’s key advisor Stephen Miller opted for a campaign of cruelty time and time again including separating families, pushing white nationalist messaging throughout
• When Bondi confirmed the pressure on Minnesota was all to procure the voter data
• When Noem bragged about literally shooting a dog and a goat in her biography and instead of derision, it was a symbol of strength in this regime
• When the spineless Republican congress opted to hide the memorial honoring the efforts of the Capitol Police to keep everyone safe that day
• When the Trump regime launched a website to literally re-write history
• When the US Embassy confirmed that ICE would be backing up Secret Service agents to provide security for the Winter Olympics, Italy’s government (which is pretty far right in general) told US officials they didn’t want ICE in Italy. Italy knows what it’s talking about thanks to its near 25 year dalliance with fascism and dictatorship under Mussolini. OVRA, Mussolini’s secret police, was responsible for the arrest of about 6,000 people, many of whom were either tried by special courts or sent into exile, but specific numbers of those killed are not clearly documented. Is anyone surprised that ICE’s detention population of 73,000 would seem shocking?
• When filming an ICE officer lands you on a “nice little database” of so-called domestic terrorists

Trump is objectively a bad leader. Trump is objectively a bad president.

His track record of dishonest, morally bankrupt, cruel, and outright gross behavior would be disqualifying if these were normal times, if Congressional Republicans had any sort of spine or sense of decency, or really any sense other than fear of the MAGA base.

Trump’s policies are decidedly harmful by almost every measure. He doesn’t know how to inspire confidence – instead, he stokes chaos and confusion. He readily sides with the ultra-wealthy against the poor, creating regressive policies that range from drug policy to energy production. If you’ve got enough money, no crime is unforgivable in his eyes (including being illegally in the country). Speaking out against him runs the risk of retribution from the Federal government, including for projects that Trump himself supported. Trump’s mercuriality on tariffs (which are also not constitutionally approved) , funding projects, and most of his own opinions have led many to speculate that he’s actually suffering from an advanced form of dementia. He actively uses SNAP benefits for the poorest citizens as a bargaining chip to get states run by Democrats to agree to his executive branch overreach.

Trump’s self-proclaimed Tariff Expert, Peter Navarro, is a quack whose ideas are so ridiculous that it was said that appointing him as Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy was akin to making a “flat earther” the head of NASA. Navarro cited himself as an expert in his own book, inventing a fake person and using an anagram for his own name, so he could justify his wackadoodle economic theories.

Trump, Miller, and Noem have so much blood on their hands – and most of it behind closed doors, hidden in ICE detention facilities like Alligator Alcatraz, missing in moments that weren’t captured on camera. If Trump’s regime is willing to shoot a white, male, U.S. citizen in broad daylight and shoot a white, female, U.S. Citizen in the face in front of her dog and wife, and then lie to your face about both of those incidences and more, with 70,000+ in ICE custody, there’s no question that there are untold atrocities happening in the darkness against people of color that we will never hear about.

We cannot separate the actions of the agents from the ideological imperatives of Trump, Miller, Noem, and everyone up and down the chain of command. These are not isolated incidents, but rather the consequences of a campaign intent on maximizing the cruelty, brutality, and divisiveness that are at the heart of Trump and Miller’s anti-immigrant stances, implemented and enhanced through Noem and others in the cabinet.

Trump’s advisors are reckless, their policies and approaches divisive and tactless, ham-fisted, rooted in misinformation and hatred and vile and cruelty – because they wrongly believe that strength is derived from the ferocity of hate, the speed of cruelty, the depth of the vile, the repetition of the lie.

We know better. We know hatred, cruelty, and vile are not enviable traits, are not empowering traits, are not traits that command respect, but pitiable ones.

We know better because we see the truth and power of community, walking arm in arm, sharing grief, documenting abuses and bearing witness, placing flowers, being witty on signs, dressing up in costumes on street corners, banging drums outside a hotel room, holding space for patience and knowing that accountability takes time.

We know the quiet strength and determination of a community held hostage. We know the resolve of a people who place their bodies in the way of harm committed against their neighbors. We know that community, love, hope, and kindness are sources of truth, empowerment, and growth.

We can pity Trump’s goons as they knock down any helper, even as more rise and stand up against these atrocities. We can pity them because there will always be more helpers than folks trying to knock them down. And we know the pitiable end of their story: Trump and his ilk end up scared and alone, because their hate, cruelty, vile, and lies don’t connect, they don’t build, they don’t inspire. They isolate. They diminish. They shrink. And in the end, they are only ever accompanied by their own hate and vile.

We can absolutely hope that someday Trump dons his big boy pants and goes to therapy to handle his tantrums in a more productive way than sending signals through project and grant rollbacks. In the meantime, we can point out where Trump’s policies, enacted through his utterly inept and largely clueless cabinet, are actively damaging and degrading the lives and values of Americans.

The time to be a helper is here. YOU are the only thing between America and fascism. Your voice matters. You are NOT alone. Do it afraid – because we are all doing it afraid. There’s no more cavalry coming. Step up. Speak up. Speak out.