What price, all this violence?

When I started to write this over a week ago a hunger and labor strike was happening at Delaney Hall, an immigrant detention center in Newark, New Jersey. Inside the detention center immigrants were demanding improved conditions and care. Outside the center protestors were demanding that the immigrants be released from their captivity. The protestors — including U.S. Senator Andy Kim — were being met by teargas and pepper ball pellets fired by state police in riot gear. It was violent chaos that never needed to happen.

As I write this now, a cage has been erected next to a partially destroyed White House. Just over two hundred miles from the New Jersey cage holding people simply for the crime of being an immigrant, this cage will hold something entirely different. A UFC (which apparently stands for Ultimate Fighting Championship — I had to look it up) match that will bring combat sports within inches of the White House on Trump’s 80th birthday. An event where hundreds of active duty troops will be in attendance, actively recruited by the Pentagon to show up as long as they pay their own way and meet the weight requirements. It will be violent chaos that should never be allowed to happen.

The images from both Newark and DC are absolutely jarring and I have not been able to shake them. In New Jersey we bear witness to multiple people being pepper sprayed. We see law enforcement on horseback and federal agents with long guns confronting the protestors. In DC we watch a huge metal structure reminiscent of Spiderman villain Doc Ock arise in front of the White House, right next to the open wound where the East Wing once stood. A building where history has been demolished but a fighting ring constructed. Images of violence or of an impending celebration of violence.

And I ask, what cost all this violence?

One year ago I wrote with a similar question: what price all this fear? I worried:

The cost of all this fear, felt most acutely by those targeted by the evil machinations of a profoundly violent administration, will ultimately cost us all. And I don’t just mean economic cost. What happens to a country that is based on a foundation of fear? Where workers are afraid to go to work, children are afraid to go to school, and people start to question leaving their homes at all? Where masked men with guns can roam neighborhoods racially profiling folks in search of anyone that might “look like” an immigrant? Where so many of us question whether they are actually ICE agents or white supremacists taking advantage of the willfully induced chaos to cosplay law enforcement and terrorize people of color?

What kind of society does this make us?

In the past year since I wrote this piece, we haven’t even begun to answer those questions. The amount of damage done to people across the country — and the world — is incalculable. A year later, the amount of violence is incalculable too. For me, these two images encapsulate so much of that violence. People fighting to have their friends and neighbors released from a detention center with deplorable conditions, just to have agents of the state fight them right back. One of the most iconic buildings in our country degraded by the construction of a fighting cage right next to the destruction of its own halls.

So much fighting.

Whether it be the government fighting ordinary citizens so they can continue to terrorize ordinary immigrants, or the head of our government using his own home to stage a fighting match, the theme is consistent. As is the violence. I in no way want to minimize the violence that defined the creation of this country or so much of its history. But I do want to name the violence that defines this administration. That IS this administration. Violence that we bear witness to every time we look at the news or open our social media. Violence that simply wouldn’t be happening if Trump wasn’t waging war against immigrants and the people who support them. Violence that he has literally invited onto his front yard.

What impact does this have on our country?

I worry about this all the time. I worry that people are becoming numb. That our hearts and minds are simply not constructed to process all the awfulness. That more stories about horrific and preventable violence show up on our radar screens and leave them just as quickly. Because we simply can’t take any more in. I worry that most of these stories will never cross our radar screens because we simply can’t keep up with the sheer volume. People talk about needing to turn off the news and I absolutely understand that. We have to figure out how to survive all this. But what happens when we don’t even hear the stories of those who won’t survive this? When suffering is met with silence because we collectively have nothing left to give to those who are suffering?

I worry about the impact on our youth. Do we fully understand the experience of growing up in the Trump years on our children’s hearts and minds? We know that children experience great trauma when they grow up in homes where domestic violence is occurring, or in neighborhoods where violence is prevalent. Do we understand the impact of growing up in a country whose leaders embody and celebrate violence? What is the cost of all this violence on them?

There is also the economic cost of all this violence. Congress is now on the verge of pumping another $70 billion into Trump’s war against immigrants with virtually no strings attached. A blank check earmarked for even more violence. In July 2025, Congress allocated over $170 billion in immigration enforcement funding – $150 billion of which remains unused, yet they still need even more to feed this voracious and violent beast. All this money could be spent on housing and healthcare, school lunches and mental health programs. Resources that could be used on caring for people, not caging them. Cruelty is very expensive.

We have lost so much because of all this violence. Lives, safety, resources, and I fear, some of our collective humanity. If we let that happen. We can’t become numb. We cannot look at a U.S. senator being tear gassed and scroll down to the next story. We cannot watch a cage being erected at the White House and shrug it off as Trump’s latest unhinged folly. We cannot become desensitized to the violence that surrounds us because if we do it will fully engulf us.

To be clear, I am not saying we have to take on every horrific thing this administration does. There’s no way. It’s impossible, and that is likely their very strategy. They can get away with things simply because they are flooding us and we can’t possibly stop all the dams from breaking. But our humanity requires us to try.

I believe we can bring down the incalculable costs of all their violence — as long as we do not allow it to overwhelm us, that we do not allow ourselves to become desensitized. As individuals we can’t do all of it, but collectively we can do a lot of it if we each take on one part of it. Find your lane. Grab on to something you can work on or shout about, and keep on working and shouting. Do not let it go. I don’t want to live in a country that is constantly paying the exorbitant cost of their never ending violence. I don’t want our children to see the hurt and fear they cause without also seeing the care and strength of our response. I don’t want them to learn that their hate and harm is the norm.

The cost of all their violence is incalculable. Our refusal to accept it should be even larger.