Unsolicited Testimony

Admittedly, I had avoided the memorial for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. I knew it would be too much for me. I push it out of my mind often, not because I don’t care, but because I feel it so deeply that it keeps me from moving forward.

Tuesday, I went on a bus tour with other civic leaders to understand the challenges facing the East End. We stopped. The bloodstains are still on the concrete.

For a brief moment, I thought about how terrifying his last moments on this earth must have been. The tears came immediately. No one deserves to die like that. His last words were “me están matando” — they are killing me. I think of a family man, probably thinking of his wife and children, probably so scared.

And then I have to put it out of my mind again. It’s too hard. But maybe this is my brain finally letting me grieve his death, too. Yes, people die. People die terribly all the time. But this one hurts. The same way I think about my uncle, who I didn’t get along with, and how he died pleading for his life as the cancer took its final hold. No one deserves to die like that.

Sergio Rodriguez, a student at an East End high school, died at the hands of the railroads while trying to get to school. His death catapulted a conversation about rail safety that I had been pushing for and that others had been avoiding. I hate how reactive government is. His death could have been prevented. And while I appreciate that a bridge over the tracks is being built, I hate that it took a student’s death to make it happen. I hate that we all knew it was only a matter of time, and still felt no urgency.

Sergio had a younger brother, Marco, who has struggled with it ever since. He couldn’t bring himself to say his brother’s name, and he’s been working with therapists on his grief. I was sitting in front of Lorenzo’s memorial when the news came that a court was reviewing their father’s deportation case after ICE picked him up. Today, a court ordered him deported.

The groundbreaking for the bridge in Sergio’s name is September 1. It will happen without two members of his family, both for horrific reasons that could have been prevented.

I don’t know what happened to my home. This is not my home, not a place built on the mindset that people are subhuman, worthy of death and despair. I’ve lost hope in my home.