We didn’t start the fire…
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Tens of thousands of demonstrators march on Hennepin Avenue during the ‘ICE out of Minnesota: day of truth and freedom’ protestPhotograph: Steven Garcia/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
I have been paralyzed. I couldn’t tell you if it was that fateful November 5th, or far before that, but I have been stuck. Sometime last summer I wrote a piece during what I believe was the first big wave of ICE presence and another failed attempt at a ceasefire in Palestine. Looking over pieces to publish this year as my first blog of the year I knew that it would be wrong to pretend that the world isn’t crumbling all around us. It would be detached and tone deaf to not use this space to speak about what matters the most to me.
When I first started ‘With Love, Alz’ it was always supposed to be something bigger than just myself and what I am personally going through. A large hidden part of work that I’ve been working at behind the scenes is a research/historical centered part of this blog dedicated to the stories I never learned and that I think needed more attention so that we could as a collective better understand how we got to this moment in time. So we could, so that I could use the past as a framework for the work yet to be done and how to get the work done. It isn’t easy, but freedom has always been a careful quilt to weave. Staying silent and staying frozen is not the answer to quell the fear. And even last summer I knew this to be true.
June 13th 2025
This week my cousins and I bought journals to keep track of our summer. They were simple notebooks likely made in China or India or Vietnam. With an elastic to hold the book closed and two green ribbons to keep our place in the pages as we continued moving through time. I wrote about the day chronicling my simple day while my cousin wrote frustratedly about how the day had been thrown off from the moment she woke up. I told her that I just learned to not let others anger affect me and to release negative energy; her brother chimed in “Shut the fuck up!” We all giggled at this. Later in the night my boyfriend called while we laid side by side in my cousins bed, her doped on cough medicine and my boyfriend on the other end of the line packing for his upcoming trip to Peru. All our perspectives of the day differed far and wide.
Sitting on the bus the next day on the way to work for a job that I don’t mind having, but didn’t want to go to today I think about all the lives of the passengers next to me. Fellow Miamians whose paths cross with mine for the hour or so bus ride into the city. When I ride in the morning it’s mostly black and brown folks on their way to work, but later in the afternoon like right now I wonder about the empty bus and where our paths will converge today. Perhaps someone will go see a movie. Another perhaps is headed to shop. I suspect most are headed to work like me, but only because of the nature of cost of living in a city like Miami and the current economic climate.
At home my aunt and I talk about the protests in Los Angeles. My uncle lives over there. Innocent people seeking better lives and our government is kidnapping them at their children’s schools and at their workplaces. People who have asked for nothing but the means to do for themselves and take care of their families. They contribute to our communities not just in the greedy capitalistic sense that liberals and centrists will use to justify them being here, but to the cultural richness. They bring their music, their food, their joy, their love, their passion, and their vibrance.
The border moved around them. Land that we have no claim over as we borrow this earth and we think we have control over what people deserve to be here. Land that invaders pillaged and continue to destroy. Land that was prosperous and rich before any European ships landed on its coasts. At home in Florida right now the heat has become unbearable. 86° feels much closer to 96° and the humidity is heavy. I can’t help but wonder how much more bearable the heat would be if decades of corrupt republican leadership didn’t sell out their constituents to developers and billionaires hell bent on destroying our natural resources.
The thing about the mosaic that Americans weave is we all have a duty to care about each other and this land. We all have a responsibility to speak up, stand up, and defend the richness of our soil. Our dark past is supposed to enable us to reflect and inspire us to do better. To make sure that those that fought before us did not do it in vain. To make sure that those who come after us have it better than us. We as individuals don’t have the capacity to focus on every thing all at once, but the collective has the power to make change together. We need activists who understand that climate change and civil rights are interconnected. Who understand that pollution and racism are systemic issues. Collectives of people who not only talk online informing the masses but are in their communities supporting the people.
In 2022 when I began this journey of crafting ALZ, also ‘with love, Alz’ and ‘AlyzzaLouis.com’, I wanted to center love. I move through the world trying to put love first always. Many who know me in my personal life know that I am always talking. Always making connections trying to show everyone how insane the notion that we all exist in this time together and in this big wide world we still had the chance to meet. As an American, so much of the people that I know and the family that I have is the essence of this. My mother’s parents immigrated to Brooklyn, New York in the 80s. My father’s parents to Texas in the late 60s. If not for their eventual migration down to Miami, if not for fate, if not for chance, if not for the universe their paths would not have converged in the early 2000’s when my mother met my father.
If not for fate, if not for chance, if not for the universe the same could be said for any of my cousins or friends. Love brings people together. Love creates and builds communities. Love is an act. It is because my grandparents so loved each other they took the risk of leaving their home countries for a better life away from home. It is love that kept them going when they missed their parents and siblings because they knew they had better opportunity to help them here. Love is what drives so many to make the treacherous trek to cross an imaginary border so that their children can be safe, so that their children can have better.
I’m not a particularly religious person. I hate the phrase, ‘spiritual not religious’, but I believe in the love of Jesus Christ. I believe in the power of a child born of parents fleeing conflict and persecution to inspire the masses. I believe in the kindness and the courage that he had to stand against corruption for his fellow man even when it led to his own demise. I don’t know how anyone could hear of his life and his journey and then look at their neighbors with hate. I don’t know how one could hear of how Jesus helped the poor and needy then call for the gutting of social services. How one could be prolife and not want children to be safe and fed in schools. My separation from the church is from how often the same people preaching treat those who do not look like them. How often have I heard pastors mocking Muslims and Jews as if they do not serve the same God. How often have I heard the same purity doctrine they try to enforce on the women in their congregation while they simultaneously belittle the hijab.
My love for Jesus Christ is for a man who was radical in his love of humanity. A man who stood for his people. My love for America is not for the government, but for the people who make up this nation. For the mountains as old as dinosaurs and the lakes that cross through states. From coast to coast for every living creature that finds home here. Some mornings I check the news and I am outraged and frustrated. I want to scream and beg God to send the flood. But I remember there is work to be done and if we don’t do it nothing will change. If we become complacent we become complicit. If we stay silent we help normalize the chaos. We cannot let hate win. We cannot let these days pass us by while we sit and do nothing.
At night my cousin holds my hand before we fall asleep. I have separation anxiety and always feel the need to be close to my safe spaces, people who accept me in all my ways. I choke back a sob when I think of all the children going home to empty houses. Children separated from the parents. Children in Palestine who still find time to play amidst the rubble of their cities. Children in ICE detention centers who huddle together for warmth. It is by stupid luck that I am an American. I did nothing to earn or deserve this. I am not different than those children. We are made from the same flesh and blood. We hope and dream the same. We laugh and cry the same.
But for all those that can’t speak, that are no longer with us to hear we must scream. We must be loud. We must demand and fight for an end to oppression everywhere. It is imperative that we do not stop. It’s is imperative that as the days grow longer and the heat rises we let those sparks going off inside us catch fire. The empire won’t stop until we’re all gone or silent. We must ensure that neither occurs.
