You can't look for the helpers when they are dead

This is a post about politics and babies

Every disaster — terror attack, shooting, natural disaster — that Mr Rogers quote starts circulating.

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

I roll my eyes at it, but frankly it’s always been how I look for stories as a journalist and news editor during a breaking news situation: find the incredible characters and humanity amongst the horror.

Except, we’re watching them get killed.

Renee Good, a poet and mother of three children, was killed by ICE agents a few weeks ago in Minneapolis. City leaders said she was a legal observer; the government accused her of being a domestic terrorist.

Now we’ve seen Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old VA nurse, shot and killed by ICE agents. Authorities say he was waving a gun around; video shows otherwise.

And it’s hard not to again feel hopeless and angry and outraged. And also just unsure of what the hell to do. Donate? Protest? Ruminate? Join something locally? Post about it?

Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash

I’m a journalist so usually the answer is report it out but I’m on mat leave so my world is currently very small and my audience even smaller.

I began dictating this post in my head as I blew bubbles at my 4-month-old baby, trying to distract her while I showered. I realized I hadn’t showered for two days. We’re no longer in the total newborn phase but a few weeks ago she woke up from her potato stage and demanded that the focus is just her, all the time. Constant attention that makes it hard to look at anything else.

The other day I had her on the change table and I couldn’t remember if I’d changed her diaper yet or not. I do it so many times a day that it just becomes a repetitive blur. All these little moments of care, that someone else did for us and has done for every single person. Like an ICU nurse, caring for veterans, or a mother of three.

When I was pregnant I would sit on the subway or at a stadium and think “all of these hundreds of people only exist because a woman spent months and months growing every single one of us”. Then once my baby was here, it was clear even more people were needed to take care of her and me and us.

Her passport arrived this week — the most visual version of her US citizenship, a tiny American with all the powers and weaknesses that it holds. Not that we ever had plans to be elsewhere for the birth but I wanted to make sure the baby was born here, to ensure that no one could take her citizenship away.

I avoid posting about politics publicly. I’m not a citizen. Sometimes it makes me feel ridiculous — we live in our nice little bubble eating fancy donuts and chatting with friends about how terrible things are but also who they’re dating and how a nanny share would work.

I haven’t had faith for a long time that things would get better here. These two deaths are just the latest by a new militarized empowered group, but we’ve seen how many unnecessary killings of Black and brown people by police over the years, also recorded in grainy footage that we are then told doesn’t show what we see it does.

But I’ve realized that assuming things will just always be bad is not fair when I’ve brought a new human onto the planet. We have to imagine better, although I don’t know how to.

I’ve had to call relatives and loved ones after a person is killed, trying to “share their story”. Usually, people need time. In the immediate aftermath, people speak in cliches, too traumatized by this sudden violence or disaster to distill their beloved. It all becomes generic – “they lit up every room, they would give you the shirt off their back”.

Whenever someone would give me one of those interviews, I would try and get more specific: could they tell me about a time they lit up a room? Usually they couldn’t and the answer would just be like “oh always, every day”.

And it always makes me sad because readers (and reporters) often only care about a disaster for a day or so. You usually only get one chance to share your person’s story.

An Associated Press reporter broke the news of Alex Pretti’s death to his parents. It’s not hard to imagine how awful that conversation would have been — the initial introduction, getting them to watch the video and having them confirm it looked like their son.

Then, according to AP, Michael Pretti and his wife Susan had to call police, Border Patrol and hospitals to try and see if it was true their boy had been killed. Finally they called the medical examiner, who told them they had a body which matched their son.

Later that day, just hours after their monumental loss, the family released a statement.

“We are heartbroken but also very angry.

“Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately he will not be with us to see his impact. I do not throw around the hero term lightly. However his last thought and act was to protect a woman.

“The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed.

“Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Thank you.”

Still caring for him, still protecting him.

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