by Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad
At the time of writing, there is great peril in our country; there is also great promise.
The level of state violence against immigrants and the protestors supporting them provokes an undeniably just rage.
As Audre Lorde taught us, it is healthy to give this rage oxygen.
It is communicating something important: an urgency, a need to stand against injustice, a need to insist upon safety and protection for all.
I wrote a chapter on anger and compassion in my forthcoming book, The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde (North Atlantic Books, 2026).
But what is most present for me as I write this newsletter is the research I’ve been doing on how Buddhism as a set of doctrines, responds to the prison industrial complex, including the immigration system.
I understand the institutions of our society as a set of interactive relationships, not independent entities. This mirrors how Angela Davis describes the prison industrial complex in her 2003 book Are Prisons Obsolete? In it, she discusses an “array of relationships” that are interlocking, and that include government officials, private corporations, and incarcerated individuals.
This array of relationships also includes us.
We who are committed to justice for everyone, whether or not they are documented, are part of this system, and we can change it with our determination and drive.
We follow in the footsteps of our ancestors James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, who fiercely and outwardly spoke out on behalf of those whose voices were silenced, even as they also attuned to their inner lives.
I am inspired by the protestors in Minnesota and elsewhere who refuse to be silent, who refuse to acquiesce to the violence of ICE officials, who continue to care for their neighbors at great risk to themselves.
I uplift those who died at the hands of ICE officials in 2025. I uplift the protestors who were murdered and the protestors who have endured bitter cold, tear gas, and daily violence as they sought to protect their community members.
May we do everything we can to stand up and resist this administration.