Dear Sen. Alex Padilla,

I would like to extend my gratitude for your speaking up against ICE deportations at the DHS meeting last month. I was utterly appalled by the sight of a U.S. senator being roughed up and handcuffed.

As a fellow person of color, you must realize the ugly truth of racism that underlies this outrageous action: racism against brown people (the darker the worse generally) within a structure of white supremacist imperialism that plagues our lives.

Brown people from Baja to Gaza are victims of colonialism. Hardworking brown folks, undocumented Latino immigrants who represent the undersalaried essential workers of our food and health systems, must juggle imprisonment in their homes with the need to work (for living expenses) with its attendant risk of being swept up by ICE agents (masked like the KKK) to horrible detention centers. They are living in precarity under conditions of occupation.

Another brown people, oppressed by Israel, which the U.S. seems to consider as a 51st state, are the Palestinians, who have been living under conditions of occupation, dispossession, five wars since 1967, this current one aiming to annihilate or expel them, God knows where.

With the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear sites extending the war into the broader Middle East region, the Palestinians, in their 100-year struggle for freedom and rights to their indigenous land against Israeli occupation, seem to be forgotten.

They are not roaches to be exterminated, to be swept under the rug.

Sen. Padilla, with your recent experience of being stripped of human dignity, you might feel a sense of the complete loss of dignity, the invisibility, and powerlessness that Palestinians have endured for a century as Netanyahu aims to “disappear” them definitively.

I hope that your experience will inspire you to reconsider your Zionist stance and to stand up against Israel’s genocidal machine. We must oppose white supremacy in all forms.

To that effect, please vote for humanitarian aid to Gaza and for a ceasefire.

Vote yes on:

• S Res 224 (H Res 473) Urgent Humanitarian Aid to Gaza

• HR 2411 (or Senate equivalent) Resume US Funding for UNRWA

• HR 3565 (or Senate equivalent) Block the Bombs

Vote no on:

• H.Res. 488 (or Senate equivalent)

Which in denouncing the Boulder, Colorado, antisemitic terrorist attack expresses “gratitude” for law enforcement officers including ICE.

• HR 1007 Anti-Semitism Awareness Act

This pernicious bill singles out Jews for special protection against discrimination and will normalize anti-Zionism as antisemitism, thereby infringing upon the First Amendment rights of pro-Palestinian advocates. The bill formally denies that but actual enforcement under the Trump administration has clearly targeted and detained pro-Palestinian activists.

The bill’s rationale is that antisemitism allegedly is on the rise. (One wonders what percentage of these are actually cases of anti-Zionism, protesting against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.)

If the bill is truly concerned about the rise of discrimination and hate crimes, it should focus equally if not more on Islamophobia — since discrimination complaints targeting Muslims rose 63%, compared to 49% against Jews during the Gaza war last year.

It is high time to address and heal from perennial Islamophobia: Muslims have been unfairly attacked or rendered invisible, rather than specially protected as Jews have been.

Unhae Langis is a Santa Cruz resident.