Bearing Witness

The ICE raids have been particularly hard for me. I grew up with stories from my grandmother of what happened to our extended family in Poland (now Ukraine) during the Holocaust. Frankly, I think she started telling me these stories far too young (~8 years old), but she wanted to make sure I fully understood the atrocities of what humans are capable of, and she wanted me to always be aware that this could happen anywhere, even in the U.S.

I never believed that until recently, when our government began to hire literal thugs (recruiting “persons with intellectual, severe physical or psychiatric disabilities” (https://ice.usajobs.gov/job/869616100) to gather up, beat up, and even kill people of color as well as protesters. This looks eerily similar to my grandmother's description of Poland (now Ukraine) in the 1920s, which is when her father decided to bring his family to the US. He begged other extended relatives to join him, but they refused and were all murdered. I grew up with these stories. 

Inspired by the Goya painting "Third of May, 1808, shooting on Principe Pio Mountain", I decided to switch from painting to drawing to "bear witness" to the ICE raids (and detention centers, which are essentially concentration camps). 

CEL 2026