GTFOM

“That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you,” but I hope the mercury drops below zero, below -10, plummets through the minus-teens and a howling ground blizzard drives windchills to forty or fifty below zero. I wish for you the hard ache in your toes that makes you stomp your boots to wake up your feet and that throbbing burn in your fingers before they stiffen and go numb in spite of your bulky gloves. I want them to get so stiff you can’t pull the trigger on your pepper ball launchers or fire rubber bullets, so rigid you lose the grip on the hammer you want to swing at a car window, and so numb you drop that flashbang grenade right in the midst of you and your ICE-y clan of masked thugs.

I wish for you sundogs biting at your ears and nose and cheeks, such bitter cold that it leaves a white patch on your frozen earlobes and on the flesh above your balaclava. I dream of a barrage of water balloons sailing through the frost-spangled air toward your riot gear and “NO ICE” signs on the barred doors of every business place — especially hotels, restaurants, and big-box stores. I picture your spit freezing before it hits the ground, your mask stiffening with snot, and your tear gas cannisters failing. I giddily imagine you so cold to the bone that you shiver uncontrollably as you retreat to your unmarked mafia-style SUVs and pound your arms and try to rub the feeling back into your hands. I hope you dread the black ice, the whiteout, the cutting cold in your fragile lungs, and the premature sunset portending another long, dark, frigid night. That’s what I hope for you every minute, every hour, every damned day that you arbitrarily and violently drag off innocent people — including citizens — to fill your unwarranted, racist quotas.

I hope your starter won’t spin, and your car battery dies. I invite you to slide into a snow-filled ditch while driving to Worthington or Willmar, Redwood Falls, or St. Cloud, any small rural town where Hispanics work in slaughterhouses, where Natives run casinos, and where Hmong made homes after that long war and now care for their families and immense, orderly gardens. I hope you have to walk through a blizzard and ask for help, which — in spite of the harm you’ve inflicted, the innocent people you’ve jailed, the civil rights you’ve violated, and the lives you ended — is what you’ll still likely receive. And I hope that eventually you realize that humanity, legality, and morality always trump racial profiling, thuggery, willful violence, and the blood money you signed up for.

But, above all, may you be haunted for the rest of your ruthless, guilty lives by the sound of whistles and the faces, voices, and names of those you threatened, recklessly violated, held without charge, and/or emotionally or physically scarred — ChongLy “Scott” Thao, Kaden Rummler, Mubashir Khalif Hussen, Christina Rank, Renee Nicole Good (may she rest in peace), and hundreds of other Minnesotans.

GTFOM.