Israel Centeno

Those of us who came to the United States seeking refuge from the violence of our lands discovered, painfully, that it reaches us here as well. The cities once presented as safe—Dallas, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Chicago—bear a wound that repeats itself over and over: shootings in schools, in temples, in the streets.

In Dallas, a 17-year-old opened fire in a high school, wounding several students; it was the second time in less than a year that the same school suffered the terror of bullets. In Seattle, a 13-year-old amassed an arsenal inspired by the school shooters history cannot forget. In Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and New York, gun violence strikes schoolyards and turns adolescence into a besieged territory. In Minneapolis, two children—eight and ten years old—were murdered inside a Catholic church: a crime of hate that revealed that neither faith nor childhood are safe. And in Charlotte, North Carolina, Iryna Zarutska—a refugee of war—was murdered on a bus, alone and unprotected, as if the horror she fled had followed her here.

Whoever comes to this country believing their child, seated at a school desk or sheltered in a church, is safe, will sooner or later face the truth: here, too, one lives in fear. The promised suburb, the so-called “American Dream,” is not within reach of all; and in the great cities, poverty and inequality feed the same despair that pulls triggers in Central and South America.

This hemisphere, which once promised security, now reveals its nightmare: the classroom, the bus, and the temple are no longer sanctuaries, but vulnerable spaces. Europe, which once dreamed of another order, remains only a distant memory. Here reigns the bitter certainty that not even education, religion, or asylum can deliver our children and brothers from hatred and violence.

In this country, no one comes to find peace.

In this country, you come to sweat adrenaline.

And in the confusion, the Left runs to the Right, and the Right to the Left—each seeking in the other what neither can offer: true safety in a land where fear has become the common ground