I am forty-three,
married, steady,
finally living a life that doesn’t burn at the edges—
and still,
I watch you play games
with people who don’t have the luxury
of losing.
You stand behind polished podiums,
arguing in rehearsed outrage,
trading blame like baseball cards—
and somewhere between your soundbites,
a TSA agent skips dinner
so their kid can eat.
Do you even picture them?
The woman checking bags at dawn
with tired eyes and rent due Friday.
The man waving us through scanners
while calculating which bill gets paid late.
They are not your leverage.
They are not your bargaining chip.
They are not your strategy.
They are us.
And yet—
you lock horns over ICE,
draw lines in sand made of ego,
and somehow the fallout lands
on the lowest-paid people in the room.
If your fight is with ICE,
then have it.
Stand up, shout, negotiate,
do whatever it is you claim leadership looks like.
But don’t drag
working people into your standoff
like they’re expendable.
Because from where I stand—
in a kitchen with bills on the counter
and a life I fought like hell to stabilize—
this doesn’t look like leadership.
It looks like cruelty dressed up
as procedure.
And here’s a thought—
a wild one, I know—
if missing a paycheck isn’t a big deal,
why don’t you try it?
Skip one.
Or two.
See how fast your principles bend
when it’s your mortgage,
your groceries,
your life on the line.
Or is that
too inconvenient?
Funny how sacrifice
always seems easier
when it belongs to someone else.
And yes—
credit where it’s due.
When the perks get pulled,
when the comfort gets scratched,
suddenly there’s movement.
Maybe that’s the truth of it—
not speeches,
not promises,
but pressure.
Still, it shouldn’t take that.
It shouldn’t take anything
for you to remember
that behind every badge,
every checkpoint,
every quiet “next in line,”
there is a person
just trying
to get by.
Like me.
Like you once were—
or maybe forgot.
And I’ll keep my language measured,
because my daughter reads what I write—
but understand this much:
What you’re doing
is wrong.
Not complicated.
Not political.
Just wrong.
And no amount of debate
will make it
anything else.
© Susie Stiles-Wolf