A 21-year old anti-ICE protester has been left permanently blinded in California after a Department of Homeland Security agent shot him in the face with a nonlethal round at point-blank range on Friday.
Kaden Rummler can be seen on video rushing to help a fellow protester at Civic Center Plaza in Santa Ana before being shot by a federal agent. He crumples to the ground in a heap, covering his face before an officer drags him away by his hoodie. Rummler’s aunt said he was left with a fractured skull and shards of plastic, glass, and metal stuck all throughout his eyes and face, and would have died if not for the six hours of surgery he went through.
“That could have cost him his life,” Jeri Rees told the Los Angeles Times. “But now, for the next six weeks, he can’t sneeze or cough because it could do a lot of damage.… The other officers were mocking him, saying, ‘You’re going to lose your eye.’”
The sins of the parent are not the sins of the child. I’m sure you said this because you are hurting unimaginably more than I am (I live several timezones away). However difficut it is, I think it’s worth trying our damdest not to be pulled down into fascistic vitriol, thinking children deserve a broken life for only the blood in their veins. I oppose ICE and other similar groups around the world because their actions conflict directly and harshly with my ideals, and I sometimes start to lose sight of those very ideals when I get more and more angry at the news. I’m very glad for the few voices I’ve heard that remind me to look up and try to rise above my feelings, not in a "turn the other cheek, we can’t stop the horrors bc red tape is our #1 priority), but just in a way that reminds of you of why your fighting, so you don’t find that you’ve started fighting yourself.
(sorry for the text block, definitely full of comma splice errors)