I grew up in Pe Ell, and Lewis County shaped my sense of what community looks like.
That's why the response to the recent posts about the ICE protests has stayed with me.
It wasn't just the memes, though many were disturbing. It was the mindset behind them. The casual certainty. The rush to declare people fools, to say a woman deserved her death, to dismiss protestors as less than worthy of consideration.
That mentality says something deeper than disagreement. It says we've stopped pausing long enough to think.
Protesting is not lawlessness. It is a constitutional right. It exists precisely because laws, power and enforcement deserve scrutiny. And officer-involved shootings — like any use of lethal force — should be investigated carefully, not waved away by slogans or crowd approval.
What unsettled me most was how quickly complexity disappeared. How absolute the judgements became. How empathy was treated as a weakness rather than a sign of maturity.
I would like to believe there are better instincts still alive here, that the place I grew up is capable of more than ridicule and reflex. We don't have to agree to remain human with one another.
April Nielsen
Colorado
