Not by Accident: Casualties, Collateral Damage, and the Campaign Against Human Rights

My Fellow Brothers, Sisters, and Siblings in the fight for justice,

We are living in a time where the language of war is being used not only on battlefields overseas but right here, against our people, our families, our rights. But this war doesn’t use tanks or missiles. It uses policies, executive orders, stacked courts, deregulation, and fear. It is a war of control, and in this war, the Trump administration has shown us exactly who they are willing to eliminate in their pursuit of power.

Some of us have been labeled casualties of war—targeted, hunted, and sacrificed. Others have been written off as collateral damage, unintended, but acceptable losses. But make no mistake: whether you were in the bullseye or caught in the blast, this administration’s message has been clear—you do not matter.

Let’s start with labor rights. The Trump administration declared war on working people, especially public workers and unionized labor. It installed corporate cronies like Eugene Scalia to weaken the Department of Labor and signed executive orders that gutted the rights of federal employees to organize. Workers, essential and expendable all at once, were told to return to unsafe jobs without protections, without hazard pay, and without dignity. They were not collateral damage. They were intentional casualties.

Human rights? Civil rights? Trampled. Families separated at the border with children placed in cages was not an accident. That was a calculated strategy of cruelty. Entire immigrant communities were turned into punching bags to stir up political support. And when those children cried out for their mothers and fathers, this administration heard them—and looked away.

Women's rights? Slashed and shredded. The Trump regime declared war on reproductive freedom, stripping Title X funding from clinics that dared to say the word “abortion,” stacking the courts with justices who made it their mission to overturn Roe v. Wade. Women’s bodies became battlegrounds. Black and Indigenous women, who are already dying at alarmingly high rates during childbirth, were pushed even further to the edge. These women are collateral damage, avoidable, preventable losses that were ignored for political gain.

And what about our LGBTQIA+ community? When the administration banned transgender people from military service, that wasn’t oversight—it was a message: “You are not equal.” When they rolled back Title IX protections for queer and trans students, they made schools less safe and pushed vulnerable youth closer to suicide. These were lives lost in the crossfire of cruelty, and the administration didn’t blink.

And then came COVID-19, a true test of leadership and compassion. And once again, this administration failed. Black and brown communities, Indigenous people, immigrants, and the poor were sacrificed. Frontline workers were called “heroes” while being sent into danger without PPE. Those deaths were treated as acceptable costs of reopening the economy. Lives were weighed against profits, and the people lost.

And through it all, this administration has cloaked itself in nationalism, Christianity, and law and order. But their god is control, not justice. Their altar is power, not people.

To those who once said, “It doesn’t affect me,” to those who cast their vote thinking the cruelty would only fall on someone else’s child, someone else’s family, someone else’s community, the chickens have come home to roost.

The Scripture says in Galatians 6:7, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.”

Now you or someone you love is feeling the blowback. The job that disappeared. The healthcare that vanished. The rights that eroded. The violence that came too close to home. You sowed apathy, or fear, or even just the hope that nothing would change for you. But the seeds of injustice do not stay buried; they rise. And now the same boot that trampled the necks of marginalized communities is on your doorstep, too.

But here’s the truth: this fight has never been about just the oppressed. It’s about the soul of this nation. When any group is targeted be it Black, Brown, queer, poor, undocumented, disabled, or working-class it’s only a matter of time before the net widens. Silence is complicity. And complicity brings consequences.

James H. Cone wrote in The Cross and the Lynching Tree:

“The lynching tree is the cross in America. If America has the courage to confront the great sin and ongoing legacy of white supremacy with repentance and reparation, there is hope beyond the tragedy—hope for whites, blacks, and all people.”

That’s what this moment demands. Courage. Confrontation. And a recommitment to HUMAN RIGHTS for all people.

We cannot be silent while our communities are sacrificed deliberately or carelessly. Whether you're a worker denied the right to unionize, a trans child stripped of school protections, a pregnant woman with no healthcare, an immigrant family torn apart, or an activist silenced—your pain is not collateral. Your struggle is not invisible. Your existence is not expendable.

You are not a casualty. You are a witness. You are a resistor. You are the future.

So let us rise—not in fear, but in fierce determination. Let us speak for the silenced. Let us organize for the forgotten. And let us never forget what James Cone reminded us: that hope does not come from avoiding pain, it comes from confronting injustice and demanding transformation.

Stay loud.
Stay grounded.
Stay fighting.