There’s a park I like to take my four-year-old son to over here on the Westbank. And while this side of the river and Jefferson Parish in general get a bad rap (admittedly much of it deserved), it’s actually quite the polyglot cultural buffet these days. It’s one reason I love living over here. On any given day there are white and Black families, Arab families, Vietnamese families, and Latino families all gathered together in the park for one simple reason: to give their kids some outdoor activity time. While the adults might generally keep to themselves, everyone is friendly enough and the kids all play together, because they’re kids and they don’t know any better, nor should they. Dear reader, I wouldn’t tell you that these days at the park with my son make me feel patriotic. Patriotism, after all, is a toxic fusion of religion wedded to the State, a corrosive force that has hollowed this country out from the inside for centuries. But it makes me feel something for our little community and this country overall. We’re so often bombarded with what’s wrong with our nation, and rightfully so. But on these beautiful days at the park, sitting on a bench and watching these kids run around with abandon, zero care in the world, laughing together, I can actually see a future for them, my son included.
I think it’s essential for him to be with these kids, and not out of some sense of abstract intellectual liberalism. But because as his dad, in my heart of hearts, in an act of ultimately selfish preservation, I believe it’s absolutely necessary for his survival. He needs to grow up understanding that the world is bigger than him, and that not everyone looks or talks like him. I believe this kind of context will serve him well when he grows up, and prepare him for all kinds of opportunities.
I would love to tell you more about this park, even invite those of you with kids to come join us for an afternoon playdate, but I won’t. Because I don’t want to make this playground any more of a target than it already is, thanks to the incoming Border Patrol and ICE agents and the operation that has been callously dubbed Swamp Sweep. It wasn’t enough that New Orleans had to suffer a terror attack on New Year’s Day. The Trump administration seems hell-bent on inflicting a second one before we close out the year, with too many of our state and local leaders ready to cheer this violent—and ultimately pointless—operation on.
This news is heartbreaking, so much so that you can hear it in the quiver of the voices of the legacy media newscasters reporting on this incoming invasion. Their professional, “objective” elocution is betrayed by a tone I’ve heard before, specifically when delivering the news of an approaching hurricane. Only this time it’s no force of nature, but rather a man-made disaster targeting some of our most vulnerable friends, family, lovers, neighbors, co-workers, and comrades.
As the region braces for impact, it’s inspiring to see so many sharing resources and information, or simply declaring publicly and unequivocally how unacceptable all of this is. But I am begging the actual people in power—business leaders, councilmembers, mayors, representatives in Congress, state legislators and senators, in Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and St. Tammany parishes alike—to exercise that power you were given, stand up to these ICE goons, and defend your communities. Don’t take the stance that “somebody should do something.” You are that somebody. We all are—but you especially. Don’t pass the buck on this one.
This can’t be the future, not for the people being dragged out of Home Depot parking lots, school pickup lines, churches, or the ones very likely cleaning or fixing our homes, attending to our sick loved ones, cooking our food—or whose kids are playing alongside our kids. We’re either a nation of immigrants and ideas, builders, educators, and creators; or violent, racist, xenophobic, ignorant close-minded destroyers. Only one of these nations has a future. I know which one I want my son to grow up in. How about you? —Dan Fox
illustration by Sadie Wiese
December 2025 cover illustration by Thom Karamus
