I'm Too Scared to Call My Mom: On Courage, Risk, and What We Can Afford

I know I just posted on Friday. I’m sorry for the frequency. But my normal posting schedule feels beside the point when people are getting killed at protests. I’m processing this in real time and having a really hard time with it, and so I’m thinking out loud with you all. If it’s too much, I understand—please take care of yourselves first.

I’m too chicken shit to call my mom.

There, I said it. I should pick up the phone right now and talk to her about what’s happening. About Alex Pretti being killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis. About Renee Good being shot two weeks ago. About the videos I can’t get out of my head.

But I can’t do it.

I know my stepfather voted for Trump. I’m not 100% sure my mother didn’t. We’ve disagreed on everything from vaccines to cuts to the federal government. I know they consume what I would consider alt-right media (she sends my news clippings from The Epoch Times. They’re getting a completely different version of reality than what I’m seeing on my social media feeds, in the firsthand eyewitness reports, in the cell phone footage from the streets.

And it breaks my heart.

I don’t know if I can convince her to see what I’m seeing. I’m not sure she’ll hear me or understand how terrified and scared and angry I am.

So in some ways, I’m writing this piece because she reads my Substack. I’m writing it because I’m too scared to call. Because maybe if I just put it all here, she’ll understand. Or you’ll understand. Or maybe I’ll just understand it myself better.

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Yesterday I sat in my home office and cried for an hour. Then I wiped my face, went downstairs, and played board games with my daughter, her boyfriend, and my partner. We laughed. We joked. I tried to be present.

I see you, other parents doing this same impossible thing. Holding both spaces. Crying when they can’t see us, then showing up fully when they need us.

And I see some of you struggling with the same phone call I can’t make.

What I think is happening right now

I know there are two versions of what’s happening right now, and it depends on what kind of news you’re consuming. The news I consume is a lot of social media—firsthand eyewitness reports, footage people are capturing with their cell phones on the streets in Minneapolis. What’s in my feed might be completely different from what’s in yours.

But here’s what I think is happening.

ICE is operating in American cities like an occupying military force. Kids detained in driveways. Families separated at schools.

This week, Alex Pretti—a 37-year-old ICU nurse—was killed when ICE agents pinned him down and shot him at point-blank range. It was caught on video. From multiple angles.

Two weeks earlier, Renee Nicole Good was shot by an ICE agent. Also caught on video. Her last words: “I’m not mad at you.”

I think it’s the videos that made this hit me so hard. I can’t get them out of my head. That version of witnessing is so visceral, watching someone die in real time, over and over.

But I’m also not naive. I think this is getting national attention partly because both victims were citizens. Also white. In positions of relative privilege. They were observers and protesters exercising their constitutional rights, not targets of enforcement. They weren’t accused of any crime. They were just there. And that’s what got them killed.

I’m looking for things to help me make sense of what is going on and what I can or should do about it. So I wanted to share a couple of things that are helping me, in case they’re helpful to you too: a religious protest, three recent Substack posts, and an ancient philosopher.

1. Clergy protests

About 100 clergy got themselves arrested outside the Minneapolis airport this week. On purpose. In minus-20-degree weather.

They knelt on the pavement singing hymns and praying, blocking the entrance to terminals where ICE has been running deportation flights. Police zip-tied them one by one and loaded them onto school buses. Misdemeanor citations for trespassing. Released a few hours later.

This wasn’t spontaneous. It was part of a coordinated “ICE Out of Minnesota: Day of Truth and Freedom” action. Around 700 businesses across the state closed their doors in solidarity. Thousands marched despite wind chills hitting minus-50. The first general strike in a U.S. city in 80 years.

Reading about it, I kept coming back to one thing: these clergy knew exactly what getting arrested would cost them. They knew. They planned for it. And they did it anyway.

And I found it hopeful. Genuinely hopeful. Even for someone like me with no religious affiliation, watching religious leaders use their institutional power this way felt like witnessing what moral leadership actually looks like. Not just talking about values. Embodying them. Being willing to face consequences.

Maybe I’m sharing this with my mother too, because she does consider herself religious. Look, Mom—this is what I’m seeing. Religious leaders risking arrest in freezing cold. Are you seeing this? Does this look like extremism to you? Or does it look like people who care?

2. The problem with “courage culture”

Then I remembered Jenn M. Jackson’s piece last month about what she calls “courage culture.” (Be sure to click on the hyperlink and read the entire piece).

You know the genre—the Brené Brown “dare greatly” stuff that tells everyone to just be brave, just lean in, just do the scary thing. Jackson, a Black scholar writing about race and political resistance, isn’t having it.

Jackson writes: “Having courage to finish that swim meet or ask for that big raise isn’t like having the courage to be Black in a country that wants us dead.”

She defines courage culture as “the white-coded myth-based belief that vulnerability is experienced homogeneously across racial, gender, sexual, class, and ability lines.” But it’s not homogeneous. Not even close.

Courage for a Black woman means calculating risks that I, as a white woman, simply don’t face. Jackson quotes young Black Americans telling her the costs of courage are high—courage to speak up about racism, courage to protest killings, courage to just exist loudly. “The costs are too high for some.”

This naming of what’s usually invisible hit me hard. We can’t just tell everyone to “be brave” when bravery carries wildly different consequences depending on who you are.

3. What Aristotle meant when he talked about courage

Here’s where the ancient philosopher teaching comes in, and I promise it’s relevant.

Aristotle talked about courage as a virtue that exists between two vices—recklessness on one end (acting stupidly without regard for real danger) and cowardice on the other (freezing up when action’s needed). The courageous person finds the middle path.

But—and this we sometimes forget—Aristotle said the middle path looks different for different people. He called it the “mean relative to us.” Courage isn’t a fixed universal standard. It’s calibrated to your actual circumstances, your actual risks, your actual life.

So what’s courageous for someone facing deportation might just be showing up to work. Going to the grocery store. Taking your kid to school. That’s real bravery when ICE could grab you at any moment.

For a Black woman speaking up about racism in America? That involves disproportionate physical risk. Higher likelihood of arrest, of brutality, of being killed.

For me? White, native-born citizen, financially comfortable? Yes, I face consequences. Yes, I could lose things. AND the nature of what I’m risking is calibrated differently.

The “mean” between cowardice and recklessness sits in a different place depending on what you’re actually facing. And when your risks are lower—or different—that changes what the middle path requires of you.

For me right now? Maybe courage means picking up the phone and calling my mother.

4. The carelessness of being protected

Pooja Lakshmin—a psychiatrist—wrote this week about “careless people.” She means privileged people “who do not have to live with the consequences of what they build.”

“When you are protected no matter what,” she writes, “the destructiveness of the chaos simply doesn’t matter.”

But here’s the reality of where we are: Alex Pretti was a white American citizen. So was Renee Good. Both killed by ICE agents in the last two weeks.

I think there are people—white people, citizens—who still think this isn’t happening to them. That if they keep their heads down, if they stay quiet, they’ll be safe. That this is someone else’s fight.

Maybe that’s what my mother thinks too. I don’t know. I haven’t asked her.

But it’s not true. This administration doesn’t actually care about your citizenship or your whiteness if you’re in the way. The protection you think you have disappears the moment you stop playing along.

But Pooja also wrote about what she’s seeing in her DMs. “Regular people—regular parents—organizing and taking action for each other.” A follower from the Twin Cities told her about communities losing trust in systems but finding more faith in each other.

And Pooja lists what “care” actually looks like: The neighbor who stopped by with dinner. The teacher who made extra effort. The random text from a friend who remembered your birthday.

“In a careless future,” Pooja writes, “the radical act is to keep caring. To believe that your words, actions, and even your feelings matter and can compound.”

5. What can you do?

Leona Waller wrote a piece this week titled “If every American did 3 of these 5 things, ICE would be stopped in its tracks.” Here are her five actions:

1. Call your Senators (2-5 minutes, through January 30th) The House passed the DHS funding bill. Now focus on the Senate. Call your senators every day until January 30th and ask them to defund ICE by opposing DHS appropriations that maintain ICE funding. Find your senators at 5calls.org.

2. Donate to legal funds (whatever you can afford monthly): Set up recurring donations. Even $3/month matters. Organizations like National Immigrant Justice Center, Immigrant Defense Project, and Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee are fighting ICE in court and on the ground.

3. Divest from ICE-supporting companies (convenience): Home Depot lets ICE patrol their stores. Target rolled over to Trump. Hilton houses ICE agents. Amazon’s AWS powers ICE’s digital infrastructure. Stop giving them money. There are alternatives for everything.

4. Prepare your neighborhood (2-6 hours): Build a network of local people who can warn when ICE shows up. Minneapolis Area Synod has a guide for creating know-your-rights networks. This literally saves people from detention and keeps families together.

5. Do a lit drop ($10-20 and 1-2 hours): Print copies of action guides and hand them out at grocery stores, put them on cars, slip them under neighbors’ doors. Bring the information directly to people.

And here one I’m adding:

Have the hardest conversations (emotional labor): Talk to your MAGA or MAGA-adjacent family members and friends.

I know. I know this one is brutal.

But people are living in two different realities right now because they’re seeing completely different news sources. And I keep thinking, what if the only way through this is to actually talk to each other? To stay connected even when it’s uncomfortable?

Lead from an authentic place: “I love you. I care about you. And I’m scared about what I’m seeing. Can we talk about what you’re seeing?”

You’re not going to change anyone’s mind in one conversation. But opening the door, staying connected, refusing to let the information divide become permanent…maybe that matters.

If this piece resonated with you, please consider sharing it and subscribing for free. And if you were thinking about becoming a paid subscriber—thank you, truly—but right now I’d rather you donate that money to one of the legal funds listed above. They need it more than I do.

What can you afford?

I’m genuinely asking myself this question. I’m sitting here with citizenship, whiteness, financial stability.

Those clergy knew exactly what arrest would cost them. They planned for it. They did it anyway.

Alex Pretti knew there was risk in being at that protest. He went anyway.

I can’t even call my mother.

I don’t know what your specific risk calculation looks like. I don’t know what you can afford to do or lose.

But I do know that doing nothing isn’t the safe option anymore. We’re already paying for it.

Might as well let it mean something.

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