Epilogue for my forthcoming book, Reversing the Missionary Position: Learning Solidarity on Mayan Time

What follows is the text of my epilogue for my third book, Reversing the Missionary Position: Learning Solidarity on Mayan Time. The book will be available after the New Year.

In recent months the level of repression by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has increased exponentially throughout Kent County. GR Rapid Response to ICE has been receiving calls on a regular basis, with those from the affected community sharing stories of ICE terrorism, often resulting in requests for Mutual Aid for the now deeply traumatized immigrant families.

GR Rapid Response to ICE has continued to expand the scope of their work, especially since June of 2025, when ICE agents arrested and detained at least 8 immigrants at the ISAP office on Michigan Street in Grand Rapids. ISAP stands for Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, which is a program operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that provides an alternative to detention for individuals in immigration proceedings. However, this so-called alternative forces members of the undocumented immigrant community to not only check in at the ISAP on a regular basis, it forces them to either wear an ankle bracelet, a wrist bracelet or download the SmartLINK app, which allows “for real-time communication between officers and clients,” according to the BI Incorporated. BI Incorporated is a subsidiary of the GEO Group, which operates ICE detention facilities all across the county, with the most recent being the North Lake facility in Baldwin, MI.

After the ICE raid at the ISAP office, Movimiento Cosecha and GR Rapid Response to ICE has been inviting members of the undocumented immigrant community to call their hotline if they would like someone to accompany them to their appointments at the ISAP office or the ICE office at 517 Ottawa NW in downtown Grand Rapids.

Additionally, GR Rapid Response to ICE has been conducting patrols in 6 neighborhoods throughout the area, neighborhoods where ICE has frequently been seen by members of the affected community.

Lastly, GR Rapid Response to ICE has been working with Movimiento Cosecha to further their efforts to get the Grand Rapids City Commission and the Kent County Commission to adopt 6 concrete sanctuary policies that would not allow cops who work for both governing bodies to cooperate or collaborate with ICE, to not have relationships with companies that have contracts with ICE or are profiting off of ICE violence, to not allow detention centers to be built or existing spaces to be used as ICE detention centers, and to not share information on undocumented immigrants with ICE, including the data collected by the Flock cameras that are located throughout the greater Grand Rapids Area.

I have been involved in GR Rapid Response to ICE since 2017 and that group has also had a close relationship with Movimiento Cosecha, since those of us who are allies/accomplices always follow what Cosecha wants us to do. This is what solidarity looks like, when those of us who carry more privilege, can leverage that privilege to the benefit of those being targeted by ICE.

Accompaniment from Guatemala to Grand Rapids

This book is really about my own journey, from being bitten by the Central America bug to practicing solidarity, by doing sanctuary work in Grand Rapids in the 1980s to doing solidarity work in Guatemala, El Salvador and in Chiapas, Mexico between 1988 and 2006, to joining the immigrant-led work in Grand Rapids from 2017 to the present.

I would never have guessed that this is what I would be doing with my life, but I have nothing but deep gratitude for making these choices to be part of this work over the past 40 years, of practicing solidarity, and by learning from all of them amazing people that I have had the pleasure of accompanying.

For me accompaniment is not only being physically present with people who are being targeted by state violence, it is being present with them intellectually and emotionally. The people I have done accompaniment with over the past four decades, whether they are being targeted by death squads, military battalions in Guatemala, El Salvador and Chiapas, or those being terrorized by ICE in West Michigan, have taught me an important lesson I learned from the Zapatistas – We lead by following.

To lead by following means that I don’t have the answers and I follow what those who are being targeted by state violence want me to do. It is never on my terms, but on the terms of the person who has invited me to accompany them. If they want me to stay in their homes as a deterrent to state violence, ride in their car or stand next to them during a demonstration, then this is what is means to lead by following.

Accompaniment is a relational form of organizing, where we agree to do things that will contribute to the safety of those from the affected community and ultimately the liberation of all of us. Like the old Civil Rights saying that my liberation is directly connected to the liberation of those fighting for their freedom. We do this work together. We practice what the Zapatistas taught me, We build the road by walking it together.

The other important message I have tried to communicate in this book is what a Guatemalan organizer taught me back in 1988, while we shared a meal in her home. Maria worked with CONAVIGUA, an organization comprised of widows, since all of them had husbands who were murdered by the Guatemalan military.

Maria told me that quiet night in Quiche that she was grateful for our efforts to accompany them in their struggle. However, she then told me that when I got back to my country that I needed to work on changing the policies that the US government has towards Guatemala, since that would be another way that I could accompany them in their struggle for freedom. US military intervention, military funding, training Guatemalan soldiers in counterinsurgency and US trade policies is what Maria and CONAVIGUA was fighting against.

This call to action that has haunted me since 1988 is still being reflected not only in the US military Aid to Guatemala, the rest of Central America and Mexico, but the policies of NAFTA and CAFTA that primarily benefit US corporations and the wealthiest people in those countries, but promote economic violence against the majority of people in those countries. Ironically, US military and economic policies have displaced millions of people in those countries, many of whom have come to the US as undocumented immigrants.

In fact, many of the people that I and other volunteers with GR Rapid Response to ICE offer accompaniment and sanctuary to are the same people who have been forced to leave their own countries because of US policy and are now being targeted by ICE right here in West Michigan. Thus people fleeing Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico where I did accompaniment work over a span of two decades are likely relatives, friends and neighbors of the very people seeking accompaniment and sanctuary in West Michigan right now.

I don’t know how else to see it. My country was a major cause of their displacement and now my country wants to arrest, detain and deport them back to the very countries the US has been waging economic and military war against for decades. Accompaniment work is personal, but it is also structural, just as the fighting for liberation is personal and collective. I am forever grateful for all of the courages people I have met in my journey, since they have played a huge part in making me who I am today. My liberation is truly connected to theirs. La Lucha Sigue! The Struggle Continues!