When Loyalty Is Currency and Crimes Are Free

My daughter and I were walking to get coffee and gelato in Berlin when we almost stepped on a name.

It was pressed into the sidewalk in bronze. A woman. A date. A destination: Auschwitz. Just one name, on one weathered square, worn by footsteps, but never forgotten.

We stopped. We always stopped.

We read her name aloud. We imagined her home above that stoop, her hands still on the doorknob when they came. The sound of boots in the hallway. Screams as she was dragged off never to be seen again. And then the silence of her absence that followed. We stood there without speaking because neither of us was ready to take that next step forward. Once you see a thing like that, you carry it. You walk differently afterwards.

In that moment, my daughter understood the weight of what we were seeing. She was just nine at the time. She might not have grasped every historical detail, but she understood how it felt. She understood the gravity. The violence hidden in something so quiet. From when men who were “just following orders” kidnapped and disappeared people.

It’s been six years, and she still talks about that day. Still remembers the woman. Still wants to honor someone we never met. A woman whose story we’ll never fully know because it was cut short by a leader who had cruelty running through his veins, and power he never should have held.

In Berlin. In Paris. In city after city across Europe, these brass plaques are everywhere. Embedded in the pavement like seeds of memory. They mark and honor victims of Nazi persecution, including Jews, Sinti and Roma people, people with disabilities, LGBTQIA+ people, political opponents of the Nazi regime, ethnic minorities and those that resisted Hitler’s fascist regime. They are placed where people were taken. Where neighbors disappeared. Where ordinary people tried to resist.

They are called Stolpersteine, “stumbling stones.” And I am so thankful for them. Because the world needs things that make us stop. That make us remember. That keep us from walking by the past like it never happened.

And you don’t trip over them by accident. You trip over them because memory is supposed to interrupt your day. Because the world is not supposed to let you forget.

That’s what that side of the world does right: they remember. Not to shame, but to honor. Not to dwell, but to warn. To say clearly: it happened here. And it could happen again.

But here in America, we trip over nothing. We bury the past in concrete and call it progress. We pave over the pain. We rename the wounds. We turn monuments into myths and criminals into campaigns. We distract ourselves with slogans and flags.

“Make America Great Again.” “America First.” “Most Favored Nation.” “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Not policies. Propaganda made for the forgetful.

Trump has always named policies like a branding executive, not a president. Because branding doesn’t require truth. It just requires repetition. He knows his followers don’t want nuance, he’s said it himself. “I love the poorly educated.” And it works. Because repetition doesn’t require education or facts. Just blind loyalty.

Just today he commuted the sentence of George Santos, the man who admitted, under oath, that he stole from donors, lied about his finances, lied to Congress, and fraudulently collected pandemic unemployment benefits while running for office.

He defrauded the American people. He falsified documents. He lied to the very institution he was elected to serve.

These are not allegations. These are felony‑level crimes to which he confessed.

But Donald Trump set him free.

And on Truth Social, Trump praised Santos for being “very brave” and said the prosecution against him was “a disgrace.” Then Trump added this: “At least Santos had the courage to ‘ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!’” The message is clear: loyalty to the president matters more than the law, the American people, or the Constitution.

Because in Trump’s America, being guilty of a crime is just a stepping block to bigger and better crimes.

This is what autocracy looks like. Loyalty buys you freedom. Dissent buys you an indictment, criminal probe, or worse.

And that brings us to Adelita Grijalva. She won her election. Her state certified it. Her paperwork was complete. And for more than three weeks, Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to seat her. There is no legal reason for the delay. Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution mandates Congress to seat certified winners. But he won’t. Why? Because Adelita Grijalva can force a vote on the Epstein files. That’s it. That’s the reason.

A convicted fraud walks free. An elected Latina woman who represents over 700,000 constituents is blocked from serving. One protects the powerful. The other threatens them. This isn’t chaos. This is design.

I mention Adelita every night, and I’ll continue to until she is seated because she is dangling over the edge of us having free and fair elections and being washed into a complete dictatorship. What is the point of having elections at all if the GOP refuses to seat the winners?

The same design is playing out in Georgia, where two of the most powerful voter registration groups in the state just shut down. The New Georgia Project and its affiliate were behind the registration of over 500,000 voters, primarily young, Black, and low-income. These groups helped flip Senate seats. They changed elections, enabling all Georgians to have their voices heard, regardless of income, background, or ZIP code.

But now, they’re gone.

Taken down not by scandal, but by lawsuits, red tape, and exhaustion. And with them go the clipboards, the volunteers, the translators, the ride-shares, the reminder texts, the human infrastructure of democracy. These organizations weren’t just voter groups. They were lifelines. They filled the cracks that government left behind.

And now they’ve been cut.

The cost? It’s steep. Because not everyone has a car to get to the DMV to register. Not everyone has a stable address, the right paperwork, a working printer, or internet access. Not everyone knows they’ve been purged from the rolls, or that they need to re-register after moving, getting married, or skipping an election.

Without help, without reminders, without access, people who want to vote, won’t. Not because they don’t care. But because the system was designed to shut them out.

And that’s the point.

And in North Carolina, Republicans have redrawn congressional maps to silence entire communities. They’re dismantling moderate districts, pushing out Black Democrats like Rep. Don Davis, and slicing neighborhoods apart to keep power locked in minority rule. Gerrymandering is more than red lines, it’s a scalpel used to bleed democracy out of existence. It doesn’t just make voting harder. It makes it meaningless. You don’t win by suppressing one vote. You win by erasing millions.

Every day is another attack on democracy. Another day where the president of the “free world” doesn’t just embarrass us on the world stage, but he shows that we can no longer be trusted to follow our own constitution so how can anyone expect him to follow anything else he agrees to. He has destabilized the world, and instead of our fellow Americans recognizing the grave threat we face, they encourage him. They take up his same tone of cruelty and hate.

But there are more of us than them. And we resist.

Tomorrow we resist in a way never before seen in American history. October 18th is expected to be the largest No Kings rally. These protests are not just to send a message to Trump and his Regime that we will not sit idly by while he destroys our country. They are also a message to our fellow Americans that they have chosen the wrong side of history. They are choosing to kneel to a wanna be king. They are choosing to sail on a sinking ship. They are choosing a lifetime of shame for what they are doing and are letting continue to happen. This is their legacy. Not ours.

And so tomorrow we peacefully demonstrate. We will not fall victim to any traps for aggression. We will hold our heads high and push back in all ways we can. So grab your signs, your friends and families and let your voice be heard. And stop to look around and catch your breath while you are there. Absorb the collective strength from your community. Recognize how many others are with you. You are not alone. The other side might be loud, but they are and will never be the majority.

And when this is all over, when we have a real president again. A president for the people. All the people, we need to take some lessons from Europe. It is time for our own bronze signs. At courthouses. At churches. At schools. At border crossings. Outside old plantations. Inside housing projects. Beside water fountains. On sidewalks. On campuses. In quiet neighborhoods where people vanished today and in the past.

We are letting the same things that destroyed so much of Europe nearly 80 years ago do the same to us now. From racism to the war on LGBTQIA+ people to disinformation and beyond, we are going down a very dark path.

And the only way to stop this is to go through it. And then we need to trip over truth and history here just like they do in Europe..

We need policies. We need criminal accountability for silencing elected officials. We need oversight for every military strike. We need tax justice for hoarded billions. We need infrastructure to protect the vote.

But first, we need to remember that memory is not passive. It’s an act of resistance. It’s a promise to the disappeared that their stories won’t die with them. It’s a warning to future generations that freedom is fragile, democracy is mortal, and fascism doesn’t announce itself, it seeps in through the cracks we leave unguarded.

We need our own Stolpersteine. Not just bronze plaques, but living memorials. Every voter registration drive is a stumbling stone. Every protest is a stumbling stone. Every time we say a name, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, the children of Uvalde, the thousands lost to neglect and cruelty at our borders, we lay another stone.

Because America’s wounds don’t need new names. They need witnesses.

They need us to stop walking past the pain like it isn’t there. To stop letting comfort cushion us from truth. To stop pretending that what happened to other democracies can’t happen here.

It’s already happening here.

But here’s what they don’t understand about us: We are the children and grandchildren of those who survived. Of those who resisted. Of those who refused to kneel. We carry their courage in our bones. Their defiance in our blood. Their hope in our hearts.

Tomorrow, when we march, we don’t march alone. We march with everyone who ever said no to a tyrant. With everyone who ever chose justice over safety. With everyone who ever believed that democracy was worth the fight.

So yes, we will stumble. We will fall. We will get back up.

Because that’s what the stones teach us:

Sometimes you have to trip to remember how to stand.
Sometimes you have to stop to remember how to move forward.
Sometimes you have to remember the past to save the future.

And we will. Together. One stone, one vote, one voice at a time.

Until the sidewalks sing with truth.
Until the powerful stumble over their own crimes.
Until America trips over its conscience and finally, finally remembers how to walk upright again.

I’ll see you tomorrow. And please stay safe out there!
Heather