Covid Stories: Lorilei

It is in death that we think most of life. It is in loss that we find the most gratitude for what we have. As of December 21, 2021, COVID-19 has claimed more than 5.36 million lives worldwide. The U.S. is the worst-hit country, with the highest number of cases and most deaths. Amid so much death, I found myself, like many, reexamining my identities and values. Collectively, we are in an important moment. We are reimagining concepts of belonging and othering, and we are demanding to create the lives for ourselves and our communities that we’ve always wanted.

I have been an immigration advocate for more than ten years. Under the Trump administration, I learned how to deliver rapid response legal services to people in crisis. I’ve been teargassed on the border and know what it’s like to triage kidnapping and death threats. I’ve spent hundreds of hours in detention facilities of every kind in different states around the country. Despite having extensive professional experience in crisis, I wasn’t prepared for what the COVID-19 pandemic would do to the migrants I worked with. I certainly wasn’t prepared for what it would do to me.

When the pandemic hit, I was working with detained migrants in Georgia and Louisiana. My mental health had just gone through extreme strain from representing a particularly vulnerable Black woman who had survived extreme forms of violence and structural racism. While I was able to get her out of detention and protect her from deportation, I was overwhelmed by our system’s failure to provide her a path towards stability so she could avoid being trafficked again.

As news of COVID-19 began circulating more urgently in March 2020, I put my needs aside to focus on the only thing that mattered now- get people out of detention centers before COVID-19 hits and they begin dying. It was not a question of if. It was only a matter of when.

I began drowning in phone and Skype video calls with detained people. They spoke of their fears from not having access to soap or basic medical care while being packed like sardines into pods and cells caked in mold and slime. They told me they didn’t want to die from a virus that was terrifying their loved ones on the outside. They told me how guards would beat them, throw tear gas at them, and shoot them with mace balls until discs were dislocated.

And then George Floyd was murdered. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. Countless others. And now the television sets in their jail pods echoed with images of protest, solidarity, and resistance. Detained people told me about the times they almost died like George Floyd when prison guards kneel on their necks until the lights dimmed. We spoke of what it meant to name injustice when we live entire lives of invisibility as BIPOC, reinforced by legal and political structures that worship the written word of the white majority. I was their attorney, yes. But I was also a human sharing an intense experience with people I care about, whose lives I wanted to see valued and protected.

Some of the detained people became my friends. My friends shared their hopes and fears with me. They shared the musings and doodles that brought their minds peace in a setting of such stress and horror. And I shared my musings and doodles that helped me process the enormity of the injustice we confronted. Our drawings, poems, prose, and songs kept us resilient as we navigated racism baked into our very legal efforts to seek their liberation.

Relationships change you. These relationships- persevering through immense turmoil- transformed me. They taught me that life, freedom, and happiness are both precious and fleeting. I saw clearly how urgent issues of racism and othering are, as they directly threatened the lives of my friends I was aiming to protect. After months of habeas litigation and other events, I suffered an acute PTSD crash. PTSD is a wild thing- and it’s not purely physical. To heal and be productive given how vulnerable my mind is with PTSD, I must live my life in alignment with my values. This includes my relationships.

I’ve had to shed intimate friendships and relationships with anyone who is not internally committed to antiracism and confronting their own bias, including getting divorced and distancing myself from family who espouse white dominant mental models. I continue to confront my own conditioning around race and gender to understand myself better, which has led to deeper understandings of my own gender identity and sexual orientation. And while many who once were labeled “family” no longer hold those spaces in my life, I am grateful to build a network of chosen family that embraces me for everything that I am and will be.

Most importantly, COVID-19 and the protests after George Floyd’s murder have given me clarity on where my North star lies- in abolition. Abolition requires a brutally honest examination of how our current systems and structures are racialized and a creative reimagination of how life can be if outcomes could not be determined by race. I hope to continue using my skills as a legal expert, educator, and public speaker to equip attorneys, advocates, and organizers with systems thinking frameworks that prompt them to meaningfully operationalize a trauma-informed and antiracist approach to their work. There are thousands of incredible people working tirelessly to help their community members facing crises like eviction, domestic violence, expulsion, and deportation. Just imagine what they could achieve if they’re taught to find leverage points and mitigate bias- it’s awe-inspiring.

It is when we are most challenged that we can be the most resilient.