dared

Many years later, in graduate school, when I first read “Sonny’s Blues,” a short story originally published in 1957 by James Baldwin about family and addiction, I would think back to this painting, in this house, and how its beauty halted me in my tracks, how it dared me to pause and consider my place in the wide world.

We do know that as head of ICE, he oversaw the separation of families who dared to cross the border in search of a safer, better life.

Their prediction was that the blue wave that engulfed California would spread across the country if Republicans dared to campaign on anti-immigrant politics ever again.

A mayor of another large city beheaded after he dared to call for peace.

No administration would have dared, and no department official would have acquiesced.