In 2017, the sheriff of Bristol County, Massachusetts, pledged to have the inmates of the county jail help build Trump’s wall on the southern border, doing so quite publicly. He went on to promote xenophobia and Islamophobia, increasing ICE activity in a city that Immigrants built and keep alive, going so far as to send personal emails to Steven Miller reporting on his parish church for supplying important information to immigrant parishioners. He led the state’s county jails in suicides, overused solitary confinement, and finally lost his ICE contract and his detention center after he precipitated a riot pitting inmates against deputies illegally using unmuzzled attack dogs because of his mistreatment of those in there.

People decided to protect the county from this white supremacist’s abuse of authority as, while he was condemning all immigrants as “Illegal Aliens”, he was himself ignoring law to get his agenda of hate covered.

People mobilized and took as long as his tenure in office to educate the public, the work paying off when this sheriff lost the next election.

It took time but it worked.

It wasn’t easy but it worked.

It was frustrating but it worked.

We can make the necessary change if we choose to do the work.

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