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By Brian Hews
LCCN Publisher | Follow X
February 8, 2026
I am writing this as a parent, not a pundit, not a partisan, not a protester looking for a headline. I am writing this as someone who had to sit with the sickening knowledge that my daughter was standing in a crowd when the government decided that gas and impact weapons were an acceptable way to answer peaceful dissent. If that sentence doesn’t make you stop and feel something, you’ve already lost the plot.
Before I say another angry word, let me be clear about something that matters more than my rage. People across this country have been hurt. Some have been permanently injured. Some have been killed. Parents have buried children. Children have watched parents die. Communities have been scarred in ways that don’t show up in police reports or press releases. This op-ed is not just about my daughter. It is about every family that has felt that same cold drop in the stomach when a peaceful gathering turns into chaos because someone with authority chose force first.
Now for the part I refuse to sanitize.
You NAzi ICE cowards/bastards fired into a crowd. Not a battlefield. Not an armed standoff. A crowd of human beings. Families. Young people. Older adults. People who believed, foolishly it seems, that exercising a constitutional right wouldn’t make them a target. When the gas canisters fly and the pepper balls start snapping, you are not controlling a situation. You are creating one. You are unleashing panic and hoping luck cleans up the mess you started.
My daughter did nothing to deserve that. Neither did the people next to her. Neither did the people in cities across this country who have been beaten, gassed, run down, or shot while standing up and saying they mattered. You don’t get to label them “crowds” or “agitators” or “subjects” to make it easier to pull the trigger. They are people. Someone’s kid. Someone’s parent. Someone who was supposed to make it home that night.
What enrages me almost as much as the violence itself is the casual way it’s justified afterward. The sterile language. The talking points. The shrug that says, “Well, that’s what happens.” No. That’s what happens when institutions forget they exist to serve the public and start acting like they exist to dominate it. That’s what happens when accountability evaporates and force becomes routine instead of extraordinary.
Empathy isn’t weakness. It’s the bare minimum. If you cannot look at the injured, the traumatized, and the dead and feel the weight of that harm, then you should not be anywhere near a badge, a weapon, or a command post. If your response to a parent saying “my child was there” is to check a policy manual instead of your conscience, then something inside you is broken.
This country is better than this, or at least it used to pretend to be. We used to agree on one simple line: the government does not terrorize its own people to prove a point. It does not treat dissent as an enemy to be crushed. It does not accept collateral damage as the cost of doing business.
I am furious because I am grieving for people I have never met. I am furious because next time someone’s daughter might not make it home. And I am furious because none of this is inevitable. These are choices. Ordered by someone. Approved by someone. Defended by someone.
So hear this plainly. My daughter was in that crowd. Other people’s daughters and sons were in crowds all over this nation. Some of them are hurt. Some of them are gone. You do not get to wash that away with statements or excuses. You own it. And until there is real accountability, real restraint, and real humanity restored to those who wield power, parents like me are not going to calm down, look away, or shut up.
Brian Hews~Editor and Publisher
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