This was the moment I knew exactly how bad things had gotten, and how bad they were going to get.

In 2017, the Arabic Immersion School in Houston was located not far from my house and work. On the first day of school, after dropping my kids off at their school, I went to grab breakfast from the Whataburger that was near the AIS.

What I saw when I drove by still angers me to this day. A group of about ten people was protesting the school. Screaming at school children (this is an elementary school), holding signs demanding that they “speak English or go home,” and generally being hostile to everyone trying to drop off their kids, as well as the kids themselves.

This school was created for Capitalism reasons. Fluent Arabic speakers are valuable to oil and gas companies. However, it also serves an important part of our community that natively speaks Arabic.

The fact that a group of grown adults decided to get their signs and go yell at a bunch of children at 7am because they look and speak differently meant that we were doomed long before now, and even long before then. It also shows me that Trump’s rhetoric and actions, even then, were emboldening the worst of our society to be this way out in the open, and without shame.