Gloves, ICE, and How People See Me

I was knocking doors last week when an older Black woman opened up 

I told her I was running for Congress here in Indianapolis and she immediately got right to the point. 

 

“Democrat or Republican?” she asked.

“Democrat,” I said.

She nodded. “Okay, yep. I’m all about the Democrats.”

I told her this wasn’t just any race and that I’m running a primary challenge against André Carson. That’s when her energy shifted. She straightened up a little and said, “Really now? Okay, you’ve got my attention.”

I gave her the short version of why I’m running. That we’re in a critical moment and we need someone who’s more proactive not just in the job itself, but in rebuilding power for Democrats and actually thinking about how to govern again. I told her I like and respect the congressman, but it’s been 17 years. Our systems are failing people and not just because of Republicans.

She talked about wanting to get back to what we had “before all this.” I told her I understand the instinct and I’d rather have what we had than the chaos and dismantling we’re living through now, but that doesn’t mean what we had was good enough.

Before Trump, people were already struggling. People were already unhappy. Winning elections didn’t suddenly make people’s rent affordable, their neighborhoods safe, or their lives feel stable and dignified. If we come back into power and simply rebuild what existed before, we’ll just be reconstructing the same problems in nicer language.

We have to ask harder questions:
Why were people struggling so much before?
Why were so many people already being left out or left behind?
What would it actually mean to build systems that don’t fail people this time?

I told her that the chaos of this moment—as terrifying as it is—also creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine what we’re building toward. The real choice isn’t just Democrat vs. Republican. It’s whether we go back to a status quo that wasn’t working or whether we have the imagination to build something better.

She paused for a second and said, “I like that. That makes a lot of sense. I guess I never really thought about it from that perspective.”

Then her eyes started to move a bit. She kept glancing past me, down the block, taking in who was around.

Finally, she asked, “Are you out here with anybody?”

I told her yes, that my campaign manager and a few volunteers were knocking doors in the neighborhood too.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. You should knock in groups going forward. I’m concerned about you. With ICE and everything.”

Then she looked at my hands and added, “And you need to get yourself some gloves. It’s too cold out here.”

Two things can be true at once:

One, she was absolutely right about the gloves. We’re heading into winter and I need to be bundled up if I’m going to keep doing this at the level I’m doing it. I took her advice and bought a new pair that night.

But the ICE comment stuck with me in a different way.

It wasn’t accusatory or skeptical. It wasn’t coming from a place of hostility. It was care, care shaped by fear.

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Over the course of this campaign, I’ve gotten used to a particular kind of interaction.

I introduce myself as George and in the very next sentence, someone calls me “Jorge.”

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I don’t think it comes from a negative place. Most of the time, it’s benign, a small slip, a reflex. But it’s also a reminder of how people see me and how quickly they decide who I am before I’ve really said anything.

I’m proud to be Hispanic. That’s not in question. But in my own head, I experience myself as George. Not a category. Not an archetype. Just a person.

It’s always interesting to see how that collides with how the world reads me. Some people look at me and immediately see a Hispanic candidate and assume they know my story. Others tell me I’m “not really Hispanic,” or “basically white,” because they perceive me as white-passing. Those comments always bother me. They don’t just erase my background; they flatten it.

I’ve seen over and over again the “soft” version of bigotry—the bigotry of low expectations or of assumed scripts.

We do it in politics all the time. We look at someone and decide, without meaning harm, what must matter most to them.

You see someone who looks Hispanic and you start talking about immigration reform.
You see a Black voter and you lead with criminal justice or community policing.
You see a woman and go straight to abortion, not knowing whether she’s pro-choice or pro-life.
You see someone on the LGBTQ spectrum and go immediately to trans issues whether or not that’s central to their life.

The intention is often good. The effect is flattening. You take one important part of someone’s identity and make it the whole thing, the qualifying factor that defines every political conversation.

People are more complex than that. Every voter I meet is carrying a whole universe of experiences, fears, hopes, and responsibilities that can’t be captured by one label.

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That woman’s comment about ICE opened that whole line of thought back up for me.

She wasn’t accusing me of anything. She was worried for me because of how I might be seen and what that could mean for my safety.

And she’s not wrong to worry.

I’ve watched the way fear reshapes public life here in Indianapolis. I stopped by a monthly grassroots event a while back, a gathering that started a couple of years ago as a vibrant space with Hispanic vendors and families coming together. When they first launched it, they were seeing at least a hundred people every month.

When I was there, there were six.

The organizers told me flat out that people are afraid to show up. They’re worried about ICE. They’re worried about being seen, recorded, tracked.

Another local organization, La Plaza, had to cancel one of its annual events out of concern for what that fear would do to turnout and for the safety of the people they serve.

When one-third of undocumented people in this country are staying home—not going to work, not attending community gatherings, not showing up to things that would otherwise help them build a better life—that becomes more than just an immigration issue. It’s a systems issue. It’s a community issue. It’s a democracy issue.

It’s what happens when the basic promise of public life—that it’s safe to show up—breaks down.

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So yes, I walked away from that door with a new pair of gloves on my to-do list.

But I also walked away thinking about how much of this campaign is about something deeper than winning a seat or flipping a district.

It’s about whether people feel safe enough to be seen.
It’s about whether they’re reduced to one label or respected in their full complexity.
It’s about whether our systems protect their ability to show up in the first place.

That woman didn’t just listen to my pitch about rebuilding something better than what we had. She embodied the stakes of it in one small, caring warning about ICE and a gentle reminder to cover my hands.

I’m running for Congress to help build a politics where people don’t have to live like that and where they can open their door, step outside, and show up in public without fear.

And yes, I’ll be wearing gloves this winter.