We Were Them Once: On Being Luso American and the Hypocrisy I Can't Shake

Saturday was No Kings 3. I went to a small rally with my bestie — signs in hand, FDT hats and social injustice t-shirts on, standing on a street corner while cars drove by, some honking in support and others passing in silence. There were a lot of honkers though, and honestly? That made it even better.

On the surface, it looked different from my other No Kings experience. But the feeling — that shared fire, that collective refusal to accept what's happening to this country — was exactly the same.

Let me back up.

I didn't make it to No Kings 1. I was in Portugal at the time, and by the time I found out there had been organized protests there, the moment had passed. Had I known, I would have gone. But when No Kings 2 was announced and I saw there was one happening in Porto, I knew I had to be there. I was feeling so helpless watching everything unfold from across an ocean. I needed to do something.

The Porto rally was held in a square. Maybe fifty of us, maybe more. And almost all of them were expats — Americans living abroad, scattered across Portugal, drawn together by the same grief and rage. It has been something to learn just how many Americans are quietly making their way to the motherland these days. But that's a conversation for another post.

I went alone to Porto, which felt a little scary at first. But everyone was so warm. I ended up joining their WhatsApp community before I left. There is something profoundly healing about being surrounded by people who feel exactly what you feel. The hopelessness. The frustration. The pain. The anger. Shared suffering has a strange way of becoming shared strength.

No Kings 3, standing on that street corner with my best friend, cemented something different — a memory. The kind you look back on and know, without question, that you were standing on the right side of history. For the next one, I think I want to be in New York City or Washington DC. I want to feel that energy at scale.

But standing there yesterday, something else was sitting with me. Something that's been sitting with me for a while now, and that I need to talk through out loud.

I am first generation American. My parents immigrated here from Portugal in the late 60s and early 70s, part of a large wave of Portuguese immigration during that era. And they had real reasons to leave. Portugal at the time was considered one of the poorest, most underdeveloped countries in all of Western Europe — ground down by decades under the Salazar dictatorship. And Portugal was also at war. A colonial war fought across Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau that lasted from 1961 to 1974. The military draft under that regime was brutal — service periods were increased to four years, with nearly all conscripts facing mandatory tours in African combat zones. Men were fleeing that draft in droves. Emigration spiked because of it.

My family was part of that wave. My immediate family was fortunate enough to come here legally, documented. But that was not everyone's story. Extended family members, friends, neighbors from our town back in Portugal — some of them came undocumented. And they didn't arrive blindly. There were people from our town who had immigrated earlier, who had already put down roots here, and who were able to help those coming later find their footing. A network built on shared origin and quiet solidarity. Which is how you end up with a great aunt who sold fake driver's licenses and social security cards so that undocumented people could work and survive. That was the reality of that era. That was what it took.

So you will understand why I am having the hardest time — a genuinely hard time — understanding how so many of those same people, or their children, are now pro-Trump and anti-immigration.

I cannot wrap my head around it. I do not understand the hypocrisy. I do not understand the double standard. And I have been turning this over in my mind trying to find a charitable explanation, because these are my people. This is my community. And it makes me feel ashamed.

Is it racism? Does it really just come down to that — the idea that the immigrants coming now don't look like us, so they don't deserve the same grace we were given? Is it Fox News doing what Fox News does, feeding people a steady diet of fear until they can no longer recognize themselves in someone else's struggle? Or is it something even more insidious — this desire to feel elevated, to align yourself with wealth and power rather than with the poor and the struggling, even when you were the poor and the struggling not that long ago?

I genuinely don't know. Maybe it's all three. Maybe it's something I haven't named yet.

What I do know is this: not everyone in my community came here with papers. They came with desperation and hope and the willingness to do whatever it took. And someone helped them. Someone extended their hand knowing full well they could lose everything, and said go find prosperity and happiness.

The least — the very least — we can do is extend that same humanity to someone else.

We were them once. 💜

With love always,

The Not So Common Gal