There are moments in history when silence becomes participation.
We may tell ourselves we are simply trying to live our lives, care for our families, and stay sane in a chaotic world. But history has a way of asking something more from us.
This may be one of those moments.
Across the United States, immigration enforcement and detention systems have expanded rapidly. The number of people held in immigration detention has reached record levels—more than 68,000 people in custody at a time, according to recent government data.
What is most striking is not just the scale, but who is being held: nearly three-quarters of detainees have no criminal convictions.
At the same time, enforcement tactics have shifted toward large-scale arrests in communities and workplaces, dramatically increasing the number of people detained away from the border.
Solitary confinement has also been used on thousands of detainees in immigration custody—conditions widely recognized by human rights experts as psychologically damaging when used for prolonged periods.
None of this is abstract.
These policies shape real lives, real families, real communities.
And they force a question that cannot be avoided:
What does it mean to bear witness now?
Bearing Witness Is Not Political Theater
The Zen Peacemakers Racism in America Bearing Witness Retreat does not exist to tell people what to think.
It is not activism training.
It is not a protest march.
It is not a political conference.
Bearing Witness is something deeper and more uncomfortable.
It is the practice of stopping long enough to see clearly.
We walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.
We sit in council in Montgomery.
We visit places where American history is not sanitized.
And we allow ourselves to encounter what is there.
Not through ideology.
Through presence.
The Zen Peacemakers founder Bernie Glassman taught that when we truly bear witness to suffering, appropriate action naturally arises.
But first, we must be willing to see.
The Harder Question: What Lives Inside Us?
It is easy to point to injustice “out there.”
Harder is the work of looking inward.
The Racism in America retreat asks a difficult question:
What part of the system lives inside us?
Zen Peacemakers often speak about meeting the “inner white supremacist.”
This phrase can provoke strong reactions.
It is not an accusation directed at white people alone.
It is an invitation to recognize something deeper:
the conditioning of separation, hierarchy, fear, and othering that runs through our culture—and through every human heart.
Racism is not sustained only by laws or institutions.
It survives through habits of mind:
Who we fear.
Who we distrust.
Who we assume belongs—and who does not.
Whether we are white, Black, Latino, Asian, Indigenous, immigrant, or citizen, we have inherited a system that shapes how we see each other.
Bearing witness means seeing that clearly.
Not with guilt.
Not with defensiveness.
With honesty.
History Is Not Over
When we visit places like Montgomery and Selma, we are often told that these events belong to the past.
But history rarely ends.
It transforms.
The architecture of racial hierarchy in America has changed shape many times:
Slavery
Jim Crow
Mass incarceration
Immigration detention
Militarized borders
Each generation must decide whether it will look away—or look directly.
Bearing witness means refusing the comfort of distance.
It means recognizing that the forces shaping the present did not appear out of nowhere.
They have roots.
And those roots run through all of us.
Why We Gather
The Racism in America Bearing Witness Retreat is not about fixing the world.
Zen Peacemakers retreats begin with the Three Tenets:
Not Knowing – letting go of fixed ideas
Bearing Witness – seeing reality as it is
Taking Action – allowing compassionate response to arise
The retreat does not ask participants to arrive with answers.
Only with willingness.
Willingness to listen.
Willingness to be uncomfortable.
Willingness to encounter the world—and ourselves—without turning away.
In a time when political rhetoric grows louder and harder, this kind of practice may be more necessary than ever.
Not because it changes the world overnight.
But because it changes us.
And that is where all real change begins.
Join the 2026 Retreat
Bearing Witness to Racism in America
Montgomery & Selma, Alabama
April 23–28, 2026
Learn more and register:
https://hive.zenpeacemakers.org/events/198985




