To the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, we’re tired of being erased.

I looked around that room, so full of life and searched for someone like me. Someone I could look to for guidance. Ask the questions I’ve been wrestling with.

And then, from about a quarter of a football field away, I saw it. My chance, my hope. Our opening. So I shuffled over, careful not to come between those and their idols, their family, their North Star.

Cesar Chavez. The United Farm Workers Movement of the 1960s. Dolores Huerta. The strikes that changed the history of farm labor. He had to be here. This was Larry Itliong’s friend, his co-leader in organizing the Filipino and Mexican workforces to fight for more together. My eyes scanned their little corner. This section, I was sure, there had to be someone like me. They wouldn’t ignore his story, his life, his words, his face.

Would they?

They couldn’t erase him like that.

Could they?

My eyes paced, faster, faster. Line by line, I moved from one portrait to the next until there was nothing left for me to search.

So I went back and tried again. And again. And again. Until at least 30 minutes had passed and still, nothing. They erased him. Who knew it’d be so easy? To completely get rid of someone’s life like that. To take some paint and use it to cover the years, the blood, that person had spilt in something great, in the pursuit of something. To rewrite history so the gaps left by his absence aren’t felt so we wouldn’t get suspicious, so we wouldn’t ask questions about the nothingness where we once stood. Marched. Fought. Resisted.

As I slunk away, I saw others marvel at their heroes, their history, their stories, and felt that too familiar pang hit my gut. The one of hope flying away, vanishing between your fingers. The one of anger rising, catching on the rings of my esophagus. The one of disappointment stinging my eyes shut for a moment.

They want this. They want us to shut down. To stay quiet. To not ask questions. To sit down and continue with the status quo.

They want our silence, our complicity, our domesticity.

But I’m tired of being domesticated. Of sitting. Of being erased and ignored.

And I’m ready to fill those rooms with us. Our stories. Our tears. Our skin. Our eyes. Our voices.

I’m ready to scream until they ignore us no longer.

Isang Bagsak.