There’s a scene in The Muppets Take Manhattan where Kermit, at his lowest point, is sitting in Pete’s diner. Pete—a gruff New York cook who has no business being this wise—looks at him and says:

“Peoples is peoples. No is buildings. Is tomatoes, huh? Is peoples.”

It’s a weird little monologue. Pete’s not a native English speaker, and the grammar is all over the place, and it shouldn’t land as hard as it does. But it does. Because underneath the broken syntax is something true: we’re all just people. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

I’ve been thinking about that quote a lot lately.

I live in the USA. This past week, ICE has been conducting raids here. Families separated. People pulled from their communities. Human beings treated like problems to be solved, statistics to be managed, threats to be neutralized.

And I keep coming back to Pete. Peoples is peoples.

The thing about dehumanization is that it doesn’t announce itself. Nobody says “we’re going to treat these humans as less than human now.” It happens through language. Through policy. Through the slow, steady erosion of seeing someone as someone.

“Illegals.” “Aliens.” Words designed to make you forget there’s a person attached. A person with a family, a job, a favorite food, a dumb joke they tell too often. A person who is just as much a person as you are.

I’m not going to pretend I have answers. I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know how to stop the machinery of cruelty once it’s in motion. I feel frustrated and sad and sometimes so tired of feeling frustrated and sad.

But I know this: the first step toward treating people badly is forgetting they’re people. And the first step toward treating them well is remembering.

Peoples is peoples.

It sounds so simple. It is simple. And somehow we keep forgetting it.

So here’s my call to action, for whatever it’s worth: remember. When you see the headlines, when you hear the rhetoric, when someone refers to a group of human beings like they’re a problem to be solved—remember that they’re people. Say it out loud if you have to. Peoples is peoples.

And then do something. Donate to immigrant rights organizations. Show up at a rally. Call your representatives. Talk to your neighbors. Do whatever you can, even if it feels small, even if it feels hopeless. Because the opposite of dehumanization is insisting on humanity. Over and over. Even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.

Pete got it. A fictional cook in a Muppet movie understood something we keep forgetting.

Peoples is peoples.

Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.

Stay human out there. And help others stay human too.