Resistance to ICE’s war on Chicago

The ICE invasion of Chicago – code name Operation Midway Blitz – began in early September 2025 and officially lasted two months. During that time federal agents carried out mass arrests, snatched people off the streets, terrorized neighborhoods and tear gassed communities and even the Chicago Police. They also generated mass resistance from ordinary people – turns out, most people don’t like it when their neighbors are disappeared.

Resistance took many forms – know your rights trainings, formation of neighborhood rapid response committees, protests at a notorious immigration detention center and immigration court, door knocking to educate and recruit, protecting schools and school-children, protesting at hotels and rental car companies used by ICE, community alert whistles and direct confrontation. 

Immigrants rights activists in Chicago knew that this was coming and organized an education blitz in immigrant neighborhoods months before ICE’s invasion. As Midway Blitz progressed, lessons were learned and tactics were refined. As ICE kidnapped, shot, gassed and brutalized, more and more people questioned why ICE could get away with this kind of terror in a sanctuary city and state. 

Of the many thousands of ordinary Chicagoans who joined ICE watch groups, many of them had never been active in social movements before and learned as they organized. Entire neighborhoods mobilized for street protests when alerted that ICE was harassing neighbors. Unionized school workers stood up to federal agents and refused to let their students or their parents be kidnapped. Chicago was warned by Trump to expect a deployment of National Guard troops to protect ICE from the citizens of the city. This threat didn’t materialize and was blocked in the courts.

Although immigration raids have never ended in Chicago, Homeland Security is expected to return in force in the spring. As ICE continues to recruit, uses ever-more aggressive tactics, and raids expand in other cities, these lessons feel urgent. Here we gather a few of the voices of activists from this resistance, both new and veteran. Tempest Collective members in Chicago believe that compiling these compelling oral histories of ICE resistance in our city will serve our movement everywhere as we reflect, learn, and grow together.

Eric Ruder interviews Hongmin

Hongmin has been a volunteer at the Chinatown/Bridgeport rapid response team since September, 2025. Eric Ruder is a longtime socialist in Chicago.

ER: So you’ve been out monitoring ICE activity around Chinatown and Pilsen. What are some of your observations?

H: I can summarize the work I do. I canvas every weekend in the Bridgeport and Chinatown area to residents. And this week we’re doing business canvassing. And other than that, I am also trained for rapid response, but because I don’t have a car, I’m never rapid enough to get on the scene where ICE is detaining people. I have also helped out in the Southwest area with their canvassing once—a few weeks ago when things were particularly bad. And then other than that, I monitor the city-wide chat for ICE activities every Saturday for my team. So basically there’s a big chat that all the leaders in Rapid Response Teams (RRT) are in, and then they will send texts about ICE activities that others have reported to the hotline or on social media to the chat. And then, if it’s within the designated area for my team, I will send it to the activity chat. So that’s the kind of work I’ve been doing so far.

ER: And it sounds like you went canvassing to businesses, but you’ve just also reached out to just regular people?

H: Yes. Mainly to Cantonese-speaking and Spanish-speaking people. Those are two main languages.

ER: Do you speak both Cantonese and Spanish?

H: No, I speak Mandarin and Cantonese, and Cantonese has been pretty useful.

ER: What has that been like? I’m really curious to know: Are people appreciative? Have they heard about ICE activity at all? Would you say people are fearful or something else? What kinds of interactions have you had?

H: It really varies. It ranges from people who have no idea what ICE is to people who have heard about all the raids. People we’ve reached through canvassing learn about their rights, and they have the materials. There was one time we went canvassing in Chinatown where there are a lot of older Cantonese-speaking people, like grandfathers and grandmothers, and a lot of them don’t know what ICE is, and so we gave them the background they needed. And for people who know a bit about ICE, a lot of them think that if they have legal status, they are fine. I think that speaks to the misconceptions people have about ICE and their default trust in government agencies, even though these are federal agencies deployed by Trump.

So we have to explain that first, ICE is doing racial profiling, so if you are non-white, you can and will be targeted. And secondly, the more people they detain, the more money they make. So they literally make money by detaining more people. And people are shocked when they hear that they want to detain as many people as they can because they’re like, “What’s the use of detaining people who are ‘legal’?” Many people think ICE is here to only target and detain so-called “illegal” immigrants. And when they find out that they’re trying to detain as many people as possible, they’re really shocked.

ER: And there’s also the idea that ICE is simply going after “the worst of the worst,” only the “criminals.” But just yesterday there was a national news story that reported that something like 83 percent of the people that have been detained so far have no criminal history whatsoever. In some areas, the number is even higher.

H: Yes, they are even very active in Evanston. Evanston is not even that diverse, it’s like more of a middle-class suburb. I think this partly shows that we haven’t been able to tell our stories very effectively. I think a lot of the things we do aren’t proactive enough. And telling the story of what is happening here is a big part of it.

I think there are a lot of opportunities to make this like a Black Lives Matter movement. Obviously it’s a very different moment. Immigrants, especially so-called “illegal” immigrants, are not conceived of as American. This also extends to Black people at times—but in a different way—because this is a racist country. This question of “American-ness” will make it harder for this to become a national movement, but I think there is still potential, if for no other reason because ICE has shot and killed people.

Because we haven’t been able to tell our story very well, we have missed some opportunities. And because all the neighborhood responses operate individually in different areas, there have been some missed opportunities. But you could argue this is also a strength. Decentralization makes it easier to respond quickly on a local basis. But I think down the line, if ICE is here for a long time and we want to make it a movement, we should think about how to have more coordinated efforts and how to tell our own stories. I see more and more people joining in this effort, so I see a lot of potential honestly.

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Geoff Guy interviews Rosemary

Rosemary is a Rogers Park community defense organizer. Rosemary is a pseudonym. Geoff Guy is a labor and tenants’ rights activist in Chicago.

GG: How has the ICE invasion impacted you and your community?

 

R: Reading through 200 messages, trying to figure out where they took my friend, trying to do my job—what are the things we could be building if not constantly reacting to crises? We’re organizing and resisting, building something beautiful here, but it’s terrifying—a military invasion in my neighborhood. The fact that an average person can’t leave their house if they’re at risk of being deported, or any brown person without threat of being detained.

But also, I want to be clear about how we’re fighting back; I hate all the articles about how everyone’s afraid to leave their homes and scared. Yes, we’re scared, but we’re in the streets. Chicago is organized and responding, and responding by catalyzing fear into solidarity. In Rogers Park on the first day, ICE really hit our neighborhood—there were hundreds on the streets with their orange whistles as a visible reminder that we’re going to protect our neighbors, and people are waking up to it. It’s not just something people are seeing on the news or social media; it’s happening on their street. Our group of rapid response people is 1000 now. We have so many people trained now. Protect Rogers Park is training hundreds every week. We’re turning helplessness and hopelessness into action.

Newer folks are getting activated by just seeing this, talking to random people in the street who are following ICE. That’s what it takes – we don’t have SWAT teams, we need regular everyday people. New people coming in say they’re feeling hopeless and want to be in community with people doing something. And we’re giving constant education about why we’re doing this – not just ICE, but all forms of oppression: Palestine, policing. The number of people seeing undercover cops in our neighborhood that were never seen before, because they weren’t looking. They’re starting to see the number of cameras and the surveillance, and once they start looking, they start seeing it everywhere.

GG: Tell us about the work you’ve been doing. From the Immigration Court earlier this year to the Broadview ICE Facility to rapid response. How did these come together and form an infrastructure for the movement?

R: In June, they were kidnapping people at 55 E. Monroe (Immigration Court) for a couple weeks, then protests started. Once there was enough mobilization there and there was an embarrassing situation where they kidnapped a US citizen (protestor) in an unorthodox way. The protest worked. They effectively stopped kidnapping at court, at least for a long time. That moment where people were blocking cars from entering, that was a wakeup call that resistance works. Doesn’t work every time, and unpredictable about when it will work and when not, but in this case ICE made a calculus that this wasn’t easy picking any more. This inspired Broadview and rapid response. The more we can slow them down and waste their time, the more we can save one person.

I think neighborhood organizing is the most powerful form of organizing—working with people you live by and know. A lot of this is a proactive vs. reactive strategy. Neighborhood rapid response is in many ways a last line of defense; this all has to work together. We have eyes on the immigration court (site of many kidnappings by ICE agents and protests) and Broadview (a processing center turned illegal detention center) and hotels housing ICE and all these nodes of ICE’s operations—we’re able to share info and warn people in much quicker and more helpful ways. Just demonstrating that we do not consent to this invasion is powerful.

Having people constantly at Broadview saying, “This is wrong,” going to the source of their operations is important. For a long time, nobody paid attention to it. There are groups who have prayed rosary there for the last twelve years but didn’t see mass mobilization until someone sat in front of the car there, and that became the focal point of demonstrations. In many ways, that site is a bottleneck for ICE. It’s a horrible facility that’s supposed to just be for processing, but now it is used for detention. It was only supposed to be twelve hours, but people are now there for days on end, sleeping there with cold food, little water. We don’t allow detention centers in Illinois. They rely on them before transferring people to detention in other states. It’s a funnel, with horrible conditions. As they ramp up operations, elected officials can’t even tour and inspect.

When JB Pritzker (Illinois Governor) sent in the Illinois State Police, we saw the true basis of police repression, which is that police exist to repress dissent and not to protect people. They are clearly facilitating ICE operations by dispersing crowds. They have beaten and arrested protestors. We have yet to see local or state police arrest ICE, even though there is a recent ruling from a judge that if ICE tries to arrest people in federal court, police in Chicago could arrest ICE. Tensions between federal and local police are getting to civil war level, and everyone is so afraid of that. They want to deny these forces work together. They prefer state repression to interstate conflict.

GG: What have you seen that’s inspired you in this work? What are your ambitions for what you would like to build? What have you learned, or what would you share with other cities? What difficulties or barriers have you encountered?

R: Build now! Don’t wait. The relationships are the thing. It can feel like patrol is a time-suck: Are we spinning our gears just flyering and maybe ICE never comes? Twofold: every action you take should build community—e.g. flyering businesses is meeting people, sharing info. Not just sitting on a corner watching people, but a chance to talk to people about why we’re here. Get to know your community, get to know organizations, try to get on the same page about what’s coming. Localize everything. Don’t wait for a citywide system, don’t wait for everybody to agree on what to do—organize your building, organize your block, then organize the city.

What’s possible in autonomous organizing vs nonprofits is different. Not-for-profits (NFP) can provide material resources, but maybe can’t do riskier stuff. We need an analysis of what NFPs can and cannot do. Autonomous organizing also needs principles around accountability. For example, Broadview organizing is autonomous, while NFPs are there in advocacy roles.

GG: What do you think it will take for us to win? What are the sides? What is winning?

R: Success looks like moving people from where they’re at to understand the roots of our current crisis in the true sense of radical, to uproot those roots–pushing people to understand that this is not just a fight against ICE or against Trump, but against the broader police state that we are living under. I think a lot of people believe that if we elect a new person or if we train cops better or if we change what ICE is allowed to do, that we will win. But my goal is to stop deportations, to stop all deportations. My goal is to abolish the police, not just abolish ICE. I’m a futurist—thinking about what kind of world we’re creating, not what we’re destroying.

We have a thousand-person chat of people ready to respond on a moment’s notice. Building popular understanding of what’s happening in our world and educating about where we go is the challenge right now. As we’re building new relationships in this crisis, we should be thinking about where this is going. That is what I hope this crisis pushes us to understand: When we get a new president we keep fighting to stop deportation and keep housing our neighbors.

GG: What can we do as organizations now to secure post-crisis?

 

R: Of primary use is political analysis. Some groups aren’t organized enough to do what larger organizations are doing in mobilizing. We can carry the political education for average people out here and be voices—not in a scolding/patronizing way—but trying to normalize. So many people are baffled in terms of what to do about this. Many people, including liberals, now have to do things they’re not accustomed to, like organizing against the police. More radical organizations have a responsibility and experience to share an analysis at this moment.

We’re not entirely sure how to incorporate lots of new people and mixed consciousness–not necessarily “we should welcome in as many people as possible,” but we should let people know they’re organizers and they should take initiative and autonomy. There is no perfect organization. I’m relatively new to this, and having a political space to lean on made a difference.

GG: What would you like to see on the other side of this?

 

R: I want to see a thousand experiments of what kind of new future we want to build and to see these communications networks and infrastructures be applied to liberatory ends, so that whatever happens, we’re not waiting for an organization or a leader to take care of us, but that we actually have what we need, that we’re self-sufficient as much as possible and having joy and community in that self-sufficiency. We can’t just fight all the time. We have to build, and building is a restorative act. It’s not just hard work, it’s lifegiving. Do a community garden! But if you’re going to do anything, do it with a political analysis. If you’re going to be a NFP, do it with an understanding that all this comes from capitalism. NFPs don’t name those things, and don’t work through that political analysis—even progressive NFPs don’t come out and say “we need to abolish capitalism.”

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Dennis Kosuth interviews anonymous CPS teacher ‘T’

The following interview was conducted with a Chicago Teacher’s Union member and activist ‘ T.‘ They are involved in creating a Sanctuary School in their workplace and in community defense against ICE raids as part of a rapid response network on the Southwest side of Chicago. Due to harassment and doxxing of CTU members by rightwing activists, they chose to remain anonymous for this interview. Dennis Kosuth is a Chicago Teachers Union member and activist in the Palestine solidarity, labor, and socialist movements in Chicago.

DK: How has this operation with ICE in Chicago impacted you and the communities that you are a part of?

T: Multiple neighborhoods have been tear gassed. There are literally hundreds of people who were picked up in illegal arrests, arrests that ICE is not authorized to make. Citizens have been picked up. We’ve got kids who have missed six days in a row of school. When a teacher calls the mom, she says, “I’m afraid to take him. I’m afraid to go out and travel all the way to school.”

There was a helicopter over our school last week, and the kids were asking, “Is it ICE?”

Our school’s after school programming was just cut by two thirds. I can’t help thinking that the budget was cut by two thirds and ICE agents are getting $50,000 signed bonuses.

DK: Tell us about the work you’ve been doing.

 

T: We’ve got a sanctuary team and we’re making sure our staff know what’s going on because everybody lives in different places and ICE has not hit the city evenly. We let families know that ICE is not allowed in the building without a warrant. We did see some students who had not been coming to school very regularly have their attendance picked back up right after we sent that information home.

We made sure we sent them resources from the Chicago Public School website, from the mayor’s office, from trusted organizations. We let them know how you get good information, and what their rights are. I’m really grateful that the CTU has made multilingual materials so we could distribute them school wide.

We’ve also connected with our neighborhood rapid response team and folks in the community who support the work that we’re doing. We have community members helping us do morning and afternoon school patrols. These make sure that students and parents are safe during the busiest times at drop off and pick up.

When I’m not at school, then I’m on my rapid response team and in my neighborhood, and that’s a trip because we’ve been hit really hard.

It’s affecting the kids at school; it’s affecting my neighborhood. There are other CPS employees I know who also have ICE in their neighborhood. So many people know somebody whose family member was detained or witnessed them being detained. It’s just happening so often in so many places and is increasingly violent.

DK: What have you seen that’s inspired you? Are there any experiences that give you some kind of hope?

T: This stuff definitely shows the worst of people in these ICE agents. They teargas civilians who are literally just living their lives. We also see the best of people. I’ve been surprised how some of my colleagues were willing to sign up for actions when we asked, or even folks who proactively reached out and said, “How can I help?”

It’s activated people who maybe thought that this wouldn’t happen here, and folks are willing to move to action. We see the way that people defend their own communities, how they’re willing to get to work early and patrol.

The way community members have joined in this work is also impressive. People are willing to pick up students for parents who are afraid to go out. Oftentimes this is for people that they’ve never met before and who they might not meet again after this.

We are seeing the way people are showing up to witness these kidnappings, calling for help and letting people know what’s going on. Interesting bridges and coalitions are being built because we’re focused on what matters and what matters is keeping our city safe.

DK: What are some lessons for people in other cities who are also experiencing similar things?

T: A top line, not necessarily a lesson, but more like an orientation, is how little the Feds care about anything. They don’t know who they’re detaining. They don’t care about your private property. They don’t care about your actual citizenship status. They don’t care about running red lights and causing accidents in the streets. They have no regard for the people of the cities that they’re in.

A lesson is: Be open to building partnerships that maybe in other times you would not have, with people you might not have reached out to in another time.

The power of good documentation and good communication is also important. What we’re seeing here is things moving really fast. What we organize doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be a massive network from, you know, one end of your city to the other end of your city. Start a group chat with your neighbors so you can ask them, “What’s that weird car sitting out there?”

If you can catch ICE when they’re scoping out, it’s possible that you can stop that detention, and there’s a family who won’t get separated

DK: What do you think it’s going to take to push back Trump and the anti-immigrant forces in this country?

T: I think we need to build towards a general strike. If moral pleas were going to work, I think we would have already seen a response from ICE. What I’ve noticed is when they realize that they’ll be unsuccessful is when they stop. When the cost of whatever they want to do is too high. That’s the only time they back off.

I think we need to hit capitalists in their pocket books. I would like to see what a mass work stoppage could do, and break their banks.

DK: What do you think are some of the steps that we can take now, as union or non-union workers, towards that kind of action?

T: I think workers need to keep talking to workers. Whether you’re in a union or not, or a formal union or a budding union or whatever it is, like, anybody can pressure their own workplace to establish an ICE protocol because there are only two ways that ICE can enter a building: with your consent or with a warrant.

Don’t give consent. Demand a warrant. We’re not asking anybody to, or I don’t even think you necessarily have to, be so radical as to defy a warrant. That’s not what I’m advocating at this moment. At least demand that your employer who makes money off of your back and your labor say: We’re not opening the door without a warrant.

Set up your own security teams. We’ve seen some factories here that are doing it, and really any business can decide that they’re gonna do this. We probably need some small actions before we get to a general strike.

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Kirstin Roberts interview with Jorge Mujica (October 2025)

Kirstin Roberts is a Chicago Teachers Union member and longtime activist in the socialist and labor movements in Chicago. Jorge Mujica is an organizer with Arise Chicago.

KR: Can you tell Tempest readers about yourself?

JM: I’m Jorge Mujica, organizer with Arise Chicago. Arise Chicago is a worker center so basically we are focusing workplace problems from stolen wages to discrimination. Most of our members are immigrants, so therefore we have to talk about immigrant issues, although that’s not our main focus. I live now in Little Village, but I lived in Pilsen for many years as well.

KR: We are trying to let a national audience understand what is happening in Chicago from the perspective of people on the ground, ordinary people like yourself— organizers, activists, and impacted community members. Can you just paint a brief picture about what Trump is doing right now to our city?

JM: Well, I would say in general terms that Trump is terrorizing the community in Chicago. It is a psychological war, you know, because he needs to give the impression to his base that he’s keeping his promise of deporting 12 and a half or 13 million immigrants. Of course he’s not going to be able to do it. So far, in one month immigration has only detained 800 people (as of early October) that gives us an average of like 25 people every day and that’s nothing in terms of the numbers Trump wants. Of course, each deportation is a personal tragedy, a family tragedy, you know fathers without their sons, our sons without their mothers, etc. But it’s nothing in terms of real numbers. Eight hundred people every month for a full year would be 9000 people. So it’s a lot more terror, a lot more circus than anything else.

KR: I think that’s a really really good way of describing it for people. Talk a little bit about how this is impacting the community that you work in.

JM: There are a good number of day laborers in Chicago, although we are not a hub for construction like Atlanta. Many, many people look for jobs closely related to construction in the Chicago area, mostly in the suburbs, but they look for work at the Home Depot where immigration has been concentrating some of their actions. Mostly immigration has been coming after people individually, what they call “targeted operations,” but they have also conducted raids. The big difference between a targeted operation is they go after someone they’ve identified; they have an address for that person. Then they have the raids. Let’s go to Home Depot and catch everyone we find in the parking lot. These are the most incredibly vulnerable workers, to be looking for a job every single day with a different employer to do just one day’s work or maybe a bit more. But then after two weeks you’re unemployed again and you have to go back to the Home Depot and start trying to find someone to hire you. So this is despicable, going after these people just looking for work.

KR: One of the things you said is that this is a campaign of terror. What you’re describing certainly qualifies. Terrify people to get them to self-deport or just push them farther and farther underground. But there’s also something happening here in Chicago that doesn’t show up enough in the mainstream press and that is how communities are stepping up for each other. Is there anything you think people should be aware of and maybe even learn from in other cities?

JM: Well, the most inspiring thing we have had this year was hearing Tom Homan, the so-called “border czar” live on CNN saying that Chicago was a very difficult place to arrest immigrant workers because they were very well educated on their rights. So that’s like receiving the Nobel Prize for grassroots education because that’s exactly what we needed to do since Trump’s election. You know there was a lot of discussion. What do we do? Rapid response brigades or the position I took—popular education? Rapid response, maybe it’s already too late, basically coming after immigration detains somebody. Instead of that we focused on training people, educating people, preparing people for the event and for the possibility of facing immigration. We gave so many workshops. I really lost count. Immigration workshops about what to do: Keep your mouth shut and then don’t open your door. Learn your rights and have your rights card. We trained them to face the aggressiveness of immigration police.

KR: Looking forward, what is it gonna take? What kind of awareness and what kind of strategy do you think we’re gonna need in order to turn back the tide on what Trump is doing? Clearly right now people are resisting in so many ways. But every day, it’s a new outrage. Can you talk about what we need to move towards?

JM: Well, of course we need to change the regime. In order to gain that I think it’s a lot of conversation. On a daily basis people ask me, you know, what do I do? “What do I do” is not what you individually do, it is what we do as communities, what we do as groups. A community facing this thing together. We need leadership in that sense. What we need is to mobilize 200 people on that corner, and on every corner; what we need is creative participation. Like in the Little Village (neighborhood), we are distributing whistles. We are blowing the whistle and everybody starts doing it so it gets noticed. Don’t depend on an organization printing posters–if you can do it on a piece of paper or on a piece of cardboard, write down the number to the hotline and post it at the entrance of your building. We need to talk to thousands and thousands of people, telling them to be doing this kind of resistance.

KR: Is there anything else you think would be important to let people know?

JM: You know it is natural to be fearful, to be afraid, but the more you learn, the less fear you’re gonna have and that’s what we need. I began this conversation by saying it was a psychological war so how do you get rid of that? That’s what we need you know the community to lose their fear of immigration and to start fighting because as long as you’re in panic you’re going to be frozen in place or you gonna need to try to escape. What we need, instead of running away, is facing the danger and overcoming the danger, and that only happens when you overcome the fear.

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Kirstin Roberts interviews Raul Islas (October 2025)

Kirstin Roberts is a Chicago Teachers Union member and longtime activist in the socialist labor movement in Chicago. Raul Islas is a Chicago Teachers Union teacher.

KR: Can you tell Tempest readers about yourself?

 

RI: My name is Raul Islas. As a CTU (Chicago Teachers Union) teacher, I have answered the call of the teachers’ union to build a sanctuary community in my school. Basically what it is, is building a group of watchful staff, but also, if possible, bringing parents and community into it. So that’s something that I’ve been doing, connecting the staff that wants to protect students and families from ICE. Connecting them with parents and the community so that we build a strong watch community and are ready for whatever they bring at us. And today, it’s very much escalating.

KR: Can you say what happened today in Chicago? You said it’s escalating?

RI: Well, yeah, so my understanding is the National Guard has been called into Chicago by President Trump. They’re coming from the state of Texas. We’re talking hundreds. I’m not sure what the total number is, but it’s definitely hundreds. And it is specifically to aid ICE enforcement and to protect ICE agents to detain, arrest, deport people. So, yeah, that’s what I mean by escalating.

KR: Chicago has been in the national news a lot. But as people in the community, as teachers in Chicago, how do you describe this moment? What’s happening here?

RI: I interact a lot with parents, especially newcomer parents or parents who may not have legal status, and families are very scared. They’re scared to leave the house. They are scared to bring their children to school. They are scared to go and provide for their basic goods, like grocery shopping, or even going to the doctor, right? A lot of members of the community and staff, we’re trying to respond to that, and to provide them support. That could mean accompanying people to school. It could mean helping families with certain needs like grocery runs or even economic support for families. It’s becoming riskier and riskier to intervene on behalf of people who are being illegally detained. An activist was shot. ICE claimed that she attacked them, but the body cam footage is proving that to be a lie. They shot her five times. We also have a father who was shot and killed in the suburbs in Franklin Park (a Chicago suburb). Rapid response community members have also been teargassed repeatedly. Those of us who are in a rapid response community have to think more about our safety as we’re also thinking about the risk and the safety of people that we might be supporting.

KR: Is there anything that has given you hope or inspired you over the last couple of months of this work?

RI: I think there’s been a feeling of a lot of support. Whether it’s people signing up on lists to watch or to provide mutual aid for people or random neighbors, who are not a part of any groups, coming out on their own and standing up for people’s rights and taking risks, that is hope for me–just seeing where things are going and fears that people have about this administration and the boundaries that it’s pushing, fears of a dictatorship, fears of fascism. I feel rather overwhelmed by the amount of support coming in. They know more needs to be done and they’re very hungry for that opportunity to take action. I’m seeing language barriers where some volunteers are having a tough time communicating with the people, but they’re lining up to support. But when it’s an active solidarity, when there’s solidarity being felt, language becomes less of a barrier and people, they just feel the solidarity. It’s beautiful.

KR: You said something earlier and I want you to maybe just quickly talk about what you meant. Before we started recording you said there’s a place for everybody in this movement. Can you explain what you mean?

RI: We have some very active ICE watch. We have community activists who are definitely willing to engage ICE and to intervene when they’re seeing an arrest happening, willing to take those risks. And then we have people who may not see themselves doing that, but who want to be helping families; they want to play a role and they don’t necessarily envision themselves as activists going up against ICE per se. And then, of course, we have families who are affected, who are scared, but who are connecting us to other families that they know, organizing in their own community and putting themselves at risk. They’re affected, they’re scared, but they want to help others. There’s a role for everyone and that’s what I’m seeing more and more of, with all the layers of people that are coming out. There’s a role for everybody. It could be economic mutual aid, it could be providing a safe ride or a safe accompaniment to people to get to school, even to their jobs. It could be helping to spread posts to be viral to the public. So there’s definitely a role for everybody.

KR: How are you feeling about the political leadership in Chicago and in Illinois at this moment?

RI: I like hearing our elected leaders stand up to Trump. I think they mainly see their role as trying to stop some of what the administration is doing through the courts. Okay, I think it definitely has a role as well, but it also has major limitations. We have not been able to rely on the courts that much to stop this kind of encroachment on the people’s rights. Other elected leaders are going further, and especially more local elected leaders, where they are showing up in communities where ICE is present and they themselves are also challenging ICE on the spot, showing up to neighborhoods where ICE is, showing up to the places that people are being detained, and questioning ICE as to the legality of what they’re doing. So I think at the local level, more than the state level, more elected officials come out and be vocal. But, you know, some elected officials express that there’s only so much they can do. Their hands are tied. They’re seeing us fight back and I think they know they have to be looking like they’re fighting too. I was at the most recent No Kings rally. We had a prominent senator go up and speak, and the reception was not very good for that senator. That’s because people felt that the senator wasn’t really standing up to Trump so much. So now we’re starting to see some of these elected officials stand up a little more and you know want to make themselves look more like someone that is standing up and fighting against Trump. So I think these protests and mobilizations and organizing that are happening are making some elected officials, who normally have not been as vocal or strong, step up as well, because that’s what their constituents are demanding from them.

KR: Is there anything that we want people in other cities to know that we’ve learned? Negative lessons and positive lessons?

RI: Maybe we can start with negative, okay? I think it’s important for those in the activist community that are getting involved with stopping ICE, that they’re communicating with immigrant rights groups and the groups that are working with the people affected. We hace got to make sure that the actions that are being done are working in cohesion with people who are advocating for the affected. For instance, right now, we’re definitely hearing how hard it is for lawyers or immigrant rights advocates or families to get to their loved ones at Broadview (ICE processing and detention center and site of daily protests.) That means getting things to them that they might need. Broadview is a center run by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. It’s a processing center that should not be used as the detention center. They don’t have beds for everybody. So people are made to sleep standing up! It’s been a scene of a lot of intense protests and calls for shutting it down. And for some affected families, that’s worrisome because it means that their family members will be shipped further away to states where they do have “legal” detention centers. I’m wondering how much activists are talking to immigrant rights organizations or the affected families.

KR: So we need more movement spaces where people can communicate and coordinate?

RI: The question that needs to be asked is, how is this affecting the families? Is it making it harder for families to get to their loved ones, to get support for their loved ones? Well, what are some alternatives, right? We’ve got to have more spaces where people can talk to each other from different impacted communities. We’re all impacted communities. How do we get together and talk to each other?

I do think it is positive that people are using words like fascism, like authoritarian governments, like dictatorship. Before this we were only hearing that from groups on the Left. Now that sentiment is more widespread. What if this really is a dictatorship or a fascist takeover, and what are we willing to do to stop that? It’s very regular everyday people who are saying, look at this, look at what we’re seeing. I have family on the South side, Hispanic working class, and they are sharing things and saying things that makes me feel they understand. They’re realizing that this is beyond elections, so to speak. We have to take action beyond just voting or beyond just waiting for lawyers or the courts to do something. It’s becoming more and more clear that the people have to take action. I think this is setting the foundations for what will be a strong grassroots resistance to whatever this administration tries to do.

KR: Is there anything else you would want people to know, anything else you want to share?

RI: You know, I think this is a harder conversation to have for people, but I think we need to start thinking about not only movements and protests but completely alternative organizations that really are going to authentically and consistently fight for the issues that we care about. The Democratic Party that presents itself as an opposition party has failed to act like an opposition party in very critical and crucial moments. I mean not just recently, but throughout history. So we want to be careful to be practicing the same thing; we organize, we protest, we resist, we create the momentum, and the movement to make change, but then we just hand power over to the Democratic Party, which has some very strong members and elected officials. But overall, as an apparatus, it often feels like they are part of the problem, not part of the solution. During the election, I was not hearing from Democrats or their leaders warning about what immigration actions could turn into. If anything, I would often hear them present themselves as tough on immigration, or as tough on the border as, let’s say, Trump, right? And so I think that’s very problematic, because if you don’t present yourself as an opposition party, then people are going to go for who they see as being stronger.

I think the Democratic Party has some very strong voices. We have some local elected members who are very strong on this issue, like Congresswoman Delia Ramirez, who’s been very strong on immigration and very vocal against Trump. But when you look at figures like that and you see the rest of the Party, you realize the good ones are the exception. The rest of the Democratic Party doesn’t look like this, doesn’t sound like this.

I think that there’s definitely an interest from those in power to have a lower paid sector of workers with less rights that they could use, for instance, to break up unionized industries. Native workers against immigrant workers, Black against Brown, which they’ve been doing as well. I mean, we’ve definitely seen attempts by Republican governors to bus migrants into specific cities to create friction in the cities. And so there’s a lot of using the immigrant community as political weapons. It certainly feels like in this city, Chicago, that people are not putting up with it. They are standing up, they’re coming out of their homes, they’re coming out on the streets, they are keeping an eye out, they’re being watchful. And it just feels like more and more people are on guard. Like, they’re kind of ready.

You know, some people have compared us to the underground railroad. They’ve talked about how there was a time in this country where there was a Fugitive Slave Act and the federal government was forcing states to hand people over who had escaped slavery and were looking for freedom. You have a federal government now that wants to force sanctuary states to hand people over, imprison them, detain them, deport them. And so there are definitely people looking back at history and saying, we know that it’s taken people working at an underground or clandestine level to support people. I’m seeing a lot of that in Chicago and I’m inspired by it. And like I said, on a daily basis, I am overwhelmed and unable to even manage and handle the number of volunteers who are contacting me and saying, I want to help. When I met with activists from L.A. in D.C. who are facing the same thing, one of the things they warned about was fatigue and people experiencing burnout, not just physical, but emotional as well. That’s one thing that they kind of told us here in Chicago to be aware that that will happen quickly. The number of people wanting to get involved could help keep this going, because by the way it looks like now, we’re gonna have to keep this going for years because so much damage is being done and so much of it is being institutionalized like a sort of superstructure being built right before our very eyes.

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Kyle Gilbertson interviews Bridget Murphy

Bridget Murphy is a longtime community organizer on the northwest side of Chicago. At her children’s neighborhood public school in Albany Park she helped to build a group of neighbors that walks students safely to and from school and supports impacted families in the context if hostile ICE raids. Kyle Gilbertson is a musician and educator as well as a longtime socialist and Palestinian rights activist.

KG: How has the ICE invasion impacted you and your community?

BM: It has been very intense. The closest thing I have to describing that feeling is like COVID. You know, when all of a sudden, overnight, everything is different. Everybody has to rethink their actions. Even the smallest action, like going to the grocery store, taking your kids to school. Everybody has to rethink what is the safest possible way to go about what they do every day. In addition to the fear and anxiety, every individual person is handling it very differently.

KF: Could you tell me about the work you’ve been doing?

BM: At my own kids’ school, we have a group of neighbors that has been organizing since around Labor Day weekend. We came together very loosely on a Signal thread to think about how we could potentially organize and to find out if any families needed help getting to school. We didn’t immediately know of any families who needed that. So we started just doing morning safety walks. We met with the school administration to introduce ourselves and discuss what kinds of stuff we might want to work on together. But mostly the first few weeks we were just doing safety patrols and trying to get people plugged into community defense trainings. Then about two weeks ago, things really heated up in our neighborhood. There were multiple ICE arrests at an intersection very near our school. In one case, it was a mom from our school. She dropped her kids off at school, and walked two blocks to the bus stop to go to work. ICE swooped in and took her. I hear that her husband was with her, and he just happened to go to a corner store for a minute to get something when she was arrested. So, if he hadn’t done that, their kids would have lost both parents. When that happened, word traveled among all the parents in the school. The principal called me that day and said, “Are there a few volunteers you could have come to the main office and help us walk kids home after school?” We said sure. So about six to ten people came to the office within an hour from our group and that day we ended up helping to walk home close to 40 students. Parents possibly knew the mom who had been taken in and were scared to pick up their kids. That was a Friday. The following Monday, there were many absent students. The school really came to us at that point to say, we need your help.

Right now, it’s about 65 kids every day we are walking to school. We have ten different routes with different colors and numbers. We try to have two adults on every route. So on a daily basis, to get everyone both to and from school, we need at least 40 people to raise their hands for this kind of solidarity. And people have been doing it. It’s been amazing. Every day we’re like, okay, can we make it through? Can we do it tomorrow? But so far, the outpouring of people who have shown an interest has exceeded the number of families seeking this support.

KG: What is your vision for what you would like to build beyond what exists right now in terms of movement infrastructure?

BM: I want to acknowledge that none of this started on Labor Day weekend. I and many others have been organizing in our neighborhood as part of an independent political organization since 2020. Through that, we have built a precinct captain program. We’ve connected with people in the neighborhood dozens of times, whether it was for the Bring Chicago Home referendum (which aimed to alleviate homelessness), or for candidates, or for helping people prepare for the current attacks. So I think that’s part of what made it possible to even just get started. There was already a group of people who knew each other, and knew that there were some shared values. We’ve also organized together to plan block parties. As a parent at the school, I’ve also worked with the school over the years, organizing to help stop school closings, for safety on the playground, and as a member of the Local School Council. So, there have been lots of different pieces of organizing work that happened over the years.

Now there are so many more people joining in and looking for ways to do something concrete. And there is an interest in doing something beyond a walking school bus. We have a traditional Democratic machine alderman representing our neighborhood. So a neighbor put out a call for her to vote a certain way in city council. And some people were asking, who can run against her? At the next neighborhood school over, they have a similar Signal thread that started overnight. It’s related to mutual aid and community defense, and now has over a hundred people. A lot of elected officials on the north side are leading the charge in all this.

KG: Are there any challenges or difficulties that you’ve encountered, or lessons you’ve learned in this work that you’d like to share with people in other cities?

BM: At this moment, most of the walking school bus volunteers are white. I think it’s an important way for people to show up and use the privilege they have. But that’s not a long-term foundation for a political organization. For the real and present need right now, I think it works. I also think that people of color in the neighborhood have shared that they’re glad to see all the white people standing up for them.

I also want to acknowledge that, though we have this new walking school bus thing, a lot of families have been doing this forever–helping each other walk their kids to school. Now some families are coordinating together to figure out how to walk in bigger groups to get to school. It’s a walking school class, an organized effort with a spreadsheet. It always has been happening. Our role is to fill the gaps now, where people feel like they don’t have access to that support.

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Kyle Gilbertson’s interview with anonymous activist

The following interview was conducted with a longtime social justice activist based in Chicago. They are involved in community defense against ICE raids as part of a local rapid response network. They are also involved in the Palestine Solidarity movement in Chicago. For this interview they chose to remain anonymous. Kyle Gilberston is a musician and educator as well as a long time socialist and Palestinian rights activist.

KG: Tell me a little about how the ICE invasion has affected you and your community.

A: I live in a neighborhood that has been pretty hard hit. We’re building a lot of the organization from the ground up. There is a lot of fear. One thing that we have a lot of is like false sightings, and we’ve had that for months. Every day we continue to have sightings that are people mistaking suspicious looking cars for ICE. That really shows how people are on edge. It’s also been an opportunity for people to come together. I organized, on my own, a very small scale block watch – for just a two block by two block area around my house – after somebody was abducted directly in front of my building. We had a meeting for that, and an ICE watch training. Fifty people showed up. Sadly, that might not have happened if not for this crisis. I wish we had had that kind of organization and connection beforehand. But it is becoming a big catalyst for people to connect with their neighbors.

KG: Tell me a little more about the work you’ve been doing in this moment.

A: There are various places to get involved, and one of them is on a very local neighborhood level. I am in the rapid response group in my neighborhood. I do regular patrols around a certain area near my house. I keep up with sightings in my neighborhood. That’s rapid response. The patrols are a little bit more proactive. There is the “adopt a hiring corner” initiative with Latino Union. These hiring corners and Home Depots where the day laborers are have been such a huge target. There’s a Home Depot by my house. There’s a raid at that Home Depot almost every single day. One thing people have found is that, if they are volunteers tabling and keeping watch at a hiring corner or a Home Depot, that will significantly deter ICE raids. We think that they have scout cars in the Home Depot parking lots, such that when the volunteers leave, the ICE raid will happen about 30 minutes later. People have said, why do the day laborers go out if it’s so dangerous? The fact is, their livelihood depends on their accessibility to employers. So the fact that these people are making themselves accessible to sell their labor means that they are also the most accessible people to ICE.

So people are trying to be proactive, instead of just responding when there’s a raid. It’s the same idea with the school drop off and pick up patrols, where people try to proactively have presence around schools, because they’ve been targeting parents dropping off and picking up their kids. Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez was killed right after dropping off his kid. So you’re trying to guess where they would go and then be there in advance. The third way that I’ve been plugging in is by going to Broadview and protesting there. Everyone who gets kidnapped in Chicago gets trafficked through Broadview. And the conditions–It’s not that the conditions are the only problem. To be clear, the existence of the facility is the problem. But on top of it being a trafficking center, the conditions are also terrible there. People will be taken there and within hours feel like it is so unbearable that they will sign up for voluntary removal. We have to get Broadview shut down.

There are also people who are trying to gather data on ICE operations to try to better predict their tactics. There’s a lot of different levels.

KG: What is your vision for what you’d like to build, or what you would like to see happen in the future, within the movement?

A: In the Northwest Side Rapid Response Network, when we get calls from a certain location, sometimes no one is near that location, and we have to drive. It may take 15 minutes, and that could make a life or death difference for people. What I would really like to see is for rapid response to become obsolete, because whenever they come to a block, every single person on the block will just walk out of their house. I want to see everyone who is not undocumented, or who feels that they have the privilege to step outside and take that risk, that everyone who can somewhat safely do that, is empowered to do so and is trained to do so and can respond to it in the moment. I think it just happened in Albany Park.

KG: Yeah, my friend Gabe was a part of that.

A: There have been instances when people have literally come out of their houses to stop a raid. The thing about ICE is that they work so quickly because they know that we are on to them. The person who was kidnapped in front of my apartment, was walking down the street, and they ran up to him, zip tied his hands, and threw him in the back of a van, and it was over in 10 seconds. We didn’t even get a video of it. So one thing I would like to see is that everybody is empowered to do something in that situation, and that everyone feels confident that they will be supported by their neighbors in going out and taking some sort of action, whether that’s interference or not, whether it’s just recording, or whether it’s trying to offer support to the person. Just the presence of people on the street is important, because ICE is afraid of people.

I really feel like there is a utility to be a “protective presence,” which is a word people use in Palestine to describe when, for example, American Jewish activists go to Palestine and try to impede the occupation by just being there. They’re so afraid that they’ll teargas us, even though we aren’t doing anything to them. We don’t have guns, but they seem to be afraid. I don’t know what it is inside their minds, but they seem to be very sensitive to community response. So that’s my vision for how this could be.

KG: Are there any lessons you’d like to share for people in other cities?

A: Definitely. I’ve been telling friends who live in other cities, this could come to you later, and you want to get to know your neighbors beforehand. When you’re trying to build community amid this invasion, some people are not comfortable leaving their homes. Some people are going to be understandably very wary of meeting new people right now. Trying to build relationships now, while also being sensitive to people’s very legitimate fears, is way more difficult to do. If we had done this over the summer–I wish we could have had potlucks and block parties out on the boulevard, and met every single person on our block. Before this person got abducted in front of my building, I had just happened to create a WhatsApp group for my building. It wasn’t that organized, but we had about 40 people in it. Somebody posted the video there first. Then I said, can we meet in front of the building and ask people what happened? That small WhatsApp group provided a level of organization that was really valuable in that moment. I implore people: We are socially conditioned to think that it’s rude to even say hi to our neighbors. I’ve always felt kind of awkward in my neighborhood. I feel like I am living in a place where people were displaced from due to gentrification. All of that awkwardness is completely understandable and fine. But don’t wait until there’s an emergency, and somebody has just been snatched off your block and thrown into a van to think, maybe I should meet my neighbors.

KG: Another person I interviewed for this article made a similar point. She’s involved with United Working Families. She has done tons of door knocking around the neighborhood. She also organizes block parties. She said all of that helped in making connections with neighbors, and laying the groundwork for what’s happening now.

A: That’s the other thing: You can’t do door knocking anymore, because we just told everybody not to open their door. That’s one of the biggest problems we had. We’re trying to canvas to get people to join our block watch group, but we can’t knock on people’s doors because we don’t want to scare them. But if we had done this before–three months ago, six months ago–we could have knocked on people’s doors, and it wouldn’t have been scary. I feel a lot of regret over the missed opportunity.

KG: What do you think it would take to actually win in this struggle?

A: I think it’s a combination of two things. One thing is the organization that I talked about with everybody knowing their neighbors. Presence on the street, feeling empowered, having information networks, so we can respond immediately. The second thing is that I do believe escalated tactics are necessary. I know organizations that are 501c3s cannot recommend that people intervene in operations. I get that, and I’m respectful of that. When I volunteer with organizations, I do make that commitment.

But I don’t believe in pure pacifism. I define violence as violence towards people, not towards property. I don’t even think that we need to go as far as violence towards people like agents. It’s kind of hilarious because they have already painted us as being violent rioters at Broadview. If they’re going to call us violent rioters for just standing there, then you might as well do something that is actually effective. I do think there are ways to actually slow them down.

One issue we’re dealing with at Broadview right now is Pritzker and the Illinois State Police (ISP). Weeks ago, there was all that tear gas and stuff. I wasn’t there on those days. But on those days, about half of the agents that are present in the Chicago area were tied up with protesters at Broadview and not kidnapping people. However much I do not want me and my comrades to be teargassed at Broadview, it’s absolutely preferable to go out and take whatever they want to give us if that means they are busy and can’t be kidnapping my neighbors. Since Pritzker’s police took over the security at the Broadview facility, it has enabled the border patrol and other federal agents to be freed up. That’s because of Pritzker’s policy, the ISP’s policy, as well as the Broadview mayor’s policy is to institute these “free speech zones,” which are like kettling areas because they have these concrete barriers that trap you in. It’s unfortunate, because we never wanted our fight to be against Pritzker or the ISP, but they brought it to us. Now the movement is dealing with a lot of tension about how to respond to this. Police violence against us is obviously an issue, but it is not the core issue. Yet, you can’t separate it from the core issue, because why are they beating us up?

To win, if we’re talking about Broadview, we need to get the ISP out. I think probably the most viable way to do it is by threatening Pritzker’s chances at a presidential run. Then we need to make it too difficult for them to traffic people through there, and that could require a lot of different tactics. So, if we can get Pritzker’s police out of there, then we might have a chance at actually being face to face with ICE again and making their operations more difficult.

KG: A number of people in Tempest are involved with the May Day Strong Coalition. It’s a nationwide coalition that involves a lot of unions and community organizations. Part of their vision is to help lay the groundwork for a general political strike to stop ICE. Do you have any thoughts about using the power of labor to defeat ICE?

A: In this country, I think the labor movement has been co-opted and legalized to the point that labor leaders will not take this on. The rank and file is not empowered to do it without the consent of the union leaders. My general impression is that we are not treating this like the emergency that it is. I think schools should be closed, most businesses should be closed, like when everything shut down for COVID. That’s the level of disruption that I feel like this deserves. Don’t go to work. There’s a reason why that doesn’t happen. It’s because everybody would get fired. But it is very worrying the way we continue to just go to work. Things are open and things are functioning. And every few minutes, somebody just gets grabbed off the street, and we’re just going to keep working. The one example that I think is a really good one is Home Depot. Home Depot’s management, they have these off duty cops that work as security guards. They are very corrupt and colluding with ICE. There was a lawsuit filed against these people because they actually killed a migrant day laborer about a year ago. So, one thing is that the Home Depot management and these off-duty cops are extremely aggressive towards rapid response volunteers who try to talk to the employees. The employees have in general seemed to be sympathetic and don’t want raids happening in their parking lot every day. However, they have also said that if they try to do anything other than just look away, they will be fired. If Home Depot workers were to strike, that would be so impactful because that’s literally ground zero for ICE operations. They feel that their employer has the power over them, but I would hope that organizing could be done. There are more of them, and they’re the ones whose labor is powering this whole corporation. So I hope that they could at some point, organize and harness that power.

KG: Is there anything else you’d like to say that I didn’t ask you about?

A: I think too many people are falling for the Pritzker propaganda. He spoke at No Kings, and mere hours later his cops beat so many people up in Broadview. There was an ambulance called for a protester and 11 people were arrested just for being there after the curfew at 6 p.m. It created an incredibly unsafe and chaotic situation and pushed all of the protesters into Maywood, into a residential neighborhood. They were literally beating people up in residents’ front yards. If that’s what his police are doing, I just don’t care about what he’s saying in the media. Pritzker’s messaging on this is starting to be challenged. I don’t like the idea of being a punching bag for him to prove that there’s no need for the National Guard to be sent in. I want the Chicago and Illinois Left to split from Pritzker. I think that’s a really important shift that needs to happen as soon as possible. Pritzker sacrificed all of us, and Pritzker is not on our side. Pritzker is on his own side.

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Glenn Allen interviews Mandy Medley

MM: My name is Mandy Medley, a worker-owner at Pilsen Community Books (PCB) and also a member of PUNO (Pilsen Unidos Por Nuestro Orgullo) here in Pilsen.

GA: How has the ICE invasion impacted you and your community?

 

MM: Mostly we are just really scared for our neighbors. There has not been as much activity in Pilsen as elsewhere on the southwest side and in the suburbs, but we did have a neighbor who was taken at the restaurant across the street from the bookstore in the morning before we were open. Actually two neighbors were, and that was a real eye-opening moment for us. So ever since then we’ve been organizing with neighbors trying to find ways to help try to get educated and pass what we learn along to people and just be as present as possible in the neighborhood.

GA: So tell us about the work you’ve been doing.

 

MM:  So I joined a coalition called PUNO. It’s a coalition of different immigrant rights organizations and neighborhood groups and also just random neighbors who are committed to advocating for the protection of immigrant rights. PUNO does legal support, education, community engagement, and then they also do migra watch, which is the thing I’ve been most involved in. PUNO puts on public migra watch training to help folks learn how to identify ICE activity happening in their neighborhood and give them some tools for ways to react, encourage them to record any interactions that they have with ICE, or record any activity they see and also to collect license plates. The first training I went to was super empowering. I think we all know in the abstract ways that we could be a community defense, but to have someone go through it step-by-step was very empowering. I got involved in migra watch along with everyone else at Pilsen Community Books, and a bunch of our neighbors. We sign up for shifts to be on watch in the neighborhood and respond to reports of activity that are called in through the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights hotline.

GA: How many people have you trained?

 

MM: I don’t have exact numbers, but I bet PUNO has trained over a thousand folks. As far as I know, PUNO is the only migra watch group that holds in-person open, public trainings.

GA: So how has that changed the group? Are those people taking part and signing up for work? Are they becoming part of a larger network that is starting to form?

MM: PUNO trains lots of people. You don’t have to live in Pilsen to go to a migra watch training. If you do go to a training and you want to get plugged into PUNO, we help you get on-boarded and into our network. But because we also are connected to all different rapid response networks throughout the city through ICIRR we can help folks get plugged into their neighborhood if they’re not Pilsen based. PUNO has grown exponentially and it’s been really great to see and to meet new neighbors, but we’ve also directed countless people to other networks throughout the city.

GA: How did you decide to do in-person mass training?

 

MM: You know, I don’t know. I wasn’t a part of that early decision. But when something like this happens, when there’s a crisis, everyone’s like, “I wanna help but I don’t know how.” There have been a bunch of organizers in Pilsen and in the Little Village neighborhood and beyond who have been planning for this for a long time. They’ve been organizing around this for years and years, so this crisis wasn’t new for them. It’s my understanding that they understand the power of community engagement and they wanted to help folks get involved and you know be as informed as they could be. PUNO had the capacity to put these on in conjunction with ICIRR and it just kind of grew from there.

GA: What have you seen that’s inspired you in this work?

 

MM: I have seen so many folks who would have never dreamed of doing this kind of on-the-street work. Just get out there, even though sometimes it’s scary. It’s unpredictable. It’s just average people. It’s like dorky middle-aged people like me. It’s young people. It’s older people. Out there together, you know, across race and class barriers all in defense of their neighbors and it’s just honestly one of the most moving organizing experiences of my life.

It is like an unexpected silver lining to this. I know I’ve lived in Pilsen for quite some time and I thought I knew a lot of folks already and I did. But I mean so many folks are coming out of the woodwork and wanting to get involved because I think everyone recognizes that this is fascism here on our street.

GA: What have you learned or what would you like to share with other cities that haven’t done this yet?

MM: I’ve learned that the more you can share information with others the better. I think having trainings open to the public is really important. It allows people to become involved in an informed and more safe way. So I encourage other cities to start thinking about what to do now and start putting that framework in place. We had talks with organizers from L.A. before all this happened in Chicago. In our PUNO meetings, we’ve talked about what we’ve learned from them and that’s been very useful. Not only for the information but also to feel like you’re not alone. Like we’re all working in solidarity fighting fascism together.

GA: What do you think it’s going to take for us to win, and what do you think the next steps are right now?

MM: You know our mayor Brandon Johnson called for a general strike. In my wildest dreams, yeah, sure I would love a general strike. I think building the power that we need to get to a general strike is the next step.

It’s been really illuminating to see how a group of people who aren’t connected in any way except geographically can come together and learn how to organize. It’s not impossible, like you don’t need organization already in place, you don’t need cadres, you don’t even need a workplace to unite if the threat is strong enough. That has been really eye-opening for me. So I think if we can continue to build power, continue to stay connected even if the threat abates, if we don’t lose these connections and don’t lose the organizing we’ve got. Then maybe in the future a general strike might actually be something that could be possible.

I was even thinking at the No Kings protest that a lot of the Left just kind of turned their nose up at it: “It’s just a bunch of libs.” And you know there is a part of that. It’s like people who don’t ever come out for anything else that come in from the suburbs. But what would’ve happened if everyone from every rapid response group had shown up with literature? Showed up with information about when you can come to the next training? I feel like people just don’t know how. If we actually had a place where they could plug in. I would have liked to have seen more of that.

GA: I thought that this rally was much broader than the previous one. I mean it was much bigger than the last No Kings too. But it was also much younger, and it was more interracial. It was much more integrated.

MM: That’s good. That’s been another silver lining of this whole thing. It’s like every kind of Chicagoan is represented out in the streets against ICE right now. It’s not just the people who are always out.

GA: I’ve noticed an attitude expressed by more conservative parts of the opposition to ICE, an opposition to the excess violence and brutality, against picking up random people on the street. But it’s fine to go after the ‘“right” people, people without papers or with criminal records. I’m wondering if you’ve seen that get any traction, and what do you say about that?

MM: You know I have heard that and surprisingly I’ve heard it more in Pilsen than I thought I would. The rise of the Latino right has not escaped Pilsen. Sometimes you hear people say ‘well they should’ve had their papers’ or whatever. There are Latino residents here in Pilsen, who feel like they immigrated the “right way.”

And obviously all the migrants that Chicago absorbed a few years back has increased tensions, because people perceive that there aren’t enough resources for everyone. So it pits people against people. But I do think there’s a real opportunity to try and take a more abolitionist perspective in our messaging when we’re talking about this. Silky Shah has this great book called Unbuild Walls, which talks about how police and prison evolution is tied to the abolition of borders. I think it’s a real opportunity for the Left to get some more expansive messaging out there. I also think the videos of what ICE is doing in the streets with tear gas and even the videos from the way Illinois State police and ICE have brutalized protesters in Broadview. People aren’t going to forget that.

And I think it’s up to the Left to get out there and then push this message forward. A lot of people would be open to that.  It’s just, you know, we have to do it.

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Featured Image credit: paul goyette; modified by Tempest.