Elizabeth King at In These Times writes—When ICE Comes for Their Neighbors, These Community Defense Brigades Will Be Ready:
Faced with president Donald Trump’s escalation of some of the country’s worst immigration policies—massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, the Muslim ban, and tearing migrant children from their families at the country’s southern border—activists and community organizers have rallied behind immigrant communities. One key element of the fightback is the community defense patrol, a rapid response tactic designed to quickly react to ICE activity. Following the recent mass workplace ICE raid in Mississippi, in which 680 people were arrested, the critical need for community education and rapid response to ICE is all the more evident.
Although the specifics of the tactic may vary at different times, community defense patrolling involves groups of activists walking, biking or driving around specific locations where people endure high risk of being arrested by ICE. With the threat of ICE ever-present in immigrant communities, patrol participants organize to monitor areas where raids and arrests may happen. Their physical presence in vulnerable locales facilitates a rapid response to help defend people targeted by ICE. Community defense patrols have been common historically, though new instances of these patrols are emerging again in response to Trump’s repeated threats of large-scale ICE raids this summer.
On July 14, after the Trump administration threatened massive ICE raids in major cities, locals patrolled neighborhoods the north and south sides of Chicago. In the Albany Park neighborhood, the office of 33rd Ward Alderwoman Rossana Rodríguez-Sanchez, a Democratic Socialist, and neighborhood groups such as Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD) and the Albany Park Defense Network, joined together to organize community defense brigades. In Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, local groups—among them Pilsen En Defensa and the Pilsen Alliance—also organized patrols. In each neighborhood, organizers created a volunteer schedule with three shifts, ensuring that crews patrolled the areas for most of the day.
Lilia Escobar, the neighborhood services coordinator for Rodríguez-Sanchez in the 33rd Ward, says that the office wanted to have an “immediate response to an attack” on people who live in the neighborhood. Locals who signed up to participate in the patrols were given a training hosted by the group 33rd Ward Working Families, divided into smaller groups, and sent to walk or bike around specific sections of the neighborhood to monitor for ICE activity. No verified ICE activity was spotted that day, but participants were instructed to record any incident involving ICE, alert the 33rd Ward Working Families Office and an Illinois hotline designated for reporting suspected ICE activity, and also to inform anyone being arrested of their rights if possible.
“The most immediate goals of the defense patrols is to inform the community of their rights and to build a trained network of community members on standby to monitor and respond to any potential ICE, Homeland Security Investigations or Customs and Border Protection activity as quickly as possible at all times,” Diego Morales, an organizing member of Pilsen En Defensa, tells In These Times. “We want to ease the fears of our undocumented neighbors by showing them that the community they live in has their backs. [...]
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QUOTATION
(The squatter in the White House who calls himself the Chosen One probably never read Aristotle, but you can be sure he agrees with this remark.)
“A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.”
~~Aristotle, Politica (c. 340 BCE)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2003—Bush to declare war on Iraq:
Okay, this [from The Onion] is really funny:
Today President Bush said the situation in Iraq had deteriorated to the point where he had no choice "but to declare war on that country."
"I've just become aware that good people are dying out there. Terrorists run rampant, killing people, blowing up oil pipelines, wreaking havoc, maybe just plain wreaking. They've got to be stopped."
Bush said that he had recently learned that since May 1, 2003, Iraq has become the "number one nexus of the terrorist activities in the world," and he called it "the nexus of the axis of evil," speaking from his ranch in Texas.
He said that it was a difficult decision but he had "no choice" given the state of the country at this time.
"Whoever is running that country has allowed it to turn into a hornet's nest that threatens the stability of the Middle East, and with it, the safety and security of the United States, and of the world."
Priceless.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: We're back on, live! Even though this player actually links to the podcast, of course. But it’s one featuring Greg Dworkin and Joan McCarter in our best effort to catch up on one of the most 25th Amendment-able weeks yet. But lol/yolo/nm, as you well know.