ICE Raids In Chicago

Or How To Feed And Defend Our Community

Wishful thinking is the reason I’ve put off writing this piece. I hoped, naively so, that after a week, maybe two, at most three, that ICE would’ve stopped raiding my city. I knew from watching the attacks on LA that the raids would persist because as Adam Serwer wrote, the cruelty is the point, but still I hoped. Yet now, over a month later, it’s become clear that we’re settling into a new phase of terror.

When the raids first began, I wasn’t here in Chicago but overseas in London with my partner. During our brief vacation we went to every bookstore we could find, stuffed our faces with fish n chips, and even saw a movie at this lovely underground theater. But in between tourist attractions, while I was looking at my phone, I caught occasional glimpses of the fresh hell unfolding at home. Children were being tackled off their bikes, neighborhoods tear gassed. In one particularly devastating show of force, an apartment building in South Shore was raided, and the mostly black residents …