Chicago is fighting back

'The resistance here is strong'

Photo by Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere.

It had only been 72 hours since their last major rally, but thousands of Chicagoans marched in protest against Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement “blitz” on Tuesday afternoon.

Check out these wonderful photos and video.

"We are going to keep fighting against the escalated ICE raids and attacks against our communities,” Rania Salem, an organizer with the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, told ABC7 News. “Trump says that it's going to be war in Chicago, but I believe in the people's power and the resistance here is strong.”

The new enforcement push, which the Department of Homeland Security has designated “Operation Midway Blitz,” is actually off to a slow start as of this writing. Perhaps ICE has been scared away because of the resistance that Chicagoans, have already shown. Or perhaps the blitz is just “gathering steam,” as Gov. JB Pritzker warned on Tuesday.

Federal agents, with camera crews from Fox News and ABC News riding along, made a handful of apprehensions of people with criminal records on Tuesday – validating Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton’s description of the blitz as a “sick reality show.”

(Both networks – inexcusably, to my mind -- agreed to blur the faces of federal agents.)

But so far there have been no Los-Angeles-style raids of Home Depot parking lots or construction sites or other indiscriminate mass abductions based on racial profiling.

That said, there were a handful of apparently random apprehensions on Sunday, including that of a neighborhood flower vendor.

“This is the type of racial, ethnic profiling that is going on, and they are pursuing people who are humble, who may not speak English and aren’t a threat to anyone,” U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia of Illinois’s 4th District told WGN-TV . “They didn’t have a court order to pick up someone who sells flowers on a street corner and has been doing it for years.”

State and local officials vociferously object to the presence of federal agents. Pritzker, in particular, continues to be outspoken. On Tuesday, he called the blitz a “nefarious plan” aimed at disruption instead of law enforcement.

“We’re also taking them to court if they break the law in the state of Illinois,” he said, the nonprofit Block Club Chicago reported.

“As far as I’m concerned, ICE needs to take it down about three notches. And we need [Trump immigration czar] Tom Homan to focus on something other than his failures in Illinois,” Pritzker said. “One of the reasons that he’s been so unsuccessful is people know their rights here. They’re learning their rights. We have great organizations on the ground, and they’re doing exactly what they should be doing.”

Brandon Lee of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights told Jacobin magazine that community organizations are at the ready. “Trump’s tactics are meant to divide, to say ‘this community is acting out of line, this community shouldn’t be here,’ to make us point fingers at one another,” Lee said. “But Trump right now is bringing people together, and that’s laying the groundwork for pushback to future attacks.”

“It's going to be hell for ICE in Chicago,” historian Rick Perlstein posted on social media. “For many of us, resisting them has become part of what it means to be a Chicagoan.

Washington Marches

Thousands of people marched to the White House on Saturday in the first large protest since Trump deployed federal agents and troops to Washington.

As the Washington Post reported, the “We Are All D.C.” march was “brought together by a coalition of organizations, including Free DC, a group that aims to protect home rule, and the American Civil Liberties Union, to demand a stop to the federal incursion in Washington.”

Here’s some video from CNN.

Mark Fitzpatrick, a former U.S. diplomat, told the Associated Press that he’s worried about the “authoritarian nature” in which the administration is treating D.C.

“Federal agents, national guards patrolling our streets, that’s really an affront to the democracy of our city,” he said. “We don’t have our own senators or members of the House of Representatives, so we’re at the mercy of a dictator like this, a wanna-be dictator.”

College students walked out of classes in protest on Tuesday at Georgetown University, American University, and George Washington University.

D.C. Grand Jury Revolt Continues

A federal grand jury in D.C. has declined to indict Paul Anthony Bryant, a Washington lawyer accused of assaulting and threatening members of the National Guard, WUSA9 reports.

Even before the grand jury refused to indict, a magistrate judge had criticized the U.S. Attorney’s office for trying to keep Bryant in jail over the Labor Day weekend. “This is perhaps one of the weakest requests for detention I have seen and something that, prior to two weeks ago, would have been unthinkable in this courthouse,” Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui said.

Atlantic reporter Quinta Jurecic posted on social media: “I believe this is no true bill #8 (that we know of)”

Trump Exits Bubble, Gets Jeered

Trump ventured all of one block outside the White House grounds Tuesday night to eat at a restaurant, ostensibly to show how safe Washington is now.

Trump said he wouldn’t have felt safe before his deployment of federal agents and National Guard troops, a claim the Associated Press appropriately deemed “farcical,” because “the president is always surrounded by heavy security wherever he goes.”

Emerging from the bubble, he immediately encountered protesters – in this case, from the activist group CodePink, who yelled “Free DC. Free Palestine! Trump is the Hitler of our time.”

Here’s some video. Here it is from another angle.

Trump was also loudly booed at the U.S. Open on Sunday in New York.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles

On the one hand, the Supreme Court issued a devastating order on Monday allowing federal agents in Los Angeles to resume stopping people and questioning them about their immigration status based on racial profiling.

On the other hand, the agents have not returned. (Many of them have apparently moved on to Chicago.)

Los Angeles high school teacher Constantine Singer declared an at least temporary victory for the people of his city in a viral thread on social media.

“In the first Battle of Los Angeles, the good people of LA County have prevailed. We beat ICE back,” he wrote. “LA showed up. LA filmed. LA *knew its rights* and handed out red-cards at every opportunity.”

At their Our Moral Moment newsletter, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Bishop William J. Barber write that “thousands of local leaders” in Los Angeles “have demonstrated for months now what a moral resistance looks like.”

Clergy have led nonviolent vigils against the occupation while lawyers have challenged the regime’s illegal actions in court. Day laborers have built solidarity networks with soccer moms, refusing to accept masked-men in Home Depots as normal. Volunteers have mobilized to sell food for street vendors who are afraid of being rounded up in raids.

A steady beat of moral resistance hasn’t yet ended the occupation, but it has thwarted the Trump regime’s plan. And it has shown all of us how we can prepare for a steady beat of moral resistance when this regime’s occupation comes to us.

A Marshall Plan for the Civil Service

Sam Bagenstos, a University of Michigan law professor, is calling on civil society to start putting together a plan – right now – for rebuilding the U.S. government post Trump:

We will need to begin on day one to implement a domestic Marshall Plan for the U.S. government. We need to rebuild the institutions of government–to restore what worked, but not to be limited by the past structure of those institutions. The Trump administration has wreaked so much havoc that there is likely no going back to precisely how things were. We have a crying need for–and an opportunity to construct–a stronger, more resilient government that democratically serves the public good.

Now is the time to lay the groundwork for a massive investment in the federal workforce, he argues.

An Answer to the Brain Drain

Are you a recently terminated civil servant?

POPVOX, a platform for civic engagement, wants to capture some of your knowledge, for the sake of the future.

“As many transition out of government, Departure Dialogues gives them a meaningful way to pass along what they’ve learned about how to strengthen the programs they’ve spent years implementing,” Marci Harris, executive director of POPVOX, said in a statement.

The platform uses oral history technology to record employees’ observations, then uses AI to identify patterns. The goal is “actionable intelligence for Congress, oversight bodies, and reformers.”

This Week in Lawsuits

• A federal court ruled that Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook can remain in her position while she fights Trump’s efforts to fire her.

• Washington D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued Trump over the deployment of the National Guard. “No American city should have the US military – particularly out-of-state military who are not accountable to the residents and untrained in local law enforcement – policing its streets,” Schwalb said in a statement. “It’s DC today but could be any other city tomorrow. We’ve filed this action to put an end to this illegal federal overreach.”

October 18 is Going to Be Big

Public Citizen has collected a number of inspiring statements about the big plans for national protests on October 18. Among them is this one from Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible:

No Kings Day on June 14 was one of the largest mobilizations in American history, and it’s grown into a broad, diverse movement. While Trump escalates his attack with occupations of American cities and secret police forces terrorizing American communities, normal everyday people across this country are showing up every single day with courage and defiance. On October 18, we’re going to show up stronger and more organized than ever before. When Mad King George occupied American cities in 1775, Americans said No Kings. When Mad King Trump occupies American cities in 2025, we again say No Kings! No kings then, no kings now, no kings ever in America.

And from Deirdre Schifeling, ACLU’s chief political and advocacy officer:

The president and his administration are abusing the power of the presidency – trying to instill fear and use the power of the government to crush those who disagree with him. But Americans are brave, freedom-loving people. On October 18th, millions of us will powerfully, peacefully show that in America, we will fight for our rights and our democracy. Our leaders, especially the president, are accountable to us.

End Notes

• Berkeleyside examines the many actions being taken as part of what one activist calls the “geriatric resistance.”

• Women's soccer fans have taken to the stands at Washington Spirit games with banners, flags, and pro-D.C. chants.

• WBUR interviewed Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Blight, who says it’s time for historians to fight back against Trump’s politically-motivated attack on American history and scholarship.

• Here are TikTok videos of someone following National Guard troops around Washington playing the “Imperial March” from Star Wars on a speaker.