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Mutual Aid as Prevention: Resisting ICE in New Orleans
718 Plays4 days ago
We speak with an organizer based in New Orleans about the community’s efforts to confront ICE during a special operation that took place there in December of 2025. Among other topics, we touch on the complicated dynamics of organizing with nonprofit groups, the ways that police operations can impact community defense initiatives, and how NOLA’s powerful tradition of mutual aid in the wake of Katrina has transformed into a preventative tactic against ICE kidnappings there. This conversation is part of an ongoing series we’re developing on ICE resistance efforts across the country. Stay tuned for more like this soon!
In the meantime, consider supporting the upcoming Week of Action in Minneapolis, from February 25th to March 1st. More info here: https://melttheicemn.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to The Beautiful Idea Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello. You're listening to The Beautiful Idea, a podcast from a collective of several anarchist and autonomous media producers scattered around the world. We're bringing you interviews and stories from the front lines of autonomous social movements and struggles, as well as original commentary and analysis.
00:00:25
Speaker
Follow us on Mastodon and at thebeautifulidea.show. Thanks for listening.
Autonomous Anti-ICE Organizing in New Orleans
00:00:45
Speaker
Today we're speaking with comrades in New Orleans about what autonomous anti-ice organizing has looked like there. We're recording this shortly after the murder of Renee Goode by an ICE agent on January 7th, 2025, and just after the publishing of a thorough report back from comrades on the ground in Minneapolis about the formation and history of anti-ice organizing in their city.
00:01:06
Speaker
We recently spoke with comrades in Minneapolis directly for this show, but that article is very helpful and also informs some of the questions we're going to talk about today. It's called Rapid Response Networks in the Twin Cities, a guide to an updated model. if Anyone wants to check it out on Crimethink. And this conversation is part of a series that The Beautiful Idea is developing to compare and contrast the ways that different cities are approaching increasingly explicit state violence across the country. So thanks for thanks for joining me. Do you want to introduce yourself however you'd like to be introduced? Sure, yeah.
00:01:39
Speaker
Hi, yeah I'm Clem. I'm here in New Orleans. Great. So we're seeing these major blitzes happening in other cities, you know, Chicago and Minneapolis.
00:01:50
Speaker
And Bovino planned a, what's what's his formal title, like
Planned ICE Operations in December 2025
00:01:54
Speaker
chief of ICE or something? Yeah, he's the um he's the head of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Patrol. so he's technically part of Customs and Border Patrol, not ICE.
00:02:06
Speaker
And he's not, as far as I understand, his... his position is not one that signifies that he would be doing what he's doing. He's just been sort of tapped for this role. He's the head of a particular sector in California.
00:02:22
Speaker
Right. Okay. So there have been similar operations planned in New Orleans slated to start in December 2025. And I'm wondering if you can explain the chronology of ICE operations in New Orleans for folks who aren't familiar.
00:02:38
Speaker
Sure. So New Orleans, previous to this recent operation, was already where Customs and Border Patrol was headquarters for the Gulf South, that area. But this operation, like we saw in Chicago and l L.A. before, really changed the terrain in a large way.
00:02:58
Speaker
ICE and CBE He brought in, i think, around 250 federal agents, which sounded like a really large number at the time. It was the same, similar numbers to what they were bringing into Chicago.
00:03:09
Speaker
Now, of course, that looks pretty small compared to Minneapolis, but it was a huge uptick, especially for here. Compared to Chicago, New new Orleans only has about 1.3 million people in the greater metro area, so we're significantly smaller. And we had a similar amount of people coming in and a similar amount of of stated what their goal was for the number of arrests.
00:03:34
Speaker
They aimed to have a around, i believe, 5,000 arrests over the two months that they were aimed to be here. And so how did that go? what What
Outcomes of ICE Operations and Community Response
00:03:44
Speaker
ended up happening? So yeah, it went for our for us surprisingly well, actually. Around December 18th, Guardian reported that there had only been about 370 arrests so far, which means that they were way under their stated numbers.
00:03:58
Speaker
Nevertheless, it was a huge change in our community. I mean, we're so much smaller than a lot of these bigger cities, so it was much bigger impact in that regard. Of course, with the holidays, it seemed like ICE so generally left.
00:04:12
Speaker
I guess they also went on holiday break. And then as we know, um despite them stating that they were going to be here through the end of January, they ended up leaving to head to Minneapolis.
00:04:23
Speaker
So could you describe the historic and current terrain, ah so to speak, of ice activity in New Orleans, where they've tended to operate, how visible or invisible they are, and how that shapes the kind of response that's possible there?
00:04:38
Speaker
Yeah, previously to this operation, there was... The amount of activity that you would expect for an area that has as many migrants as we do here in New Orleans, maybe even a little bit less due to New Orleans general policing culture around allowances and being a little bit more invisible.
00:04:58
Speaker
But with the operation, it was a major change. Bovino, wherever he goes, tries to put on basically like social media stunts. And because he was previously the head of Customs Border Patrol here in New Orleans and was stationed here, there was a feeling that he was trying to you know show off his home turf.
00:05:15
Speaker
And so they were a lot more visible. While there was those social media stunts at the same time during the operation, they had already switched to this kind of more surgical strike, this ah switch in tactics to try and be in and out as fast as possible. So when they were doing abductions, they would try and show up really quickly and then be gone before anyone could arrive and respond to it.
00:05:38
Speaker
And do you have thoughts on what feels maybe fundamentally different from places like Minneapolis or what's been more effective or feasible in New Orleans versus Minneapolis or or Chicago,
00:05:51
Speaker
for example Yeah, I mean, one of the main differences with Chicago that we were working with when we first started preparing for this was the difference in population density.
00:06:02
Speaker
Most of the abductions were happening outside of the city proper, and so they were in more suburban areas, which was a lot more difficult for us and a lot more difficult to bring in a number of people and quickly.
00:06:14
Speaker
Compared to Minneapolis, one of the big distinctions is that right now in Minneapolis, the entire community is activated and responding to ICE. So that's an incredible thing that they have there, but it's a boon that a lot of us don't get to work with in the same way. So we have to think about how to organize without necessarily having everyone step out of their doors.
00:06:38
Speaker
I think in the article that you mentioned at the beginning, there's a part in which they talk about cafe where and Minnesota, everybody steps out of the cafe as soon as the whistles are blowing. That's awesome. And I wish we had that here, but we have to think about what we can do within our limitations.
Role of Mutual Aid and Communication Networks
00:06:55
Speaker
So I'm hoping we can talk more about what you can do within your limitations, but sort of going off of that, you know, what local factors, you know, whether that's the geography, the police culture, um that's a big thing.
00:07:10
Speaker
The political leadership, the disaster history, you know, and in New Orleans or community networks that are probably shaped by all of those factors, most shape how anti-ice organizing is functioning in New Orleans.
00:07:23
Speaker
This is a big question, very broad. If you want to touch on a little bit on each of those things, that would be really helpful. Yeah. One of the things that we had going for us here, there's already been a lot of migrant organizing within the community before this operation.
00:07:40
Speaker
And so the migrants themselves already had communication networks around rapid response and around getting information out about where ICE and Border Patrol was. And so in a lot of ways, we were just working with that once we started adding to that once and supplementing to that as was needed once the operation began.
00:07:59
Speaker
The reason that there was that organizing beforehand is because New Orleans is a place in which communities have already recognized that they needed to come together. The hurricanes that come through here, of course, Katrina, make people much more already oriented towards those kinds of mutual aid networks.
00:08:19
Speaker
And working within their own communities as opposed to trying to rely on state support. So along with that understand along with that migrant organizing that was before the operation started, there already was a large amount of mutual aid networks. And the ecosystem for mutual aid here was really well developed.
00:08:38
Speaker
Because of that, for preparations for disaster. So that meant that we think a lot of times about rapid response and direct confrontations with ICE. But there's also a whole world of trying to make sure that the migrants who are sheltering in place during these operations can survive.
00:08:55
Speaker
Right. They're not at work. They're not bringing in income. They're often not even going to the grocery store, since a lot of these grocery stores are also targeted by ICE and CBP. So those mutual aid networks can help supply them with the kind of resources they need to survive while these operations are undergoing.
00:09:13
Speaker
Great. So I'm hearing I'm hearing you talk about the importance of mutual aid and sort of framing mutual aid as a proactive or a preventative tactic in a way. But I'm wondering if you have other stuff to say. ah yeah absolutely. um The tactics that we're using here are similar to the ones that we find in a number of the other cities.
00:09:34
Speaker
There's a fairly robust rapid response network that works through both signal and WhatsApp networks, as well as a beginning of patrols and During the operation, there was also a movement towards developing Centros, or defense hubs as they're called. This was a tactic that we saw in LA as well as in Chicago. And we began that project based on a lot of what had been written on Centros by the folks from Lake Effect in Chicago.
00:10:05
Speaker
So using their template and that model, we began Centros here and tried to popularize that idea within the larger communities. That's cool. How's how's that going? Well, it went really well. I will say that during the operation, of course, there was sort of a bit of a manic energy around organizing and getting these things done. The holidays then were kind of a break both for us and for ICE. And then as soon as we got back from the holidays, of course, the focus has shifted towards Minneapolis.
00:10:35
Speaker
So the organizing here has calmed down to a significant degree as everybody just works to catch their breath. Gotcha. And so ah can you talk a little bit about the differences or the lack thereof between autonomously organized efforts and nonprofit led efforts? I know that's something that came up a lot in my discussion with Lake Effect folks i'm in Chicago. And it's been interesting to kind of see if there's a big difference there in
00:11:06
Speaker
lots of cities around the country or if or if it's different, i.e. not that different but between these two different types. One thing here, which is kind of significant difference between a number of those cities is we don't quite have the same culture of nonprofit organizing.
00:11:21
Speaker
There is a number of nonprofits, but they're not as big or homogenous in certain areas. They don't have the same kind of power over certain topics or areas that they do in some of those major cities.
00:11:34
Speaker
So, To that degree, a lot of the, in this ah in this era arena, a lot of the nonprofits are actually migrant-run. And those migrant-run nonprofits have a different sort of attitude or a different relationship to this. And it's a relationship that's real because they're directly, because their members are directly impacted and they know exactly what these abductions feel like within the community. And so they don't, in my experience, have the same kind or try to push the same kind of limitations that other larger, more corporate NGOs try to. They have an understanding of the kind of trauma and
00:12:16
Speaker
the anger that can respond from that. And so they're more willing to accept that and accept the kind of expressions that come out of that. Like in a lot of other cities, the nonprofits that have relationships with migrant communities are discouraging people from escalating and telling people not to intervene, telling people to just observe. And obviously those are not like actually effective tactics on their own.
00:12:45
Speaker
Yeah, the liberal mindset is really patronizing towards a lot of minority communities. And so they kind of infantilize them. They think of them as something that they have to protect. Right. Whereas actually, in my experience, a lot of the times it's these kinds of communities which go the hardest in the streets, which actually when it comes to conflict are the ones who are really willing to throw down.
00:13:08
Speaker
And no, it's not the members that are higher up in whatever NGO or whatever liberal organization that claims to represent them, but the actual community itself.
00:13:20
Speaker
So we often find that the community of migrants in this case, or whatever community is being affected, are the ones that are the most willing to push the envelope when it comes to those kinds of tactics.
00:13:34
Speaker
Because they realize how much is at stake. Yeah, totally. Yeah. So how how
Distinct Approaches of New Orleans Police and ICE
00:13:39
Speaker
has the local government responded or reacted to anti-ice activity on the ground in New Orleans? I think we you mentioned earlier, like you had some more thoughts to share around police.
00:13:50
Speaker
Curious about the police in New Orleans. This is something I've been asking people in different cities around the relationship between police and ice. Are police New Orleans distancing themselves explicitly from ice the way we've seen in a lot of Democratic-led cities around the country. In Philly, for example, the sheriff came out and directly threatened ICE and said that ICE doesn't want this smoke, quote unquote, from Philadelphia Police Department. So that there's sort of this like antagonization happening between like the good police and the bad police. So i'm wondering, like do people view ICE and police as part of the same structure or are ICE agents seen as
00:14:33
Speaker
separate or foreign agitators. How are people understanding that on the ground in New Orleans? Yeah. So New Orleans is like a number of other places in the South. It's a blue city and a deep red state. So politically, there's really no way to generalize. There's a large distinction and a distinction that's actually recognized by the population here between different police forces. Whereas the New Orleans Police Department, for as corrupt as they are, it took a more hands-off approach in this case. People also realized that the Jefferson Parish sheriffs are just as racist and just as oriented towards targeting minorities and targeting migrants as ICE and the Customs and Border Patrol.
00:15:16
Speaker
So... Here, because of that distinction, the population already recognizes and speaks specifically about which kind of police you're dealing with at any particular time.
00:15:30
Speaker
The politicians in general, a lot of it, like most of the South, is going to be a lot more covert and insider and making backroom handshake deals without speaking up outside of that.
00:15:43
Speaker
The city itself is kind of hamstrung by the state, and so no politician in the city wants to speak too strongly for fear of retribution from the governor or the state legislation.
00:15:57
Speaker
Can you talk a little bit about how police operate in New Orleans compared to other cities and how that might be relevant here? It's actually pretty distinct in a lot of ways. Because New Orleans is ah city on the decline,
00:16:09
Speaker
as opposed to many of these other metropolitan areas which are gentrifying and having more money come in. New Orleans and New Orleans police don't have the ability to operate according to broken windows theory, the kind of policing that's become popular across the United States where even smaller crimes are targeted regularly.
00:16:32
Speaker
Things like vandalism and loitering are targeted in those areas. Instead, policing here is what you might call don't cross the line policing, where there's a lot of allowances.
00:16:43
Speaker
People are allowed, police don't interfere in a lot of cases where they would interfere in other cities. Police don't do traffic stops, for instance. You obviously, and famously for New Orleans, can be totally wasted and drunk and whatever else on the street, and the police aren't really going to bother you.
00:17:01
Speaker
But there is a very distinct threshold such that if you cross that threshold, the police are going to come down really hard. And that line involves often the tourism industry and areas like the French Quarter, where if you cross that line within those areas, the police are going to the repression is going to be extremely intense. Okay. So it's sort of like you can do whatever you're going to do as long as you're not messing with the tourists. Yeah.
00:17:29
Speaker
Yeah. and to our And to our conversation, I think that one of the important things there is that that also tends to limit what folks here on the ground feel like they're able to do because they have that line in the back of their head and they think that if they cross that line,
00:17:52
Speaker
that there's going to be very strong retribution. So unfortunately, don't cross the line. Policing can be actually fairly effective in limiting the kind of organizer response.
00:18:04
Speaker
Similarly, have concerns about repression, whether that's legal, organizational, or personal, shaped what people feel able or unable to do? And how does that compare to the urgency that people feel on the ground?
00:18:18
Speaker
In a way, New Orleans is really dysfunctional, both on the city government and the larger NGOs aren't as organized here, aren't as prevalent. And so in that way, there is an openness here to what is possible.
00:18:32
Speaker
It's an openness that that lack of organization means that people in some ways feel like more is possible. There is, of course, that limitation that i was talking about with don't cross the line policing and wrecking people recognizing that there is a threshold there.
00:18:47
Speaker
But at other times, especially in these instances where the community was up against something like ICE, folks recognized their power in that situation because there wasn't this overarching feeling of the the state that was involved.
00:19:03
Speaker
And so there's more a feeling of us versus ICE in these cases with often local police feeling somewhat absent. Interesting. So I want to talk a little bit about structure and communication of anti-ice organizing in New Orleans.
Decentralized Information Sharing Challenges
00:19:20
Speaker
Really kind of quickly, how are people in New Orleans currently sharing information about ice activity and how centralized or decentralized is that? The system in New Orleans is very decentralized. There is a couple of different networks.
00:19:35
Speaker
At times it feel it feels, I'm sure, like it does to many people, like you wish these were a little bit more better organized and you weren't getting 200 texts a day, that it was often kind of incoherent, especially what has been talked about. But that decentralized nature actually is recognized throughout as being something that's stronger in terms or more resilient at least in terms of repression, due to the fact that an attack on what any one area won't take the entire system down.
00:20:04
Speaker
So speed and verification often suffer when you have that lack of organization, but participation actually can be increased because people have a number of different avenues that they can come into.
00:20:18
Speaker
For individuals such as people in the migrant community who aren't used to Signal, who might not actually be comfortable joining Signal, there is a WhatsApp network. For security there, often the migrant community is much more comfortable just getting a burner and joining a WhatsApp community. It's what they know.
00:20:35
Speaker
Whereas for other folks, Signal is something that they're more familiar with so they can participate through those kinds of networks. One of the main problems with the rapid response networks, which a lot of people have probably mentioned, is that with the shift in tactics from ICE to being a lot faster and to being trying to be in and out within 10 minutes, rapid response networks often don't work as well.
00:20:59
Speaker
They're just not fast enough. There's a number of different tactics that folks are trying in order to speed that up. One is being embedded in the neighborhoods in which are more likely to be targeted.
00:21:10
Speaker
Here in New Orleans, one of the problems that we found is that a lot of people doing rapid response networks are in the city proper, while the areas that are being targeted are outside of the city.
00:21:21
Speaker
So ideas like being embedded or having a centro where people are spending time and they're already out in that area and ready to respond or having something like patrols.
00:21:31
Speaker
What we're seeing right now in Minnesota is that there's so much participation that those rapid response networks can become so fine grained that they're actually in a very small area and can respond extremely quickly.
00:21:44
Speaker
Without that level of participation, you have to come up with some other kinds of tactics and ideas to make that work. One of which is figuring out and mapping exactly where the most likely areas are to be targeted and then having people there during the operation hours for ICE or CBP.
00:22:03
Speaker
Great. Yeah. And I think it's been interesting over the course of the last year, seeing how people in different cities are going from realizing like, oh, we can't We can't have response be like our entire strategy. of Instead, we need to be actually like accompanying people or following ICE agents or doing a number of things that are like making that response time much, much, much faster, if not actually proactive rather than reactive.
00:22:33
Speaker
Yeah, on that, one of the things that we started working on here and which has seen a lot of success in Minneapolis is identifying where ICE is based or headquartered. Sometimes that's an operational site that one can try and surround like we saw in Broadview. Other cases such as here, it was a naval base in which it's not at all strategic to try and bring the conflict there.
00:23:00
Speaker
But nevertheless, if you watch those areas and if you watch things like helicopters, you can sometimes get a sense of where ice is going to show up before they show up there.
00:23:11
Speaker
And that's one really effective tactic. Another advantage also to being embedded in those communities such as a Centro is to actually strengthen the ties one has with that community.
00:23:23
Speaker
Because really, it is the community response itself that's going to determine the success of this resistance. Right. If the community itself doesn't feel as though they're going to respond often, you're going to either be too slow or you're going to be outnumbered by ICE.
00:23:39
Speaker
But if there is a larger community response when ICE shows up, if ICE is facing against the entire community, then that's a losing battle for them. Yeah, the the Twin Cities report that I mentioned earlier emphasizes constant experimentation rather than a fixed model. And I'm wondering where where have you seen the experimentation succeed or fail in New Orleans' anti-ice work?
00:24:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more that experimentation is really important.
Evolving Tactics and Community Patrols
00:24:08
Speaker
We have to keep in mind that the successes that we found have translated for ICE into changes in their tactics. And so we know that we've been successful in some ways because they're changing their tactics around what we've been doing.
00:24:20
Speaker
And when they change their tactics, we also have to change our tactics. To stick with the same sort of system that one has had in the past is simply to find that system rendered obsolete when they find workarounds or ways to prevent it from operating.
00:24:39
Speaker
So in New Orleans, what we found was similar to what I was saying earlier, that rapid response networks were too slow and that we had to start to move towards these ideas of centros or patrols.
00:24:52
Speaker
And for us, that would be towards centros or patrols in those specifically targeted areas. One of the things that we were working on just before I so primarily left the area and went to Minnesota was organizing patrols at schools because that's a really highly targeted area and Also an extremely traumatic event. And so something where you find a strong response from parents, not just parents of migrants, but parents whose children are in school with migrants. And so it seems to be a area in which people are very willing and ready to have and excited to have those kinds of patrols there and ready in case there is ICE or CBP.
00:25:35
Speaker
Yeah. So the, the antidote to what you're naming of like the, the, the challenge of being in a more suburban or like spread out landscape has been setting up centros you mentioned. And then i guess having more calculated understanding of how long it's going to take to get to a given area. I know like One tactic that I've seen in in other cities is like dividing up the city into like much smaller segments in like little i guess regions or areas. And then making sure that each one of those areas is an area that it doesn't take more than five minutes to drive across.
00:26:16
Speaker
And then dividing people up into those different regions. So you know like if something's happening in that part of the city, you're only going to ping the people that are within five minute radius of that area. and that they can get there in in a in the right amount of time. Versus if you're in if you're in a place like you know New York or Philadelphia, there's like much much greater population density like you're naming. So it's easier to get places faster. Yeah.
00:26:44
Speaker
Yeah. yeah One thing I will add to that, what we were talking about, is that if you're in an area with a lot less population density, and you know that you have to be in the areas that are going to be targeted,
00:26:58
Speaker
That means you have to understand the community to know what kind of areas are likely to be targeted. And of course, the community members themselves are going to know that best. Right. So the better that you integrate yourself with the members of that community, if you are outside of it to begin with, the more information you can get from them about where they actually are likely to find ICE and CBP coming.
00:27:21
Speaker
And so that's when you can station centros or patrols in those particular areas to cover the ones that are um the most at risk. All right.
00:27:32
Speaker
So now I want to switch into talking about kind of internal organizing tensions and and culture.
Empowerment Through Organizing Against ICE
00:27:40
Speaker
How do people in New Orleans navigate disagreements around risk, escalation and quote unquote appropriate forms of intervention when ICE is present?
00:27:50
Speaker
This is really a question around like the culture of peace policing and yeah whether or not it's shifted and how and who who tends to set those those norms. So ah personally, i found that actually this organizing around ICE has been really empowering in New Orleans because like the case for a lot of places, protest culture is centered around these organizations which cause it to have a lot of limitations.
00:28:21
Speaker
There's a lot of peace policing. And moreover, specifically in New Orleans, protests and demos just aren't as effective. One of the reasons for that is that the idea of taking the streets is not an empowering thing in New Orleans.
00:28:37
Speaker
People take the streets all the time. In fact, they take the streets for funerals. They take the streets for weddings. Any overly excited bachelorette party might take the streets. So taking the streets isn't something that feels particularly powerful in our particular in our setting.
00:28:53
Speaker
So instead, this shift towards organizing against is feels like the kind of organizing that we're going to be needing to do in the future in the fight against fascism.
00:29:08
Speaker
Because here we are actually trying to figure out what they are doing, where they are headed, where they are going, and then counter that and then slow them at every step, if not prevent them from accomplishing their goals, as opposed to the idea of a protest in which you're sort of just generally in the streets.
00:29:29
Speaker
Moreover, this organizing and the resistance against ICE organizes directly with these impacted communities and the impacted communities realize the stake and realize what's on the line.
00:29:39
Speaker
So they don't have the same kinds of limitations or even focus on what we are doing so much as a focus on what ICE themselves are doing.
00:29:52
Speaker
yes You know, you're worried about who's going to tell you to not be conflictual. in my view, I find that either you don't have the kind of numbers of militants to take on ICE, or you have enough numbers. And if you have those numbers, then you're actually really not going to be worried about the peace police anyway.
00:30:14
Speaker
Moreover, if the community responds, then you're actually going to be able to be conflictual in your response to ICE. And those community members themselves are also not going to care what the peace police are saying.
00:30:27
Speaker
So in many cases, even if at a training or if at a meeting this comes up and it becomes a really strong point of contention, in the streets it matters a lot less. In the streets what's going to happen is going to be dependent upon the balance of power, whether or not you are there with enough people who are willing to take those kinds of actions or not.
00:30:49
Speaker
And the peace policing is going to be a fairly moot point ah in those situations. The point of this work, and even the point of a lot of the work of NGOs, is to prevent these deportations, is to slow these deportations.
00:31:07
Speaker
and And we can find success in looking at those numbers and here in New Orleans and seeing that 370 people in the first three weeks of ICE being here were deported as opposed to their aim of well over a thousand.
00:31:24
Speaker
And that's where our focus and our attention should be. And so the more time that we spend thinking about the NGOs and the peace policing and the more energy and anger that we focus on that, the more of that is taken away from our focus and our energy towards stopping ICE.
00:31:40
Speaker
At the same time, the more the NGOs are concerned with us, the more they fail in their mission as well. So when we focus on NGOs, it's just as much of missing the point as when they focus on the militants.
00:31:53
Speaker
And that what we need to be doing in both cases is actually focusing on the real enemy, which in this case would be ICE or any other federal agent. Interesting.
00:32:04
Speaker
This is a follow When you say that, are you saying it's it's a waste of time for people to sort of inoculate their community against peace police? hard to say.
00:32:16
Speaker
It's hard to say because, one, it really depends upon the community. And you have to think about what kind of community is going to be affected by that kind of peace policing to begin with. In my experience, a lot of the NGOs that are promoting peace policing are not actually reaching out to the poorest and most affected communities in this regard, with regard to ICE.
00:32:40
Speaker
And actually, they come from such a different mindset than many of these migrants that they aren't going to be that effective when they do reach out. If you're talking about migrants who have come from areas that have a level of violence, both from the state and within other forces within their area, those folks are going to laugh at the idea of you know not being confrontational.
00:33:09
Speaker
If somebody has had their cousin deported and sent somewhere else, their trauma response is going to way overpower any sort of liberal moralizing about trying to keep calm and peace in those cases.
00:33:28
Speaker
I think often we look towards other organizers and other people working on the same work because they're immediately transparent to us. We can see them. We know what they're up to.
00:33:40
Speaker
And we focus on that. Whereas really the power in this comes from those community members that we haven't even met yet, who in these instances are coming out of their doors to fight ICE in large numbers.
00:33:55
Speaker
And that's the population I think that that we need to think more strongly about rather than spending our time worrying about what the NGOs are up to. I my final questions are really a curiosity around the sustainability of this work and how people continue to be involved.
Sustainable Activism and Community Resilience
00:34:15
Speaker
And i think it's interesting to ask that of of folks in New Orleans, where there's like a really long history of people taking care of one another in the face of disaster.
00:34:27
Speaker
What practices, formal or informal, are helping people stay connected, grounded, and willing to keep showing up to this kind of work? in the face of fear and burnout and loss and, and what's, what kinds of practices feel specifically unique to New Orleans and their culture of care and resistance, if any. Yeah.
00:34:51
Speaker
Yeah. Like you said, I think because of the amount of response towards disaster and the focus on survival within the city, there already is a fairly robust ecosystem of care and care practices for one another.
00:35:08
Speaker
i think that a lot of individuals here recognize that if they learn to, if they have a particular skill or ah talent, whether that is something like acupuncture, body work,
00:35:26
Speaker
mental health therapy, that those can be leveraged towards helping others stay active within these kinds of movements. And so you find that it's fairly easy here to find community help because there's so little help from the state.
00:35:46
Speaker
folks here recognize that the state is something that isn't going to come help them, just like the state didn't come help them after Katrina. And so there has been this larger community network that's grown up and is already available.
00:36:00
Speaker
It's not even specific to this operation. It's just something that is part of the today day-to-day life here. Great. And finally, are there any sort of key takeaways that you want to leave people with that it would be useful for people in other cities to consider as they're doing the same kind of work?
00:36:20
Speaker
Sure, yeah. I think that a lot of us were really surprised when ICE targeted New Orleans. A lot of the targets before here had been major cities, LA and Chicago.
00:36:33
Speaker
Charlotte is also a fairly large city. So it was really surprising to see ICE target a place as small as here. And we were scrambling, right? We were trying to organize very quickly over a short period because we hadn't been doing that work before.
00:36:51
Speaker
So with New Orleans being as small as it is, even if it though it looms large in the cultural consciousness, I think it's important for people to recognize that ICE could target a large variety of different places and not just these major cities.
00:37:07
Speaker
And so that means that you'll be much more effective if you do the work now. If you start integrating yourself and connecting yourself with these affected communities, with these migrant communities, figuring out the best tactics and start setting up infrastructure already so that if ICE does target your area, you'll already be on the ground and running.
00:37:31
Speaker
Great. Well, thank you. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, really appreciate the time. This was great. And appreciate everything that folks are doing in New Orleans.
00:37:47
Speaker
Thanks for listening to today's episode of The Beautiful Idea. News and analysis from the front lines of anarchist and autonomous struggles everywhere. Catch you next time.