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Lake Effect on Anti-Deportation Organizing in Chicago
812 Plays3 days ago
Lake Effect Collective (https://lakeeffect.noblogs.org/) is a Chicago-based group formed in the wake of the Palestine encampments in Chicago in 2024 that has been experimenting with radical political development, writing and analysis for the last few years. Neither an affinity group nor a party, Lake Effect is concerned about increasing capacity for strategic action while interfacing with mass struggle. In this interview, we sit down with them to talk about their model of engagement with anti-deportation and anti-ICE organization in Chicago.
Drawing on their recent writings, we discuss how resistance in Chicago has evolved over the past decade from large protests and rapid-response mobilizations toward more targeted confrontations with the infrastructure that enables deportations (such as offices, detention contracts, and transportation hubs). While some disruptions have successfully delayed or stopped deportations, LE members point out that many tactics —especially tech-heavy rapid response systems or symbolic protests — have often failed to build lasting power because they remain reactionary and disconnected from everyday relationships with affected communities.
LE emphasizes that durable resistance depends on relationships of obligation and solidarity that persist beyond individual raids or crises. We speak about their experimentations with a Los Angeles-inspired tactic called "community defense hubs", or “centros.” These are physical spaces where neighbors, organizers, and existing anti-deportation networks can gather regularly, build trust, and coordinate practical defense efforts over time. We touch on the importance of grounding organizing spaces in what local communities already need, how to navigate tensions with nonprofits and/or peace-policing tendencies while maintaining autonomy, and the need to balance security with openness. LE members also articulate the importance of being clear and upfront about their politics across different spaces.
This discussion is part of an ongoing series that The Beautiful Idea is developing to explore different kinds of anti-ICE organizing efforts across the US. For more information about Lake Effect's work, please check out their blog at https://lakeeffect.noblogs.org/.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
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.
Interview with Lake Effect Collective
00:00:41
Speaker
So I'm here with the Lake Effect Collective, and we're going talk a little bit about some of the writing that you all have been doing about anti-deportations and anti-ice organizing in Chicago. But first, for listeners who are unfamiliar with your work, could you tell us what the Lake Effect Collective is and isn't?
00:01:02
Speaker
Yeah, sure. so Hi, I'm Mel. I've lived in Chicago for a couple of years. I'm a member of Lake Effect. We formed up, I think a lot of us met each other around the like university encampment wave in spring of 2024.
00:01:19
Speaker
We spent a lot of time as like an affinity group acting together, writing together. We had the blog and the website for a while. and our first thing was written about the encampments. It was basically a book. It's like super long. Nobody has read it and they never will because it's like super long.
00:01:37
Speaker
But, you know, we've we've been trying to experiment with. acting and thinking together as opposed to just doing one or just doing the other, you know, to tie our sort of practical activity to what we
Formation and Practices of Lake Effect Collective
00:01:48
Speaker
actually say. But I would say for a long time, we were not really like a formal organization.
00:01:54
Speaker
Since 2025, basically, we've been experimenting with like more than just like affinity based politics and trying to see how we can sort of scale up our activity and, you know, hopefully have more kind of of a of a critical effect where we live, I guess, with our political activity.
00:02:15
Speaker
That's a really interesting kind of overview. I'm wondering if one of you could explain a little bit about the difference between affinity-based organizing or politics and whatever this new iteration is that you're trying to build.
00:02:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think the way it works out practically is still kind of an experiment that we're we're tweaking with and figuring out as we go along. I mean, we meet regularly. We meet like every other week. We often choose readings to do together, not by any like particular program, but just people take turns picking things they want to read and talk about with the group.
00:02:50
Speaker
when We do writing projects together. a lot of the things we've written on our website have either been written all of us or at least two or three or like four people working together. And we kind of consider that, I think like a big part of what we do together.
00:03:05
Speaker
Some of us live close by to each other in the city. Some of us live further away. So we're not always doing the same things all the time, but I think a big part of what Lake Effect is, is we can come together. People are doing all these different things and talk about what is happening in the city, the,
00:03:24
Speaker
North America and kind of like figure out what we think we should do, like what we can do with our like our limited resources, our limited time, our small groupness. So I think thinking of it of moving beyond sort of like affinity is just like a little bit more sort of this regularity and intentionality and thinking of meeting and working together without being...
00:03:46
Speaker
some kind of rigid structure and I think we really only have yeah the blog has sort of existed longer than I feel like lake effect has honestly and it still is sort of like an experiment that we're figuring out cool so I'm curious if you have anything else to add to this question of what lake effect is or isn't like especially what you aren't if you have clear definitions of that for yourselves I can add a little bit, but I think we try to be intentional about how we relate to each other in a political context. Like even though we are friends as well, it is not based on informal. interpersonal relations as much as possible. And we try to also have an approach to how we relate to each other that is in the context of like political activity and in the context of Lake Effect, we're able to disagree with each other strongly and have strategic reflection and have that reflection be political rather than interpersonal.
00:04:51
Speaker
and be able to reflect on our activity and how we engage in the moment and also reassess the structure of how we act and write together continually over time.
00:05:06
Speaker
which is part of why it's experimental, sort of in contrast to both affinity group organizing and also like more rigid organizations that can become more focused on either self-perpetuation or on a specific, more narrow political line.
00:05:27
Speaker
Thanks.
Lake Effect's Strategy and Political Relations
00:05:28
Speaker
Mel, did you have something you were going to add to that? basically just the last point of what Ren just said, which is like, on the one hand, we're not like a loose AG, and we're also not like a party structure or like a party cell or something like that in in the sense of we're like hyper, hyper disciplined and, you know, bureaucratic or centralized or anything like that. I think we wanted to see how we can sort of interface with mass struggle in a way that like some of these larger groups are able to do maybe in sort of confused ways, you know, while also not sort of dropping the capacity for action that we felt like we were able to build with one another in the early phases of our relationships with one another.
00:06:13
Speaker
With an eye towards towards that strategy, it's kind of unclear, like w Ren said, what some of these communist party groupings exist to do. And then on the other hand, there are some groups that only do, you know, and it's trying to bridge that gap.
00:06:29
Speaker
Yeah, this is all really helpful, I think, context for moving into the subject of the hour, which is really anti-ICE and anti-deportation organizing that's been happening.
00:06:42
Speaker
In Chicago, I think we're going to include this interview as part of a series of different interviews that we're doing with folks all over the country about kind of autonomous anti-ice organizing efforts in different cities.
Anti-ICE Organizing in Chicago
00:06:54
Speaker
So you all, you know, your your work is kind of picking up. You're like the the hot topic of the hour, i feel like. A lot of people are reading like effects stuff and there's some really interesting ideas that you all are are coming out with, or at least articulating, if not the first people to come up with.
00:07:12
Speaker
So I wanted to shift attention a little bit to your most recently published piece. I'm to call it Chypocalypse now. I don't know if that's how it's pronounced.
00:07:28
Speaker
You go into a lot of detail about the history of resistance to ICE deportations in Chicago in that piece. Can you give a little bit of an overview of how that has developed really over the course of the last year and where you all think things stand right now? I know it's a very broad question, but just if you could situate us in this moment right now, you know, Renee Goode was murdered last week, just for context, when we're recording this interview. So having a little bit of background around how anti-ICE organizing has occurred in the last really year plus, right? I think a lot of it has picked up
00:08:04
Speaker
since Trump was signed into office last year. So would love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, I guess so. In the last year of organizing here in Chicago, to kind of give a brief overview, at the beginning of the year, it was fairly quiet. There had been a lot of threats made around Chicago specifically, and people, both the nonprofits and the NGOs side, but also just autonomous groups, mobilized to spread a lot of Know Your Rights information.
00:08:32
Speaker
And so I want to say from like that first first three to four months of the year was mainly just disseminating that information. There was an assembly that we note in the piece that happened at the beginning of the year that brought out maybe a little over 200 people where we talked about these threats and and what was coming up.
00:08:53
Speaker
and And really, that was one of the first spaces where anti-ICE organizing or even just discussions about ICE were happening in the city. Seeing it from the NGO side of things, I think there were people were aware, but they weren't proactive in actually talking to the people and connecting with them.
00:09:09
Speaker
And there was a lot of energy in the city and the surrounding areas. And so that assembly was helpful in showing that. And I think connecting some people to each other. So that was the first quarter. It was very heavy on Know Your Rights, but also tech, especially signal and messaging. That that was the one way that a lot of people were connecting and sharing information, possible sightings.
00:09:28
Speaker
Those sightings were pretty minimal at that point. Then as the summer came around, what had happened was ICE had been door knocking for a while and they were pretty unsuccessful with those arrests or attempted detainments because a lot of people know their knew their rights. And that was one complaint that I think Tom Homan had where he did this interview and was like, Chicagoans know their rights way too much.
00:09:52
Speaker
So what happened after that was i started to switch over to the courts. And the one big court we have here is in 55 Monroe, which is down in the loop, pretty central area for a lot of people here in Chicago.
00:10:05
Speaker
And when that was happening, it was in the beginning of June, end of May, around then. And this was when classes were ending for a lot of students. So you had a whole bunch of people who were free. Its centrality was also accessible to those who had free time and could go out. And this was also around the same time LA was popping off.
00:10:23
Speaker
So there was a lot of energy to mobilize around the courts. And there was a presence there for a little over a month. And people successfully blockaded and put pressure on the building for them to the point where the building wasn't allowing ICE to use their garage anymore to secretly take people and bus them out to a processing center, detention center, Gary, etc.
00:10:44
Speaker
But that campaign didn't last for long. Then there was a move to ida Ida B. Wells, which is a few blocks down. It's the federal building. That move was motivated by rumors of the tensions happening at their satellite court there.
00:10:57
Speaker
And while those rumors turned out to be true, there wasn't that much strategy behind that that move. Following the courts, there was a move towards Broadview, which I know A lot of people around the country had their eyes on on that for a second when that was at its
Midway Blitz and Its Impact
00:11:11
Speaker
height.
00:11:11
Speaker
But Broadview organizing around that started before Midway Blitz, maybe like just a few weeks. Can you explain what Midway Blitz is for people who don't know?
00:11:22
Speaker
it Midway Blitz was the big surge of ICE agents that came to Chicago. It started... in September, on September 6th. And I think it lasted about two months.
00:11:36
Speaker
And it was like a huge surge of both ICE agents and also a lot of customs and border patrol officers, which I think was the biggest change. Because like Alma had been saying, there had been ICE in the area, detaining people at the court, door knocking. I think some people had maybe been taken off the streets. But once border patrol and ICE came in these like large numbers, that really changed things. And I think really kind of led to this reign of of terror for a lot of people in Chicago, especially in the Latino neighborhoods in Chicago and in our suburbs as well, where people were, and many still are afraid to go on the streets. Street vendors were being taken, people just like walking around, like walking to their cars, people were being taken from their cars, pretty similar to what is happening in Minneapolis right now.
00:12:27
Speaker
Thank you for that definition. Anma, you were just saying that the target of a lot of collective organizing was initially 55 Monroe, then the Ida B. Wells Federal Building, and then it switched to Broadview.
00:12:41
Speaker
Yeah. And can you really quick explain kind of the differences between these, like there's 55 Monroe and then ida B. Wells and then Broadview. Can you explain what the difference is between these different buildings and why the target shifted?
00:12:58
Speaker
And maybe just briefly, how people started initially targeting these buildings? Was it just, oh, there's a lot of people at this building right now, so people are just kind of naturally going to follow the crowd? Or was there any sort of other ways that people decided to go after these targets?
00:13:15
Speaker
Yeah, so these targets are part of ICE's infrastructure in the city of Chicago. Unlike other places where there's massive detention centers, here it's kind of limited.
00:13:27
Speaker
So that's part of the reason why people looked at the courts because of its central location to the city. There's a lot, an abundance of Chicago activists and people in the organizing scene who are willing to help and be involved with that. Though I would say that was Like none of the NGOs really had their hands on any any of the organizing at these sites of infrastructure.
00:13:53
Speaker
That was mainly contained to rapid response. Yeah, just quickly on infrastructure and guess the struggle in Chicago over the past year. We had put out ah a zine a long time ago in in January. It feels like a long time ago. it was called Previous Tactics in the Fight Against ICE, sort of outlaying what had been done before, what had been tried before. So there were some sections about The Occupy Ice wave where people set up encampments and blockades at like sites of ice infrastructure. We also talked about the kind of demonstrations at airports to try and sort of flood them to prevent deportation flights and so on to to different parts of the country.
00:14:37
Speaker
I mean, like in in an ideal world, right, there are like three points of intervention in in the deportation process. There's like in neighborhoods where people are actually getting picked up, you know, so like organizing community defense.
00:14:52
Speaker
There's like the middle spot where people are at these like processing sites and center like sites for infrastructure. And then there's like the actual vehicles and locations that actually transport people across the border. So like airports and, you know, bus depots and larger detention facilities and
Targeting ICE Infrastructure
00:15:09
Speaker
so on. And the thing that was really kind of opportune strategically in Chicago, at least, because we've got the state level ban on ICE facilities and ICE is prohibited from cooperating with the Chicago Police Department.
00:15:24
Speaker
Or i guess the other way around. The gargantuan prison infrastructure that exists in our state just like can't be used for the purposes of immigration enforcement. Doesn't doesn't mean the police don't want to, you know, but they are banned on paper from helping out.
00:15:38
Speaker
So it meant, though, that we have all these relatively reduced sites compared to a lot of other places. And that the federal government sort of has to make do with other things like the immigration court at 55 Monroe is not a federally owned building.
00:15:54
Speaker
It's leased privately from like a realty company. They have the 15th floor reserved. And so it created this really interesting sort of moment in June and the end of May in 2025, where it it sort of transformed very quickly and and very easily into some kind of pressure campaign in a way that was actually quite successful. We didn't end up closing the court for good, but like Alma said, we got the
00:16:26
Speaker
ICE could not be sort of doing what they were doing and and catching people from the site and transporting them out through the freight elevator. And there were days when the court got closed entirely.
00:16:37
Speaker
And on some of those days, people's court dates were getting moved because there's such a huge backlog and the federal government has such a high amount, like a high quota right now, basically to conduct as many kidnappings as possible.
00:16:50
Speaker
People's court dates were getting moved to, in some cases, 2029, and passed the sort of nominal ends of this presidency, like if if it really ended in in four years or whatever, you know. So there was like a really real way in which, at least at 55 Monroe, it was sort of the perfect target and it had real sort of tangible, you know, impacts on people's ability to like stay out of the the state's hands.
00:17:20
Speaker
There is a kind of budding sort of strategic consciousness around this site of these sites of infrastructure in our region that least I'm not sure if that's been done elsewhere in the same way.
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah. And can you all speak to why that shifted or why the target sort of changed over time? i think that that would be helpful to understand a little bit more about. And then I have another question that sort of builds off of that that's a little bit more theoretical. So let's start with that distinction first.
00:17:52
Speaker
I could touch on it a bit. I think part of the reason there was a shift from the courts to Broadview, which for those who don't know, Broadview is located right outside of the city of Chicago, a small town called Broadview, the village of Broadview, but also bordering Maywood.
00:18:11
Speaker
But Yeah, it's a processing center, so it's not meant to hold people for a long time like a detention center. But I think the shift kind of happened in part because people who were at the courts, it was kind of the same routine of going out there.
00:18:28
Speaker
sitting around for hours or standing around for hours, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs. And I think people were questioning why they were doing this, was standing around and taking down plates and sometimes seeing the same ICE agents who would go out and do their their operations? Was that really being really helpful to the rapid responders or to communities or to people who are monitoring occasionally?
00:18:54
Speaker
i think that was one point. There was some reflection on the effectiveness, but also i think people wanted something. There was some like desperation to see results or to go to you know go to ice where they're at and one thing we did know was that broadview even though it was far that they were taking everyone to that site and there was also reports that came out around that time that people weren't being fed they weren't given the proper bedding, it was overcrowded.
00:19:28
Speaker
and those were just some things that I think motivated people too to confront the site. And because this was before Midway Blitz, there was originally not that much immigration enforcement at Broadview.
00:19:41
Speaker
But as weeks went by, and as Midway Blitz kicked in around that same time, more and more people were showing up. But also more and more agents were also adapting and and becoming more violent with their tactics against protesters who were or just people who were showing up, including people who are visiting their families and trying to give them medication or clothes, etc.
00:20:07
Speaker
To that point, increasing violence against people.
Anti-ICE and Anti-Police Struggles
00:20:10
Speaker
A theoretical question, I guess, that I have is around the differences between the anti-ice struggle and anti-police struggle and how those things can work together or are alienated in this in this current moment.
00:20:28
Speaker
And something that I wanted to ask you all, you know, as we're seeing the heightened tensions that are happening right now in this particular moment around is in Minneapolis in particular, but also in Chicago.
00:20:42
Speaker
i guess under what circumstances would mayors or governors and the police that they control actually break with ICE. And, you know, right now there's kind of this tension that a lot of local governments are being forced to speak to, which is police departments coming out and saying, you know, we're not going to collaborate with ICE or we we have a mandate not to collaborate with ICE and trying to separate themselves from ICE in the public's view.
00:21:13
Speaker
and know, I've seen that in Philadelphia, the head sheriff came out and said something spicy about ICE. And so there's this sort of mock tension that the police are trying to create between themselves and ICE agents. And yeah, so I'm i'm kind of wondering, how has that separation been a huge detriment in the struggle against ICE and against police? And are there strategic ways that you all are thinking around how to drive wedges or
00:21:46
Speaker
hate similarities between those two forces. Yeah, I'll say something and then I know other people will have stuff to say about it. But I think that is this way police agencies are kind of trying to set themselves against ICE is in many ways an ongoing problem. Because while I both, it is both to our benefit that they're not kind of actively helping ICE detain people, obviously, in places like Chicago.
00:22:12
Speaker
but It also, you know, the the police are still our enemy and there are many ways by which they uphold the rule of law and like use laws in like a more passive way to aid ICE in these various ways. And I think there is something you saw at, I think Broadview was a really good example. where Border Patrol and ICE were constantly tear gassing people, shooting foam bullets and pepper balls at people.
00:22:40
Speaker
And there was a point where I think the governor, Governor Pritzker, sent in the Illinois State Police in nominally to protect free speech. And they erected these little free speech zones, which they said was to, you know, sort of like protect the protesters rights to free speech, protect people from Border Patrol, from ICE, but really was just like effectively a way to sort of quash the protests at the site.
00:23:07
Speaker
And it really was that kind of moment where the police were coming in supposedly in opposition to ICE that actually, I think, more effectively kind of put a an end to a lot of the protests at Broadview for right now.
00:23:23
Speaker
And so I think that, to me, is a thing. And I've seen some similar things in Minneapolis, just from seeing, like, social media, news reports, things like that. Like with Tom Walsh, the governor of Minnesota, saying he might send in the National Guard in order to protect people's freedom of speech in order to protect their rights, but very clearly to sort of quash any kind of protest.
00:23:48
Speaker
So I do think that is, and my friends might have more to say about that, but I think that is like something that really i think needs to be agitated around with people that the police and the National Guard are still our enemies, even though they are, you know, our neighbors.
00:24:03
Speaker
Yeah, I think there can be a tendency to view the local government as an ally when in fact they're just a different opposition with different interests. So I think with the Broadview example, I think, again, that is a really strong example because they had an interest in crushing the possibility of effective resistance and pacifying the movement in Chicago.
00:24:28
Speaker
And that interest was different from federal agents who wanted to, you know, simply create terror. But there was an interest from local government in sort of quiet deportation. There's been deportation in Chicago and around the country, you know, prior to this administration, of course, and continually. And it's not like Illinois, the state government minds that. It's that they mind the attention and the sort of political battle.
00:24:59
Speaker
And so the framing that a lot of people sort of see of like the Democratic establishment or local politicians as a sort of shield can actually be incredibly destructive to actually stopping deportations.
00:25:14
Speaker
We saw this with people being less willing to resist against ISP, Illinois State Police, compared to Border Patrol. and the state police success in shifting the situation at Broadview from resistance to the facility to just an effort to even get into the street and out of these little containment free speech zones. It was also the case that when there would be standoffs where people were actively trying to stop ongoing deportations or stop ICE vehicles from moving throughout the city, ICE or Border Patrol would frequently use tear gas to flee and police would form lines that would allow the agents to get away. The surveillance infrastructure in Chicago is tied to federal databases and access as well. So federal agents do get information from the massive police surveillance infrastructure in Chicago. It's just not direct. And the sort of separation or like viewing of police is like
00:26:16
Speaker
not the same kind of or not not a threat can be like very destructive to efforts for resistance. It can also lead to like one of the other things that we talk about in the piece, which is sort of a failure to recognize the way that cops operate and kidnap people and brutalize neighborhoods in Chicago and can lead to things like people be like, we should call the police or police are going to stop ICE. Police are going to arrest ICE agents and they're going to stop them when in fact what they do is what they've always done, which is targeting Black and brown communities. And in the case of rapid response efforts, they are far more likely to be pulling over somebody who is
00:26:55
Speaker
you know, tailing an ICE vehicle than they are to be engaging in any kind of confrontation with the feds, which they won't be. So I think to the extent that there is a rhetorical and sort of political divergence or or animosity between state and ah local and federal governments, I think that taking advantage of that tactically and strategically does not mean viewing the the local government and local officials as an ally, but rather both being aware of like when they won't be a threat, but also being aware of the different ways they are a threat and actually revealing what they are not willing to do, which is, you know, all of the things that they're kind of saying in terms of actually standing against deportations.
00:27:43
Speaker
Yeah. So naming the tension that you have just outlined, what are some ways that you see people effectively addressing that on the ground and effectively targeting, bringing this back to a discussion, a broader discussion around the harms of the police and state forces, as well as
Community Defense and Anti-Capitalist Objectives
00:28:01
Speaker
ICE? And what are some ways that maybe you all are interrupting sort of peaceful narratives that city leadership are trying to push right now?
00:28:11
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like what has been effective, at least for me, is just like talking a lot, you know, a lot of people who are coming into, there's a lot of people being politicized right now.
00:28:22
Speaker
And a lot of people who who don't really understand what, why some of us are like, Fuck 12. We're really hard on that. And I think it's a lot of it is conversation with people and letting those contradictions just show themselves.
00:28:36
Speaker
With the courts, there was a time where the police came over and was like, I think we talk about this in the piece where they were like, we need some to talk to someone who's a leader or to act like the leader because they didn't want to get involved. And during the stuff around the courts, they weren't arresting people or bothering a lot of the protesters. And that's because a lot of aldermen came in support. And same thing with Broadview. there was The Broadview PD was pretty hands-off during those first few weeks and letting protesters do their thing and only stepping in if ICE was calling on them to do so or letting ICE make the detainment at one point.
00:29:10
Speaker
But I think as time passed, people were able to see that the police in Broadview were brutalizing and stopping effective protests and jumping on that just as much as ICE was when those videos were coming out of like people getting pepper-balled or like beaten with batons. like They were stepping in with ISP.
00:29:28
Speaker
Same thing in Chicago, while CPD was acting like an ally Not long after, the CPD was standing right by ice while they were tear gassing neighborhoods, attacking people, and even tear gassing them.
00:29:41
Speaker
Like Broadview PD and CPD were both tear gassed and essentially attacked and by ice, yet they still willingly stood by them. And I think people shouldn't forget that here in Chicago, but also in Minneapolis or in Philly or in other cities where cops are coming out and saying, We're we're going to arrest ICE. We're not going to or we're not going to support them because I think people, at least from my experience, a lot of people see ICE as unpatriotic and as police and police as part of the community as patriotic. And I think that's interesting and something that needs to be pointed out, because in reality, just as much as ICE is destroying our community, police local PD is also doing that at the same time every day.
00:30:26
Speaker
Maybe not as loud as ICE is doing right now, but they're still doing it. Yeah, sort of just to add on to that, I think also at the neighborhood level, there can be this tension between like with rapid response groups forming and especially a lot of people coming in who don't have necessarily the same antipathy towards cops There can be a tendency towards a kind of neighborhood watch type behavior where people are just like looking at any car and they're like, oh, this is suspicious.
00:30:56
Speaker
And there isn't necessarily an understanding of the threat that police pose in those same communities and a knowledge that they shouldn't, for example, be calling the cops or seeing a suspicious car and considering reporting that its license plate is not right because they're like, oh, we're going to be reporting an ICE car, but it could very likely just be a person's car, for example.
00:31:20
Speaker
But then I also think there's the opposite sort of tendency or ability to sort of, as people are active in community defense situations, especially in the context of community defense centers or like regular presences at places where people are actually forming connections and relationships with people on the ground,
00:31:39
Speaker
To sort of see the way that police harassment and also the capitalist labor relations are also part of what is enabling the ICE targeting and is also like an additional threat to violence. people. So more specifically, at day labor hiring corners, it's very common for there to be consistent harassment of folks looking for work there and unhoused people there by cops, by security guards, who are also often off-duty police.
00:32:15
Speaker
And people are also, like, the reason those are spots, like, spots like Home Depot hiring corners are such repeat targets, are because people have to wait there in those conditions to get a job for the day where they are often cheated out of any wages and subjected to horrible conditions. So there are ways in which the actions of the police are actually directly a part of what people face.
00:32:44
Speaker
And it can be, I think, a class-based division that allows for people to sort of turn a blind eye to police activity, too. So I think i think there is ah an ongoing challenge that we haven't found an answer to of how to actually make the anti-I struggle something that important. also against police and against capital and actually tie in the contradictions that we see into an effective struggle rather than simply being something that, as I think is right now, like people are gradually potentially having greater awareness of, but it's not necessarily actually part of what people are doing actively.
00:33:28
Speaker
It's like, if i i strap you down to a chair and I pull out a pistol and I put bullets in it and then I leave it on the table and I leave you in the chair and then somebody else comes out and shoots you with the gun. you know, it's not quite clear who killed, who killed you, you know? And, and in, in this case, it's like, you know, the, the cops are like our hand in glove with ice in a way that I think at least in like ah a liberal Democrat city and state like ours, like is sort of not immediately apparent. But, you know, and and you can pull up information about that and share it with people like CPD passively shares all their information with ICE. like ICE has full access to their databases, so they're like not allowed to help out ICE. But they leave the door open for ICE in in every instance. you know like If somebody gets arrested just by regular cops, they might not the ICE might not be able to go to the cops at the precinct and be like, hey, we we just saw this you know get flagged or whatever. We're going to take this person into custody.
00:34:36
Speaker
And deport them. but like You know, it still flags in their system, let's say immediately when this person gets out, their address is in the system now, you know in know, maybe it wasn't before, you know, they've got their prints in there now to, you know, the steps that it would take for ICE to actually detain and deport somebody just like shrink extremely dramatically. And In Chicago, that's been a sort of hard thing to agitate around, although there have been moments of just like really clear collaboration. I think the the best example would probably be Illinois State Police at Broadview when they they were sent in. nominally to protect us but ah obviously to protect the facility i mean they're saying like oh we're going to protect your right to speak freely as they're like hitting you with a big wooden stick you know and shooting you with with rubber bullets and shit but people will not become sort of opponents of the federal government or government at all you know until they have like practical reason to do so so honestly The events with ISP at Broadview and these other moments of CPD collaborating with ICE and ways to agitate around that, I think, are something that just has to be seized upon. And I think it has not been done the way that I think we would want it to be to really like build out a movement that can oppose all layers of government and not just the kind of scary, you know most visibly chauvinistic ones, but the people who are their enablers like time and time again.
00:36:08
Speaker
And I think that that comes down to
Centro Model for Sustained Organizing
00:36:10
Speaker
the nature of rapid response in our city, which is that it's primarily, I mean, historically throughout 2025, historically like extremely legalistic, functionally an appendage of the Democratic Party or the nonprofit structure, which is just like, just they're they're another step removed from the same thing. and And I think that if we are emphasizing that the movement has an illegal character,
00:36:36
Speaker
you know, or that there are there are moments of it that are illegal. think that was what made the infrastructure stuff most appealing is that it's like directly challenging, not just the kind of top level manifestation of the regime that we live in,
00:36:53
Speaker
but also like the things that people sort of take for granted, like the law or the courts or whatever that might be. You know, I've been at a meeting meetings before with people who are like, and I just, I wish that i could just be in a courtroom and have things be normal again. And things are so, you know, not normal.
00:37:12
Speaker
And i love the I love the sanctity of the law and ICE is wrecking it. You know, and and i I think that we do ourselves a real disservice if we sort of de-emphasize that this movement is illegal.
00:37:23
Speaker
And that like the only way that we're going put an end to deportations or borders or anything like that is if we like prioritize illegal tactics and disseminate them and and make sure not to sort of condemn them or, you know, diminish them in an attempt to kind of gain a broader coalition with with liberals.
00:37:46
Speaker
Yeah. not Not to say that that stuff isn't important, you know. Yeah. I mean, i think what's interesting about you all's writing is that you're sort of talking about the need for, you identify the need for this like third way or third option, right? That's somewhere in between, beyond we'll say symbolic protest or spontaneous violence, right?
00:38:12
Speaker
And i feel like it's it's interesting because you emphasize relationship building and like the centro model that you've written about that you've hinted to a little bit in this discussion is sort of described as a place to start to build these like deeper relationships with people that are longer term. And so I have so many questions around that. Like, first of all, you know, touching on kind of what you were just saying, Mel, one is how do you navigate the tensions of needing to be able to coordinate and work with existing groups and infrastructure, a lot of which is controlled by kind of the nonprofit industrial complex and more liberal groups with ties to the Democratic Party, like you just named, with the need to actually mobilize people that care about this in your immediate community.
00:39:00
Speaker
I think in some of the work that you've written, you've talked about how the LA Tenants Union was really helpful in like organizing people locally because there was already this practice of meeting regularly and that brought people together and how that could be useful in building centros in Chicago, like having practices like that and being able to build long-term relationships with people.
00:39:24
Speaker
So I guess this is a ah long context that I'm setting up, but I'm curious about navigating that tension with liberal groups and also why long-term relationship building is important and why you all are framing it as important because You know, it's funny and maybe it's sort of a silly question, but especially, you know, this is a mostly like anarchist leaning podcast. We've historically worked a lot or interviewed a lot of anarchist writers and thinkers.
00:39:52
Speaker
And i think sometimes there's like an overemphasis on or like a hyper fixation on the affinity group model and sort of smaller examples of sabotage or, you know, not necessarily centralized or coordinated.
00:40:08
Speaker
attempts at resistance. So why do you all think it's important to build relationships of trust and obligation that continue beyond individual confrontations?
00:40:18
Speaker
And is that actually what you see happening in these centros that you write about? i guess it would also be helpful to have like a little bit of of more context around what the centro model is. And yeah, if you all could touch on some of these questions that I'm naming in describing that, that would be helpful.
00:40:37
Speaker
I can start off and then people can jump in. Yeah, so community defense centers or centros was a big tactic in l LA, especially, started in LA of setting up a regular presence at hot spots of ICE activity, most commonly Home Depots, which were being targeted repeatedly by federal agents. And people would come with a table, coffee, know your rights resources, eventually other forms of mutual aid and other kinds of infrastructure in LA and be regularly there. So if ICE targeted at that location, they were already there and already able to respond because what a lot of rapid response has looked like both in l LA and certainly in Chicago, which we can speak to more, is that people tend to
00:41:27
Speaker
respond to tips that they receive in signal chats or other other kinds of other chats. And so they tend to arrive after agents have already left, which is part of why there can be a tendency towards a more legalistic model, because there isn't anything else people can do at that stage. Like if they arrive after the fact, the most people can do is provide resources and support after the fact.
00:41:51
Speaker
And while that's not a bad thing, it does mean that a ton of people were sort of channeling all of their energy into monitoring these chats, not being able to actually intervene to stop deportations, to stop kidnappings and...
00:42:06
Speaker
expending a huge amount of energy without actually taking time for strategic reflection on whether it was actually tactically effective. Also spending a lot of time in cars or on devices rather than building relationships or community with people who are being targeted and therefore This also meant that there could be a ton of energy expended without actual growth of self-organization.
00:42:31
Speaker
Centros developed pretty late in Chicago, pretty far into Midway Blitz, around late September or October, which also meant that many people, day laborers vendors particularly, had been kidnapped from these hotspots. by the time these presences were set, were starting to get set up to some extent.
00:42:51
Speaker
I think that to sort of turn to the the question about why long-term relationships are important, and then sort of, there are sort of two aspects of this. I think centros are tactically clearly...
00:43:03
Speaker
a step up from rapid response generally in that people are able to actually respond in the moment and also build connections that go beyond the moment of confrontation. So when there is a confrontation with federal agents are trying to take someone There is a place where people can plug in afterwards, where they can get whistles or they can connect with other people, join into something that can go beyond that that moment.
00:43:34
Speaker
That's a tactical matter, but it's also something which in a larger scale is necessary if we want to build infrastructure to sustain life outside of capital. There needs to be autonomous infrastructure.
00:43:51
Speaker
And that form of infrastructure has been decimated by the democratic machine and nonprofits. So there is a desperate need for that if we want things to be to go beyond a moment of spontaneous uprising and actually you know sikh revolution.
00:44:11
Speaker
I think Centros practically has also run up against some of the same limits as everything else in the sense that like it is difficult to get a lot of people there. It's difficult to have it function as something that is owned and run by people there rather than becoming a kind of service provision.
00:44:37
Speaker
Something that I think Centros can easily become something that's Righteous, but not particularly revolutionary in the sense that it is providing things that are useful, like hand warmers or coats or food or coffee. It's providing reassurance in the sense that people are there, you know, responding.
00:44:57
Speaker
It has more contact between sort of this specialized activist set. And workers, people waiting for work there and has the past does have the possibility and has actually in moments been effective at increasing the possibilities of people's resistance, whether that's by like allowing the alert to get sounded faster or more people to like gather and intervene and try to stop vehicles or try to stop a kidnapping or things like that.
00:45:28
Speaker
And can also be helpful for things like connecting more people so that they can have increased coordination about where people can hide or how people can get away and things like that. So it's not, it's tactically more effective than tech-based response, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't just become a sort of better version of its nonprofit cousin.
00:45:50
Speaker
And in that sense, it's a an open question of how to do that kind of neighborhood-based community defense in a way that becomes self-organization and that becomes pro-social infrastructure rather than something that becomes a sort of outside group coming in, or even if it's not an outside group exclusively, still a sort of form of class-based division in terms of service provision type dynamics.
00:46:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's helpful. I'm curious if you all have concrete answers to that question yourselves. I'm guessing that you don't from the smiles on your faces. ah But I also i i' curious if you all have more to say about this question of navigating tensions with the sort of nonprofit or liberal forces at play in the city, which I think is also related to that that same question,
Challenges of Nonprofits in Organizing
00:46:48
Speaker
right? You're like naming that it's an issue,
00:46:51
Speaker
You've tried experimenting with this other model, and now you're sort of aware of how this other model might might put you in a similar position to some extent. Not the same exact position as as nonprofits in the context of rapid response, but similar in that you're maybe not engaging in ah in a long-term sustainable or like solidarity-based project.
00:47:14
Speaker
And I guess similarly, there's a there's another question I had in here. You focus attention a lot on infrastructure, like airports, data centers, detention contracts, logistics, as opposed to to policy, obviously, maybe.
00:47:31
Speaker
But how how did that analytical shift change the kinds of victories and failures that you've experienced? And what do you think organizers still underestimate about the power of infrastructure and sustaining state violence? I think that's also your answer to that question might speak a little bit to the tensions that come up with kind of nonprofit-y type groups in the rapid response scene.
00:47:55
Speaker
Just thinking about the first question that you asked, I mean, like the central model Tactically, I've been on the ground a lot less regarding the centros, but I'll just you know speak more conceptually, I suppose. It's hitting the same kind of problems that it seems like most social movements hit, which is that I think as anarchists, anti-authoritarians, etc., we you know take it as a kind of...
00:48:23
Speaker
fundamental principle that the the work of the emancipation of the working class has to be the work of the of that class, you know, and that there there can't be people who step in you know, to like do it for them, you know, and that like if if we want to reach a free society, like it has to include the millions of and billions of people on this planet sort of taking up that task into their own hands.
00:48:47
Speaker
And in Chicago, at least for the past 60 i mean, that that nonprofit structure has basically been the status quo ever since the CPD in conjunction with the Chicago government.
00:49:04
Speaker
pushed out the kind of work that radicals were doing in the 60s to like provide the kind of survival programs of the the Panthers and the Young Lords and so on and replace them with these kinds of means tested, very sort of transactional approaches to like service provision instead of like sort of direct, free, you know, non-geographically limited programs for survival pending like a larger scale revolutionary upsurge.
00:49:39
Speaker
And so I think the central model in analyzing that is critical because like we're running into the same walls of this kind of transactional way of of behaving. And that's the way that the the nonprofits and the Democrats are work. And if we want something else, then we have to be able to like figure out a way to work with people in such a way that prioritizes their need and enables their self activity instead of I think the way that it currently seems, which is that there's like a supportive community. And then there are very righteous volunteers who are not necessarily the same people who are in that community.
00:50:15
Speaker
you know But look more like the kind of activist set that has spent a lot of time in Chicago over the last year, doing a lot of really righteous work at all these various sites of infrastructure, while also being like...
00:50:28
Speaker
in a specific kind of class position to have that actually be possible. Like people with a large amount of free time, more flexible schedules, you know, people who are not themselves like day laborers or these kinds of precarious migrant laborers of any kind, you know, I think that that's the kind of struggle that we we don't quite know how to surmount is that we're sort of contesting the terms of the reproduction of the working class and not able to sort of penetrate into the kind of realm where their, their lives are actually structured by, by the capitalist system.
00:51:06
Speaker
I guess a little bit of a follow-up question there. How does fear of repression and deportation, job loss shape political behavior differently than outrage and how,
00:51:20
Speaker
How might we account for that difference and that reality? And similarly, this is not a sexy question at all, but what role should nonprofits and more liberal organizations play, if any, in the anti-deportation struggle?
00:51:36
Speaker
i can speak to one part of that. Yeah, I think I think that one thing that we talk about in the piece is that there is a substantial difference between the current context and 2020, where both economic precarious deprivation and joblessness and also people on remote work were conditions that enabled people to go into the streets after George Floyd was murdered in a way that we are not seeing
00:52:08
Speaker
right now, despite, for example, the murder of Silverio in Chicago, and now Renee Goode. And despite the outrage against ICE, people are still going to work. There's also, for people who are directly targeted, either there is a necessity to continue to go to work and to continue to be in in situations of greater risk of being kidnapped or if there is the possibility to stay inside is very understandable to do so.
00:52:41
Speaker
And more broadly, many people are continuing to sort of have their people who are not at risk are continuing to have their sort of regular lives and jobs.
00:52:52
Speaker
and things like that in contrast to that sort of 2020 situation. So what we do see is in moments where a neighborhood is targeted, for example, when there were massive raids in Little Village,
00:53:07
Speaker
People of every level of precarity or risk were certainly coming out and resisting ICE and trying to stop people from being taken in like moments of spontaneous confrontation.
00:53:21
Speaker
But outside of those moments of direct opposition, people are either... living life, working as they have to x for economic reasons, or sort of more likely to stay inside rather than to be going out on the street.
00:53:38
Speaker
And so I think those things definitely impact what the moment looks like here and in this moment in contrast with 2020.
00:53:49
Speaker
Yeah, I guess I was, I wanted to add to the question on on fear of repression, deportation, job loss, etc. Yeah, I guess it's, what's unique about the immigration movement, or the anti-ICE movement, is that the people who are affected vary a lot in terms of their status and class, where you have undocumented people, people with partial legal protections,
00:54:15
Speaker
And then you have people who have some sort of status or residency. And I think that really impacts the way in which people interact with the struggle. And when we look at nonprofits or NGOs and who's like actually running them, even when they are immigrant led or led by the children of immigrants, there's a whole group of voices that ah that are often left out in that process. And I think, at least in Chicago, from what I've seen, a lot of times there's projection of what they want rather than what the larger community wants or what the most vulnerable of their community wants.
00:54:51
Speaker
And I think... While we should account for people's fears and how their proximity to whiteness or their proximity to citizenship might impact the way in which they express their outrage or their action, I think they and also we should also account for those who and talk to those who are at most risk. and who aren't in those spaces and who often have their voices stripped by those with more privilege and more proximity.
Navigating Nonprofit Dynamics
00:55:17
Speaker
Because that that's like a reality and something that we have to tell people sometimes. I found myself talking to a lot of children of immigrants like myself and also immigrants here who who would do anything, and I mean anything, to stop their parent or their sibling or their loved one from facing deportation or being detained for long periods of time.
00:55:39
Speaker
And when I brought that up to a nonprofit leader here in Chicago, they were surprised. They were like, what? I've never heard that. and And I found that so shocking because I i thought that was a natural response. But I also realized that people are in different positions and in different processes and thus in different proximities to citizenship.
00:55:59
Speaker
And there's a lot of people aspiring to to be U.S. citizens and to be part of this nativist group of people here in the in the country. and And so that definitely impacts some of the work we do.
00:56:11
Speaker
And i guess, yeah, with that second question on the role of nonprofits and liberal organizations, I feel like at times they often feel like tactical obstacles, but I think they do hold a lot of information and a lot of access to people in the city.
00:56:27
Speaker
And again, people are being politicized for the first time. Some people are. And so I think it's important to sometimes find your way into those spaces and like, you know, find people or utilize some of the information that they are withholding and gatekeeping sometimes for themselves, but that is useful. And to continue to interact, but not get caught up in that and allow yourself to be overly influenced and overly changed. And I think we say this in the piece, like,
00:56:57
Speaker
Try not to water down your politics and try not to water down who you are when you are in these spaces, because I think that's important. But I also don't think people should isolate from the spaces or resources or reach that these organizations have.
00:57:13
Speaker
It's like maintaining your own orientation while being in these things is is very tricky. I feel like it's like how how to stay within and against without, you know, letting the fact that you're like within affect your capacity to be against.
00:57:29
Speaker
And. I mean, when when we're in these large kind of coalitional settings or like big tent type political movements or like popular front type politics, I think it easily becomes a situation where we wind up in the situation that the phrase diversity of tactics was supposed to, you know, like get us away from, you know, like in in previous social movements and anti-capitalist movements,
00:57:57
Speaker
The phrase diversity of tactics has been brought up, you know, basically to give us our space as anti-authoritarians, anarchist communists to actually act in the ways that feel congruent with our politics instead of sort of diminishing what we think in favor of what we think is most agreeable in that coalition, you know, as opposed to these kinds of prior environments where we had basically no space,
00:58:22
Speaker
And everything that we would want to achieve is being very tightly controlled by the people who are the kind of acceptable face of the movement usually, which is extremely kind of legalistic and you know agreeable, I suppose, or palatable.
00:58:40
Speaker
And it's like how to, there are certainly things that the nonprofits can do or that more civil society type organizations can accomplish. and even things that have ah been accomplished at the kind of legislative or policy level that we benefit from. Like there's a state level ban on large scale ice infrastructure, which does not exist in a lot of other states. And it's like much, much easier for the deportation machine to operate in some of those states than it is in ours. And it that situation, which results from the kind of law and order type liberalism, is what provided certain critical bottlenecks in the that radicals were able to jump on 2025. And also
00:59:27
Speaker
There have been plenty of instances where even in 2025, where we set our intentions and say, like, we think that this is what we should be doing.
00:59:38
Speaker
And there's like a huge amount, you know, much more than previously of buy-in from people who might not necessarily have agreed five years ago, just because of the ways that the situation politically in this country has developed. I think there are a lot more people who are sort of looking for alternatives or like just other options on the table of different ways of doing things because, you know, we've seen that that Trump was elected, you know, through through the law and order system. Maybe there was voter fraud, probably.
01:00:10
Speaker
And also, I think that it's the harder thing to grapple with is that there are a bunch of people in the country who want it. you know, and and who want this kind of of political leader.
01:00:21
Speaker
And, you know, so people are sort of flocking towards what they think is like the necessary response to increasingly dire circumstances. And yet, I think in 2025, we found ourselves still working with a lot of these groups, nominally saying diversity of tactics, but basically doing the same thing that has happened sort of time and time again. You know, it's like real diversity of tactics has never been tried, you know, and there seems to be a real reticence in some of these spaces to kind of accepting that in order to actually bring this thing down, people need to be pushing from all angles.
01:01:02
Speaker
and And at the same time, if we stay within the kind of realm of bourgeois politics and legality and representative democracy, instead of kind of direct working class autonomy and class power, then then then the problem is not going to go away.
01:01:22
Speaker
It just might be that there's like a different administrator of it at the at the highest levels or something like that, you know, and and I think that that is the real thing to be pushing on that I think has been the ah kind of challenge just because of the the monopoly in in Chicago of the democratic machine of, you know, do you want a different president or do you want a new society? You know, and and I think that that has often been what what political and and tactical alliances have often run a ground on.
01:01:54
Speaker
or like not being able to talk about that kind of strategy in in an attempt to kind of avoid conflict, I guess. you know I think, yeah, to Mel's point, the crux of the issue when working with nonprofits and, you know, liberal organizations is that the strategic objective of those organizations is not the same as ours. And so Big tent politics operates under the assumption that we are working towards the same thing and that therefore we are employing a diversity of tactics towards that same objective. But if the objective of the organizations we are in coalition with is return to status quo liberalism,
01:02:39
Speaker
then we are not working towards the same thing. So when we talk about the tactics and what they're for, they're they're not actually in support of each other. So what would often happen most obviously with Broadview was that the sort of liberal and clergy elements in that coalition would often heavily lean on media influence, influencer status, political benefit, things like that.
01:03:06
Speaker
based on having a different objective from those of us who wanted you know to actually end that site of infrastructure. And that meant that when there would be conversations about diversity of tactics or autonomy, those became kind of catchphrases to shut down criticism or debate and instead be a kind of way of saying, well, we can do whatever we want, but certain people or certain sectors of that coalition were still making the decisions that guided the direction it was going in and impacted the possibility of action at that site. So I think that that is a broader challenge is it's one thing to tactically work with people from these different sectors in the capacity of trying to accomplish some shared goal, but it has to actually be a shared objective and there has to actually be a clearly articulated political message from our side of things.
01:04:02
Speaker
And there has to be sort of an understanding that what we really want when we're talking about diversity of tactics isn't exactly diversity of tactics. It's a composition of tactics to further strategic objectives, which requires reflection or requires strategy.
01:04:17
Speaker
not just anything anyone wants to do that can include things like talking to police or media attention that compromises people's safety or things like that.
01:04:27
Speaker
And relatedly, also, when working with nonprofits on a sort of neighborhood or local level, recognizing the ability to access, as Alma was saying earlier, like the information that they hold without becoming a part of them. So being able to still retain a degree of autonomy So, for example, like neighborhood rapid response groups can have their own, you know, forms of politics or guidelines or approaches to to things like intervention, regardless of what the sort of top level nonprofits are saying.
01:05:01
Speaker
And recognizing that the nonprofits depend a lot on what a bunch of people are doing.
Security Practices in Organizing
01:05:07
Speaker
They are incredibly dependent on these rapid response groups for everything that they do. And those rapid response groups do not have to toe the line.
01:05:15
Speaker
that the nonprofit set and generally speaking people on the ground. It's very hard if you're on the ground constantly and seeing the the shit that's happening to take the line of, well, I'm not going to follow a vehicle because of the risk, or I'm not going to do anything that other than just like watching and filming. And I think that's why there were people all over the city, you know, tailing vehicles or things or tailing the the border patrol caravans because, that kind of activity is necessary and obvious to people engaged and not separated from what's going on.
01:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for that overview. As we're wrapping up this discussion, i had a couple more things that I wanted to ask you all about explicitly, which is in some of your most recent writing, you touch on this issue of guess a preoccupation with security. I don't know if you all use the phrase safetyism per se but I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit to that in these spaces and like how to actually effectively address it, because it's something that I think to name it, to define it really quickly, is just like a preoccupation with security that oftentimes comes at the expense of actually creating effective infrastructure for addressing harm.
01:06:35
Speaker
So Annie, I'm wondering if you could speak to that a little bit and then to wrap up the discussion, i would love if you all could give a little bit of your takeaways that are found at the bottom of your most recent piece. I think it's the ship apocalypse piece.
01:06:49
Speaker
There's a lot of takeaways, but to just kind of finish out the interview, it'd be great to kind of touch on some of those as we close out. But yeah, Annie, love to hear your thoughts on this safetyism question. Yeah, I think the safetyism stuff, especially now, it is like a delicate issue because there is a lot of federal repression occurring. i mean, you obviously have the the case of the Prairieland defendants in Texas who have been arrested and facing very serious charges for just engaging in a noise demo or for things as simple as moving a box of zines or deleting someone from a group chat.
01:07:24
Speaker
And there are a number of like federal investigations into anti-ice organizing occurring across the United States. So I think it's yeah important to acknowledge that there is indeed a lot of federal repression, especially against, you know, quote unquote, Antifa, as they're sort of using as like a very broad term.
01:07:42
Speaker
But at the same time, the anti-ice movement and I think broader, you know, sort of like anarchist revolutionary struggle, like as a whole needs to reach out to people who we live among and like in our communities.
01:07:56
Speaker
And there is like a certain point where over focus on or like over emphasis on some security stuff can just sort of like practically prevent you from building new relationships with the people you come across in your day-to-day life or in the course of organizing.
01:08:13
Speaker
And there are like times where these security measures are necessary and are important. But I think an important part of fighting against or keeping in mind the things that safetyism can like impede us from doing is really having kind of honest conversations about threat modeling, what you're actually modeling against, what the real and practical threats are.
01:08:35
Speaker
And practical things you can do against that. of One thing we've, I don't know if we touched on this in the piece, but it kind of is something that happens practically is like an overemphasis on technological methods of security while maybe neglecting sort of the like social relations that I think are just as important with security. Like,
01:08:55
Speaker
Signal is a good example, something like as a secure messaging platform, but I think a lot of maybe like security breaches or like issues that occur around signal occur because of kind of human error instead of technological error.
01:09:10
Speaker
So I think a lot of our perspective on this is the kind of necessity of not just falling into the highest possible level of security for everything you do, but to actually kind of assess what is needed, what is necessary. It may change from situation to situation.
01:09:30
Speaker
Just like the necessity of kind of at a certain point presenting yourself as who you are in order to like actually build relationships with people using like a consistent name, perhaps.
01:09:41
Speaker
And I think maybe some of my other comrades might have things to say about that. Just on the issue of of safetyism, I think there's been in response to like extreme repression, like a kind of, you know, leveling up of your your security measures, mostly in the tech-based way. And then I think sometimes to detriment, like in social ways, like instead of thinking about sort of collective solutions to these kinds of problems of repression, there can be
01:10:15
Speaker
a turn towards like antisocial behavior, basically, without a clear like threat model, besides like the the sort of fear of an omnipotent government, you know, or something like that. And it's like, well, what is more likely that your phone is cracked or that you open your phone for somebody and show show them. You know, I feel like most of the instances that I can think of, of people whose phones are are accessed, comes from voluntarily giving information. And it's like, then we need to be thinking about social strategies and not necessarily tech magic bullets.
01:10:50
Speaker
Yeah. It's funny that you all are are naming the concern around, or like the way that of fixation on tech can sometimes be a red herring because I think that's one of the first things that you list in in your takeaways, actually. I've definitely seen that in other cities and other places where people have been trying to organize rapid response networks. It sometimes can become this preoccupation, like getting the right tech flow, getting the right workflow in place at the expense of actually building personal relationships with the community members on the ground that are most affected by this.
01:11:23
Speaker
So that's a great sort of segue into the sort of final takeaways that people might have or that you all might want to leave people with in your writing. Is there anything else that you want to definitely highlight in this piece on Shypocalypse?
Concluding Insights and Strategies
01:11:38
Speaker
I should also say i want to note, I've been drawing questions from looking at a bunch of different writings that you all have put on your on your blog. I definitely encourage people to go check that out. I think we can link to it in the show notes.
01:11:50
Speaker
But I just really appreciate the way you all have really thoughtfully articulated a lot of these questions. so Yeah, if there's any other sort of big takeaways that you want people to have, feel free to to highlight those.
01:12:04
Speaker
Very briefly, being clear about your politics, recognizing that people may actually agree with them, and building actual connections with people to create community defense strategies that allow for intervention that is based on relationships where people actually understand what each other are doing and why they are there, rather than simply parachuting into situations.
01:12:30
Speaker
having reflection about your activity and recognizing that there are opportunities in the fact that agents lack crowd control training. They lack a lot of the sort of tools that cops have that allow them to control or shut down chaotic situations so that creating chaos, creating distance between agents and their cars can actually enable stopping kidnappings in ways that often seem unfeasible in other contexts and just broadly meeting with people and doing things in person rather than relying on tips or kind of busy work activity as a sort of placeholder for like the strategic approaches that could otherwise be engaged in.
01:13:19
Speaker
Yeah, I just wanted to emphasize as well, there is a part that says that people act conservatively when there's nothing more appealing for them to do. I think something that we're tackling and hopefully other people in other places can as well is, you know, just making sure we're disseminating information and also presenting alternative activities and also like following up on them and making sure that they're effectively aligning with our long term aims.
01:13:43
Speaker
And so encouraging, I think that's something for us, but also for anyone who's hearing to find those alternatives and to not be afraid to push them out. Certainly there are people who like listening to to speeches in the cold, but I feel like people go to boring stuff when there's, when the only thing you can go to is boring.
01:14:02
Speaker
That's sort of vulgar, but I think it's it's probably true. i think... Disseminating the information, particularly about ICE infrastructure, at least like for a tactical kind of takeaway, has been kind of crucial in Chicago and I think would be crucial across the country.
01:14:20
Speaker
And then maybe more politically, be honest and and not just be honest about your politics, but the kind of tactics that might spring from it. Be honest about illegality and then and then be illegal.
01:14:35
Speaker
Be illegal is a great like final point. I'm taking that from a Living and Fighting article, by the way, okay from Tucson. Be illegal early and often.
01:14:45
Speaker
m That's beautiful. Annie, were you going to add something just now? Oh, yeah. The one more thing is also be honest with yourselves just about what seems to be working and What isn't? You know what I mean? And like the necessity of like taking a step back and being like, wait, I keep doing this thing, whatever it is, what's actually working, what actually isn't working.
01:15:08
Speaker
Do I need to change and not feeling stuck in doing something just because it's what you've been doing? Well, great. I think that's a really good summary. I really appreciate this. Yeah. Is there anything else that you all want to want to say you feel like you haven't been able to say yet?
01:15:26
Speaker
if anybody really disagrees, you should write about it and you should send us an email or reach out to us on social media or something like that. Cause it actually sucks to not be in conversation with other people publicly.
01:15:42
Speaker
So. Yeah, that's great. I'm hoping that this, that this conversation can be a part of a series that is inspiring a lot of debate and comparison and contrasts so thank you all so much thanks for having us this was great yeah be well take care this was lovely
01:16:11
Speaker
thanks for listening to today's episode of the beautiful idea news and analysis from the front lines of anarchists and autonomous struggles everywhere catch you next time