(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
On Monday night, a songwriter I like named Jason Anderson had a small concert in Brooklyn. About halfway through the show he asked the crowd if he could perform a song he had written that day. One he said he wasn’t sure if he’d perform again. He was clearly a little nervous about it.
The song was about Alex Pretti, the VA worker and nurse who had been gunned down by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis only a few days prior. Anderson’s music isn’t especially political, but his song was raw and gorgeous and by the end the entire room was sobbing.
It is clear that something has shifted. Abolish ICE is not just the mainstream position, it is also the only moral one. I have seen up close what their occupation has done to Minneapolis. They are an affront to human dignity. A rogue paramilitary force that will execute you in the street like an animal and count the bullet holes when they’re done and smear your name online to cover their tracks. A kaleidoscopic nightmare of state violence and Silicon Valley-sponsored surveillance run by internet-brainrotted fascists and hapless podcasters that forces normal people, like Pretti or Renee Good or Keith Porter, to respond the only rational way one can to such a thing. You must oppose it with whatever you have. Hide your neighbors and arm yourself with whistles, barricades, Signal groups, geolocation tools, cellphone videos, and, if need be, you go on strike. Which is why, tomorrow, instead of our usual Friday issue, Garbage Day is joining the general strike in solidarity with Minneapolis.
I recognize that this might make us seem like less “objective” journalists, but we have an audience of over 100,000 readers and a responsibility as Americans. I, also, don’t really give a shit anymore. And neither does my team.
ICE is the ultimate manifestation of the Trump regime’s depravity and madness. A machine that we now must shield our most vulnerable from. An institution that would arrest five-year-old Liam Ramos, as he was walking home from preschool, and send him to a concentration camp in Texas cannot be reformed. An institution that would separate someone like Maher Tarabishi from his disabled son Wael and not let him even attend Wael’s funeral when he inevitably died after losing his sole caretaker cannot coexist with a good and decent society. QR codes and bodycams and “proper training” cannot heal the rotting abscess on the soul of this country that is ICE.
It is our duty to use the levers of a democracy to put pressure on our leaders, while we are still legally able to do so, and before we lose that privilege forever. Journalism is a part of that, yes, but sometimes the moment calls for more. Here are some resources about tomorrow’s strike:
We’ll be back on Monday.