List To Resist: Abolish ICE

If you haven’t downloaded the 5 Calls app or set up a Resistbot chat, do that immediately, if not sooner. As fruitless as it may seem sometimes (and believe me, the disembodied voice writing this list is from Texas - I know the joys of fruitless harassment of my representatives), we have to keep pushing Congress to do their job. And if you’re feeling particularly spunky, this list, compiled by volunteers, has contact information for Members of Congress, but also for Cabinet members and news agencies (tell Bari Weiss I sent you).

ICE is terrible everywhere and if you haven’t looked up an Ice Out for Good event in your area yet, here’s a handy link to get you started.

If you or someone you know lives in Minnesota, a general strike is being called for on January 23, organized by major local labor unions as well as faith and community groups. If you’re someone who does business with Minnesotan companies or people, you ought to take note of and observe the strike as well. For instance, if you’re unable to boycott Target year-round, at least don’t shop on or around the 23rd.

And while all eyes are on Minnesota these last weeks, ICE is still operating with impunity in other communities around the country. Sharing toolkits, resources, and explainers on staying safe and plugging in to community activity alerts are going to be vital for everyone, even if they’re in an area they think will be safe or off the radar.

But also, remember that - for as terrifying as the current moment seems - we have been here before - many, many times. Indeed, as Jamelle Bouie points out, these are the very sort of actions that led to the American Revolution.

“Faced with an angry public but committed to a rigid agenda of nativist brutality, the president and his coterie of ideologues are playing the only move they seem to have: wanton violence and threats of further escalation. They think this will break their opposition.

“But looking at the ironclad resolve of ordinary Minnesotans to protect their homes and defend their neighbors, I think the administration is more likely to break on their opposition and learn, as the British did in Boston, that Americans are quite jealous of their liberties.”

Comparison to the Nazi regime is extremely apt, though this is our own American flavor of fascism in action, but so too are the comparisons to our founding conflict. The right has been using the symbolism and language of the American Revolutionaries as a cudgel and a disguise for years now, but we must take these things back, if for no other reason than to highlight the un-Americanism of their actions and strip them of the patina of patriotism. They want their second Civil War, to own the language of our Revolution. But that language and that imagery is reserved for Americans, not the puffed-up bully puppets of a mad king.

Through whistles, through car horns, through standing unafraid in the face of bullies “having fun,” through community organizing against brutality, and by indentifying these warped cosplayers for the corrupt Klansmen and inept, state-backed gangsters they are, we protect us and we continue the centuries'-long revolution against the ever-present threat of tyranny and oppression.