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File:  ltr to Congress, 76 scientists 2012.pdfResource Type: Letters

File:  ltr to Congress, 76 scientists 2012.pdfResource Type: Letters

The past month has seen the new Syrian government in Damascus move politically and military against the autonomous state of Rojava. In our latest, Scott talks with writer and organizer…

If you’re crafting climate-positive fiction, nonfiction, or essays, if you’re writing sci-fi, fantasy, or horror short stories, novellas, or novels, and you want an editorial process that respects your voice while strengthening your manuscript from the inside out, you should know about Arc & Spine Editorial Services — a craft-focused editorial studio led by our co-editor-in-chief Justine Norton-Kertson.

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The annual EcoFarm Conference took place last weekend, bringing together thousands of organic and sustainable farmers, organizations and agriculture and food systems experts. At the end of the Friday morning plenary session, a surprise guest took the stage—Senator Adam Schiff,

The post EcoFarm Welcomes a U.S. Senator to their Conference for the First Time appeared first on CalCAN - California Climate & Agriculture Network.

Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.

Are solar projects hurting farmers and rural communities?

The largest land use scenario for solar development would occupy only 1.15% of the 900 million acres of U.S. farmland. Many would not be sited on farmland at all.

Agrivoltaics is a practice allowing the synergistic installation of solar arrays on farmland. Panels can provide beneficial shade to crops and livestock, reduce evaporation and soil erosion, and create refuges for pollinators. Agrivoltaics, already implemented in other countries, can increase the economic value of farmland by over 30% and annual income by 8%.

Failing to transition away from fossil fuels would worsen climate change’s impacts on farmers and global food supply. The IPCC forecasts up to 80 million additional people at risk of hunger by 2050, lower quality crop yields, and altered distribution of pests and diseases due to climate change.

The harms to farmers and rural communities from unmitigated carbon emissions far outweigh the effects of solar development.

Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact

This fact brief is responsive to quotes such as this one.

Sources

U.S. Department of Energy Solar Futures Study

U.S. Department of Agriculture Farms and Land in Farms 2021 Summary

Princeton University Net-Zero America

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Agrivoltaics

MDPI Sustainability Compatibility between Crops and Solar Panels: An Overview from Shading Systems

Applied Energy The potential for agrivoltaics to enhance solar farm cooling

University of Georgia Empowering Biodiversity on Solar Farms

Columbia Law School Sabin Center for Climate Change Law Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles

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About fact briefs published on Gigafact

Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer "yes/no" answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact — a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all of our published fact briefs here.

Caroline Shenaz Hossein

Caroline Shenaz Hossein’s latest book sheds light on the activism of the Black women who act as ‘Banker Ladies’ in their communities, creating systems of mutual aid, co-operation, and collectivity. The book highlights how Black women counter …

Defending the right to land and access to resources is fundamental to the realisation of the right to food, especially in a global context marked by escalating conflicts, growing corporate concentration, and the dispossession of land and natural resources. For the constituencies of the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM), this is a historic political priority and a central focus of their demands within the Committee on World Food Security (CFS).

Ahead of the Second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20), to be held in Colombia from 24 to 28 February 2026, social movements from more than 70 countries, organised through the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC), are calling for mobilisation to defend land and territories and to advance food sovereignty. They also call on the FAO and the CFS to establish robust and participatory mechanisms to ensure the effective implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (VGGT).

The conference and its outcomes are of particular relevance to the CFS, especially with regard to the implementation and uptake of the VGGT. This was recognised by the CFS 52 Plenary (2024) and the CFS 53 Plenary (2025). The latter encouraged the Government of Colombia and FAO to present the outcomes to the CFS 54 Plenary in October 2026, as well as to contribute to the preparation of the 2027 High-Level Forum on equitable land governance and tenure rights.

Below, we share the press release from the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty:

20 January 2026

As geopolitical conflicts intensify and corporate control over land, territory and natural resources deepens, social movements, and Indigenous Peoples from across the world are rallying behind the Second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20) – being hosted by the Government of the Republic of Colombia and to be held in Cartagena, Colombia, from 24 to 28 February 2026.

From Palestine to Venezuela, from Cuba to the Arctic, a renewed imperial scramble for territory, minerals, water, and energy is underway. Financial investments, military occupation, economic blockades, and so-called security, development, and green transition projects are increasingly used by governments, corporations and elites to dispossess peoples and grab power over strategic resources. As a result, the world is witnessing escalating land concentration, the dispossession of peoples from their territories and commons, and growing inequality.

As global social movements of small-scale food producers, we are determined to unite in Cartagena to expose how these global power struggles directly impact rural and urban working-class communities and to fight for public policies that respect our rights and autonomy.

This capitalist and imperialist expansion has pushed the global food system into deep crisis. It is collapsing under climate breakdown, industrial monocultures, and extreme inequality. We, the peasants, Indigenous Peoples, and small-scale food producers who feed most of the world and protect ecosystems, are facing a new wave of dispossession driven by militarisation, big technology, organised crime and the commercialisation of climate action.

We, representatives of social movements from over 70 countries, organized through the International Planning Committee on Food Sovereignty (IPC), and attending ICARRD+20 as part of the Common Political Action Agenda emerging from the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum, call on the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) to establish robust, participatory, and regular assessment mechanisms to monitor the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT).

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) must be central pillars of comprehensive agrarian reforms, guiding states to protect collective rights, ensure participation, uphold free, prior and informed consent, and defend territories against dispossession.

ICARRD+20, which will take place from 24 to 28 February 2026, comes twenty years after the first conference in Porto Alegre. In the intervening decades, land concentration has intensified and new forms of land and water grabbing have expanded. As social movements, we insist that the conference must move beyond technical recommendations and voluntary pledges.

We are calling for comprehensive agrarian reform grounded in four pillars:

• recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ and customary rights over land, territories and water;
• redistribution of land and resources, including limits on corporate and military accumulation;
• restitution for communities dispossessed by land grabbing, colonialism, occupation, and conflict;
• and strong regulation of land markets to protect food-producing territories from extractive, speculative, and military uses.

A comprehensive agrarian reform is central to democracy, peace, and climate justice.

Any meaningful agrarian reform must centre women’s equal land rights, secure dignified futures for rural youth, and recognise the rights, safety, and belonging of sexually diverse and gender-diverse people in rural territories. Without political commitments and effective global monitoring and cooperation mechanisms, land grabbing simply takes new forms.

Our struggle for agrarian reform today is inseparable from our fight against imperialism, authoritarianism, and ecological collapse. ICARRD+20 is a critical moment to intensify our united efforts to reclaim land, territories, restore dignity to rural peoples, build food sovereignty, and defend the foundations of life itself.

As the IPC Working Group on Land, Forests, Water, and Territories, we will organize a Social Movements and Indigenous Peoples Forum on February 22 and 23 to prepare our collective proposals for the Conference.

Defending Life, Building Food Sovereignty!

People’s Control over Land, Water and Territories, NOW!

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FOR PRESS

• List of Global Social Movements: La Via Campesina (LVC), IITC, WFFP, WFF, WAMIP, WMW, FIMARC, MIJARC, HIC, URGENCI
• List of Regional Social Movements: AFSA, CAOI, COPROFAM, ECMIA, MAELA, PROPAC, ROPPA, USFSA
• Key Dates
  • Social Movement Forum: 22–23 February 2026
  • Academic Forum: 20–22 February 2026
  • Official ICARRD+20 Conference: 24–28 February 2026
  • Press Conference: To be confirmed (virtual or in Cartagena)

Press Enquiries

• Viviana Rojas (LVC) – viviana.rojas@viacampesina.org or press@viacampesina.org
• Andrey Martinez (CLOC-LVC) – andreyviacampesina@gmail.com
• Francesco Panié (IPC Secretariat) – f.panie@croceviaterra.it

The post Global Social Movements Rally Around ICARRD+20 as Struggles Over Land, Commons, and Territories Intensify appeared first on CSIPM.

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob Henson

A prolonged, dangerous bout of frigid temperatures with snow, sleet, and freezing rain will encompass much of the central and eastern United States this weekend into early next week. To make matters worse, there are fresh model signals that one or more reinforcing rounds of cold and snow may emerge around the end of January and early February, including parts of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

The intensity, duration, and geographic spread of this U.S. winter blast could have major consequences, from sustained power outages to transportation snarls and widespread business closures.

The National Weather Service office for the Washington, D.C., area warned on Friday: “The combination of heavy snow and ice alongside prolonged very cold temperatures presents a unique and significant risk to life and property across virtually the entire region.”

As of midday Friday, January 23, nearly all of the contiguous U.S. east of the Rockies was plastered with one or more winter-weather watches or warnings issued by the National Weather Service. Frozen precipitation is not expected in Florida and nearby parts of the Gulf and Atlantic coast, but even these areas will be markedly colder than average for late January.

Daryl Herzmann, the lead for the Iowa Environmental Mesonet sites that the weather community relies upon for many archived datasets, posted on BlueSky this morning that the number of counties under a winter storm warning for this event is second highest since 2008, only slightly trailing February 15, 2021. 

How far south – or north – will the heaviest ice and snow develop?

As we noted in a post on Jan. 7, some of the longest-range forecast models were already suggesting that a strong upper-level ridge could develop over western Canada and Alaska by late January, setting the stage for cold air to surge into the United States on the east side of the ridge. As that scenario firmed up, models such as the European and GFS (U.S.) coalesced on the wintry assault now unfolding. By early this week, there was noteworthy model agreement on the overall picture for this weekend.

The factors in play are:

• a sprawling polar air mass at the surface, which was racing southward on Friday as expected
• a pair of upper-level troughs, one in central Canada and another off the coast of western Mexico, that will come into alignment over the central U.S. this weekend, providing the upward lift for precipitation
• very warm, moist air over the Gulf of Mexico that will get drawn northward atop the cold air, providing ample moisture

High pressure centered in North Dakota on Friday afternoon already extended across much of the eastern half of the country. Air temperatures by early afternoon Friday were already near or below zero Fahrenheit from Omaha, Nebraska, to Detroit, Michigan, with even colder wind-chill values. Multiple days below freezing are possible as far south as Dallas-Fort Worth, which will put major pressure on regional power grids.

The bigger forecast challenge has been placing the north-south extent of the heaviest snow and ice, which will extend roughly from the Southern Plains to the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. There’ll certainly be ample fuel for precipitation: Sea surface temperatures over the Gulf of Mexico are close to record highs for late January. But more moisture doesn’t always mean heavier snow: Temperatures aloft still have to remain cold enough for snow production.

Models briefly converged early this week on the idea of epic, potentially all-time-heavy snowfall in places like Oklahoma City and Nashville. But it now appears the surge of warm, moist air from the Gulf just above the cold surface air will be stronger and will push farther north than originally thought as the upper lows orchestrating the flow join forces a bit sooner.

If more recent model runs prove accurate, the snowfall from the Southern Plains to the Tennessee Valley will be significant rather than record-smashing. However, heavy snow could extend from the Ohio Valley all the way into parts of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Totals of six to 12 inches are expected along the Interstate 95 corridor all the way from Washington, D.C., to Boston, with higher totals toward the north and just inland from the larger cities. (Near the coast, sleet and/or freezing rain could invade the mix and cut down on total accumulations.)

The juicy Gulf air will also raise the risk of a highly damaging and disruptive ice storm, especially in a belt from eastern Texas through parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina. In Raleigh, news outlet WRAL warned on Friday in their forecast for Sunday: “We need you to prepare for a few days or possibly more of no power.”

Cold surface air often remains trapped against the eastern slopes of the Appalachians, a feature called “cold-air damming,” which will help keep the warm air aloft from working its way to the surface in parts of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia.

Far above the surface – and even above the jet stream – the stratospheric polar vortex is highly elongated. This isn’t quite the same as the polar vortex “splitting” and a lobe heading toward the United States, which is one mode that can help facilitate intense U.S. winter weather. Instead, it’s more of a stretching out – in this case, from the high Arctic to central Canada.

Figure 1. The stratospheric polar vortex is a mass of cold whirling air bounded by the jet stream that forms 10 to 30 miles above the Arctic surface in response to the large north-south temperature difference that develops during winter. Generally, the stronger the winds, the more the air inside is isolated from lower latitudes, and the colder it gets. But sometimes it can be shifted or stretched off the pole toward the United States, Europe, or Asia. (Image credit: Climate.gov)

In a 2021 Science paper, Judah Cohen (Atmospheric and Environmental Research) presented evidence for an increase in stretching events during the era of “Arctic amplification,” the phenomenon in which the Arctic is warming faster than other parts of the world as a result of climate change. (See our 2025 coverage of the Gulf Coast snowstorm for more background on polar-vortex stretching.)

A chilly wake-up call

This storm sequence is hitting after what’s been a mild winter with little snow from the Great Plains across the South and Southeast. The past 30 days were warmer than average for virtually all of the contiguous U.S., and only 25% of the nation outside Alaska and Hawaii was snow-covered as of January 23, the lowest fraction for that date in records going back to 2003.

The cold of the next few days doesn’t seem likely to be historically extreme in terms of sheer intensity. In fact, the number of daily record lows set could be surprisingly small, given some of the truly fierce Arctic blasts of the 19th and 20th centuries. However, the duration of noteworthy cold may push into once-in-a-generation territory in some places.

For example, the one-two punch of winter storms in Washington, D.C., assuming little temperature recovery in between, could produce a stretch of seven to 10 days at or below freezing. The longest stretch in modern times with high temperatures at or below 32°F at Washington’s Reagan National Airport lasted seven days, on Feb. 9-15, 1979. Nothing longer has occurred since Jan. 23–Feb. 3, 1936, when the nation’s capital failed to rise above freezing for a record-long 12 days. Correction: There was also a freezing-or-below stretch of 10 days on Dec. 16-25, 1989.

Jeff Masters contributed to this post.

Mexico is at the crossroads of an elite culinary destination and extreme social and economic injustice. The corporate takeover of Mexico’s food sector has polarized the nation’s diets and food…

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, January 18, 2026 thru Sat, January 24, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category:

Climate Change Impacts (7 articles)

• Ocean Damage Nearly Doubles the Cost of Climate Change "Ignoring the blue economy has left a multi-trillion-dollar blind spot in climate finance, according to a study from Scripps Oceanography." Inside Climate News, Johnny Sturgeon, Jan 15, 2026.
• ‘Climate change is here’: Experts warn environmental crisis is decades ahead of forecasts "Drought, heatwaves, hurricanes, and wildfires are arriving sooner than we imagined according to scientists" The Independent, Maria Butt, Jan 17, 2026.
• 2026 will likely be among the hottest on record: Environment Canada "12% chance of exceeding important threshold of 1.5 C this year" CBC, David Thurton, Jan 19, 2026.
• Scientists warn of ‘regime shift’ as seaweed blooms expand worldwide "Study links rapid growth of ocean macroalgae to global heating and nutrient pollution" The Guardian, By Damien Gayle, Jan 19, 2026.
• Era of ‘global water bankruptcy’ is here, UN report says "Overuse and pollution must end urgently as no one knows when whole system might collapse, says expert" The Guardian, Damian Carrington, Jan 20, 2026.
• Australia’s worst heatwave since black summer made five times more likely by global heating, analysis finds Lede: "Extreme heat ‘is getting worse and whether we like it or not … there’s ultimately a limit to what we can actually physically cope with,’ scientist says" The Guardian, Donna Lu, Jan 22, 2026.
• Trump says the big US winter storm is proof of climate hoax – here’s why he’s wrong "US president asks ‘whatever happened to global warming?’ Well, it could be making our winter storms worse" The Guardian, Oliver Milman, Jan 23, 2026.

Climate Policy and Politics (7 articles)

• Trump Wants to Halt Almost All Coal Plant Shutdowns. It Could Get Messy. "Critics accuse leading firms of sabotaging climate action but say data increasingly being used to hold them to account" The New York Times, Claire Brown & Brad Plumer, Jan 16, 2026.
• How Wall Street Turned Its Back on Climate Change "Six years after the financial industry pledged to use trillions to fight climate change and reshape finance, its efforts have largely collapsed."How Wall Street Turned Its Back on Climate Change The New York Times, David Gelles, Jan 17, 2026.
• How Trump’s Withdrawal From Climate Treaties May Ultimately Play Out "In addition to international stakes, states and cities face additionally challenges to acting autonomously this time around." Inside Climate News, Jenni Doering, Jan 18, 2026.
• Analysis: UK newspaper editorial opposition to climate action overtakes support for first time "Nearly 100 UK newspaper editorials opposed climate action in 2025, a record figure that reveals the scale of the backlash against net-zero in the right-leaning press." Carbon Brief, Josh Gabbatiss & Sylvia Hayes, Jan 19, 2026.
• The consequences of Trump’s war on climate in 7 charts "Seven snapshots reveal how climate rollbacks altered the trajectory of U.S. energy, environmental protection, and economic security." Grist, Staff, Jan 21, 2026.
• Records show DOE climate advisors targeted key EPA finding Lede: "The internal dialogue showed the researchers took a political tack in their discussions, a course critics said could complicate the Trump administration’s quest to kill the 2009 endangerment finding." PoliticalPro, Zack Colman, Jan 22, 2026.
• At Davos, Talk of Climate Change Retreats to the Sidelines "The annual gathering of top business leaders and policymakers used to be a center of the global climate movement. Things are much more complicated now." The New York Times, David Gelles, Jan 22, 2026.

Miscellaneous (5 articles)

• Federal Court Allows Dominion Energy in Virginia to Continue Offshore Wind Project "For the third time this week, the Trump administration is blocked from stopping a major renewable energy effort." Inside Climate News, Charles Paullin, Jan 16, 2026.
• 2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #03 A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, January 11, 2026 thru Sat, January 17, 2026. Skeptical Science, Bärbel Winkler, John Hartz & Doug Bostrom, Jan 18, 2026.
• Carbon-sucking fungi and 'forever chemical' crackdowns: Positive environmental stories from 2026 "Eco anxiety is very real, so we share this year's most uplifting stories to prove there’s hope for our climate." EuroNews, Angela Symons, Jan 19, 2026.
• A California Climate Expert Is Working to Restore Climate Risk Scores Deleted by Zillow "The real estate website scrubbed the data under pressure from California’s real estate brokers and agents who were concerned about its impact on home prices. Neil Matouka thinks prospective buyers have a right to know." Inside Climate News, Claire Barber, Jan 20, 2026.
• Half of world’s CO2 emissions come from just 32 fossil fuel firms, study shows "Critics accuse leading firms of sabotaging climate action but say data increasingly being used to hold them to account" The Guardian, Damian Carrington, Jan 21, 2026.

Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation (3 articles)

• Talking About Energy Dominance? Solar Would Like to Have a Word. "We are in the solar-powered century, although some are taking their time to figure this out." Inside Climate News, Dan Gearino, Jan 15, 2026.
• Sea otters are California’s climate heroes "From kelp forests to sea grass meadows, these charismatic predators are quietly holding parts of the coast together." Yale Climate Connections, Daisy Simmons, Jan 20, 2026.
• Wind and solar overtook fossil fuels for EU power generation in 2025, report finds "Researchers say event described as ‘major tipping point’ for clean energy in era of destabilised politics" The Guardian, Ajit Niranjan, Jan 21, 2026.

Climate Science and Research (2 articles)

• The Women Saving America’s Climate Data Time Magazine, Kyla Mandel, Jan 16, 2026.
• Guest post: 10 key climate science ‘insights’ from 2025 "Every year, understanding of climate science grows stronger." Carbon Brief, Prof Kristie Ebi & Prof Sabine Fuss, Jan 22, 2026.

International Climate Conferences and Agreements (2 articles)

• Roadmaps and Colombia conference aim to shift fossil fuel transition into higher gear Lede: "Conferences in Santa Marta and the Pacific will discuss how to transition away from fossil fuels without harming workers or financial systems" Climate Home News, Jo Lo, Jan 16, 2026.
• Power play: Can a defensive Europe stick with decarbonisation in Davos? "With the US doubling down on fossil fuels, maintaining the clean energy transition is central to reducing geopolitical exposure and preserving Europe’s ability to act strategically" Climate Home News, Tsvetelina Kuzmanova, Jan 19, 2026.

Public Misunderstandings about Climate Science (1 article)

• Bloggers claim Met Office fraud! (Let's investigate....) Potholer54 on Youtube, Peter Hadfield, Jan 17, 2026.

Public Misunderstandings about Climate Solutions (1 article)

• Fact brief - Do solar panels release more emissions than burning fossil fuels? Do solar panels release more emissions than burning fossil fuels? Skeptical Science, Sue Bin Park, Jan 20, 2026.

If you happen upon high quality climate-science and/or climate-myth busting articles from reliable sources while surfing the web, please feel free to submit them via this Google form so that we may share them widely. Thanks!

The January 9 CSPOA “Save Our Sheriffs” rally in Puyallup, Washington, displayed an under-examined aspect of CSPOA politics – that is, the strong place of anti-Indian politics in its networks.

In addition to GOP state leader and speaker Jim Walsh belonging to the anti-Indian Save Our Sequim Facebook group, event celebrity and Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank also recently mingled with a regional anti-Indian figure. Swank’s activities also presented an example of how anti-Indian activists in such networks often run alongside proponents of radical attacks on federally protected civil and voting rights.

In November, Sheriff Swank was scheduled to appear at the Liberty First Summit in Gig Harbor, Washington. Another announced speaker at the event was Glen Morgan of We the Governed. Morgan has a history of anti-Indian organizing. While at the Freedom Foundation, Morgan opposed the inherent sovereign right of the Chehalis Tribe to develop tribal properties free from county taxation. And through the Citizens Alliance for Property Rights, where he serves as Executive Director, Morgan built a close relationship with Elaine Willman of the Citizens Equal Rights Alliance (CERA), an organization long dedicated to the outright termination of Indian tribal sovereignty and abrogation of treaties signed between tribes and the U.S. government.

The Gig Harbor event was also slated to feature KrisAnne Hall, a sometimes CSPOA trainer who holds that the 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution are unconstitutional.

During the press conference preceding the January 9 CSPOA event, far-right congressional candidate Jerrod Sessler asked a question implicating a call for sheriffs to step in to suppress the treaty and fishing rights of Indian nations. Sessler asked,

“So, um, general question to you again, it’s kind of the same thing. I’m an engineer. I want to know what are the steps are that we can solve or fix this problem or stop it from happening. I recently did a documentary on the Klamath River Dam removals that happened in Oregon and California. And one of the one of the questions I asked, they removed four dams down there. One of the questions I asked them is, where were the sheriffs? Why did the sheriffs not stop him from blowing up these dams?”

Mike Flynn answered by discussing sheriffs’ power, but never specifically answered the question, instead saying, “Every state constitution actually has the authority to secede if they want,” and that he did not want that.

Michael Flynn at CSPOA “Save Our Sheriffs” rally

As for Sessler’s “documentaries,” his treatment of tribes, while at times acknowledging the existence of tribal treaty rights, is, to be very generous, superficial – and, at times, echoes the long-held language of anti-Indian activists about tribal domination of non-Indians.

While Sessler claims that a 1957 agreement “equitably splits water for states, tribes, farms and fish,” the combination of dams, water withdrawal, and other environmental impacts across the years has led to significant declines in tribal fisheries.[1]

Sessler later declared that a rancher and facilitator for the Klamath Working Group, a step along the way to addressing issues in the basin, “brings in untouchable tribes, the Yurok, the Karuk, and the Klamath, with treaty rights. Of course, they demanded dam removal for salmon. My understanding is that the Shasta tribe refused dam removal.”[2]

The idea that tribes are somehow “untouchable” echoes the language of Indian power in anti-Indianism – an accompaniment to false claims of tribal domination. In a similar fashion, and making a reference to the television show Yellowstone, Sessler draws the lesson that “No one dares speak against the tribes, even if what is happening completely violates the rights of other citizens.” [3]

Another Sessler video continues this theme, featuring an interview arguing that the facilitator sought “bribe them [tribes] into coming in, getting involved, saying we’re going to give you power we’re going to give you authority- they had to supersede the rights of the people who owned the water rights up there.”[4]

Sessler also mobilizes the idea of blood quantum to undermine Shasta claims to lands inundated by the dams. He claims, based on an interview with a local opponent of dam removal, that the government enticed Shasta cooperation by “offering a person that has a 16th of her bloodline back to one of the tribes rights to certain land in order to get their support to remove the dams and subjugate water use to prioritize fish.”[5]

While tribes confront real issues in grappling with the effect of blood quantum measurements on their nations – not, incidentally, an idea drawn from American policies and not tribes – as displayed here, Sessler follows the suit of opponents of tribal rights who often make such claims.

Despite the multiple claims of tribal domination of water rights, Sessler fails to explain that tribal water rights are established in the same manner for all who live here – by pegging water rights to the date of the first beneficial use of the resource (particularly in the western U.S.), and then creating use order preferences based on that date. The principle in such “prior appropriation” law is that “first in time, first in right.” For example, under U.S. law, tribal water rights can be based on the date that a reservation was created or, frequently for treaty fishing rights, to “time immemorial,” as tribes relied on water for their fisheries long before Europeans stepped on the continent. Often, in keeping with the colonial aspects of federal Indian law, they are based on actions of the federal government, not the simple fact that all tribal water uses pre-dated European and American use.[6]

In the Klamath Basin, for instance, Klamath Tribes’ rights for fisheries-related water date to “time immemorial,” and for other uses to the 1864 treaty with the U.S. government and creation of a reservation. Yurok Tribe water rights date to an 1855 Executive Order creating a reservation, while Hoopa Valley Tribe rights are linked to an 1876 Executive Order doing the same.[7]

Sessler’s “documentaries” have been circulated by Lisa Mott inside the Klamath Basin Crisis Facebook group, of which she is a member and “rising contributor.” Mott is an administrator of the Klamath River & Dam Revoval Facebook group. For its part, Klamath Basin Crisis is a long-time player in far-right mobilizations against tribal rights in the Klamath Basin – even hosting a section of its website titled, “Elaine Willman – Tribal information and Tribal corruption Citizens for Equal Rights/CERA.”[8]

Sessler continues his string of canards by featuring an interview, but not fact-checking it, in which an individual claims that tribal gillnetting had depleted sturgeon stalks – again, a refrain from opponents of tribal fishing rights that was prominent in the tribal fishing struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. [9]

As for Sessler’s videos, offering the Shasta Tribe as an example of a tribe opposing the dam leaders of the non-federally recognized tribe, celebrated the return by the State of California of some lands once inundated by the dams.[10]

Sessler’s videos are also peppered with references to Agenda 21, the wholly voluntary 1992 United Nations program promoting environmental protection and other goals, primarily in developing countries. In the minds of far rightists, this program often served as evidence of a global conspiracy. In one video, Sessler posits that the

“Post 2001 water crisis reclamation halted farm deliveries for fabricated salmon protection,” while in the 1990s, “Agenda 21 and the Wildlands Project targeted dams for renewing salmon habitat.”[11]

Sessler also features an interviewee who describes that the Obama administration aimed to “ensure, in the intention was to impose environmental conditions on all of the public – is to gain control of the assets of America is a unique place. It is one of the few places in the world, and the UN stated that in Agenda 21, difficulty is one of the few places that private citizens can own natural resources. That’s antithesis to every environmental protocol that the UN stands for and that the US signed on.” [12]

In keeping with attacks on tribal rights, CSPOA event emcee Larry Stickney has assailed Indigenous Peoples’ Day and promoted the variety of historical revisionism that denies the atrocities committed against indigenous peoples with the coming of Christopher Columbus – in 2024, for instance, posting a meme declaring, “Today is Columbus Day, not ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Day.’ Columbus was a great man of history who fundamentally reshaped the world we live in today. He accomplished a million times more in his life than all of his modern critics combined.”[13]

For an organization with ties to white nationalists and groups like the Oath Keepers, it is of little surprise that CSPOA also trucks with anti-Indian politics. One more reason that people of goodwill should speak out loudly to condemn their efforts to recruit law enforcement officers into the far right.

NOTES

[1] Jerrod Sessler. Klamath Dams Removal 60 Year Hidden Agenda Exposed, Thousands Affected, No Congressional Approval? YouTube. November 17, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WiWStbvbZQ&list=PL6BkucHRE2KQWEm8-wIm9932b7RkrRN2B&index=4; See National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Klamath River Basin: 2009 Report to Congress. NOAA. Arcata, California. http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/klamath2009.pdf; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Klamath River Basin: 2011 Report to Congress. NOAA. Arcata, California. http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/species/klamathriverbasin2011.pdf.

[2] Jerrod Sessler. Klamath Dams Removal 60 Year Hidden Agenda Exposed, Thousands Affected, No Congressional Approval? YouTube. November 17, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WiWStbvbZQ&list=PL6BkucHRE2KQWEm8-wIm9932b7RkrRN2B&index=4

[3] Jerrod Sessler. Klamath River Dam Destruction Mystery | Faux Salmon Crisis, Native Tribes & War On Water. YouTube. November 17, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RfVbPtvNjE&list=PL6BkucHRE2KQWEm8-wIm9932b7RkrRN2B&index=1

[4] Jerrod Sessler. Klamath River Dam Destruction Mystery | Faux Salmon Crisis, Native Tribes & War On Water. YouTube. November 17, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RfVbPtvNjE&list=PL6BkucHRE2KQWEm8-wIm9932b7RkrRN2B&index=1

[5] Jerrod Sessler. Klamath River Dam Destruction Mystery | Faux Salmon Crisis, Native Tribes & War On Water. YouTube. November 17, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RfVbPtvNjE&list=PL6BkucHRE2KQWEm8-wIm9932b7RkrRN2B&index=1

[6] Native American Rightrs Fund. Indian Water Rights 101. A Summary of the Fundamental. Last Updated March 14, 2025. https://narf.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/indian-water-rights-101.pdf

[7] Bardeen, Sarah. Exploring the Yurok Tribe’s Management of the Klamath River. Public Policy Institute of California. September 5, 2023. https://www.ppic.org/blog/exploring-the-yurok-tribes-management-of-the-klamath-river/; Native Nations Institutes Constitution Resource Center. Yurok Tribe: Preamble Excerpt. https://nniconstitutions.arizona.edu/yurok-tribe-preamble-excerpt. Accessed January 21, 2026; Oregon Water Resources Department. The Oregon Water Resources Deptarment Completes Klamath River Basin Adjudication (1975-2013). Press Release dated March 7, 2013. Salem, OR; UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA. YUROK TRIBE v. UNITED STATES BUREAU OF RECLAMATION. Civ. No. 4:24-cv-8216-HSG. file:///C:/Users/crorg/Downloads/1677-1.pdf

[8] Klamath Basin Crisis. Elaine Willman – Tribal information and Tribal corruption Citizens for Equal Rights / CERA. http://www.klamathbasincrisis.org/AskElaine.htm. Accessed January 21, 2026; Lisa Mott. Klamath Basin Crisis. Facebook. November 18, 2025. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1536133236568310/?multi_permalinks=3296903853824564&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen; KLAMATH RIVER & DAM REMOVALS. Facebook. Members. https://www.facebook.com/groups/384246450824754/members. Accesed January 21, 2026.

[9] Jerrod Sessler. Klamath River Dam Removal Documentary – Video 4 of 4 – Peaceful River Float. YouTube. July 15, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUosj-Cmi3o&list=PL6BkucHRE2KQWEm8-wIm9932b7RkrRN2B&index=5

[10] Krol, Debra Utacia. Shasta tribe will reclaim land long buried by a reservoir on the Klamath River. USA Today. June 22, 2024. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/06/22/california-returns-land-shasta-tribe-klamath-river/74169647007/

[11] Jerrod Sessler. Klamath River Dam Destruction Mystery | Faux Salmon Crisis, Native Tribes & War On Water. YouTube. November 17, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RfVbPtvNjE&list=PL6BkucHRE2KQWEm8-wIm9932b7RkrRN2B&index=1

[12] Jerrod Sessler. Klamath River Dam Destruction Mystery | Faux Salmon Crisis, Native Tribes & War On Water. YouTube. November 17, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RfVbPtvNjE&list=PL6BkucHRE2KQWEm8-wIm9932b7RkrRN2B&index=1

[13] Lawrence Helge Stickney. Facebook. October 14, 2024. https://www.facebook.com/larry.stickney.9/posts/pfbid024pXCpv7NAP7EpyDvYJwRbqKCV1nHdT3dKekwRjE2Y1AzBUcxtHPBc6YxGKV854tPl

The post Anti-Indianism Rears Its Head at CSPOA Washington Event appeared first on IREHR.

“Save Our Sheriffs” emcee Larry Stickney is an individual with a long history of organizing to deny civil rights to same sex couples. Larry Stickney is also a Council Member Aide to Pierce County Council member Amy Cruver.[1]

A Washington State Director for the 1996 Pat Buchanan campaign, and former legislative aide in the State House of Representatives and Snohomish County Council, Stickney’s LinkedIn biography notes that he resigned from the Snohomish position in 2007 to “embark on a lengthy, challenging, expensive and ultimately perilous 2.5-year political battle to defend traditional marriage (defined as that between a man and a woman only)” – that is, to deny basic civil rights to same sex couples.[2]

In 2008, Stickney helped found and lead the Washington Values Alliance, an organization formed, in the anti-gay and anti-choice lingo of the Christian Right, to “defend human life, the institution of marriage, religious freedom, and Judeo-Christian values.”[3] In 2009, Stickney served as a board member and campaign manager for Protect Marriage Washington. The group led a failed fight to deny civil rights to same sex couples by opposing expanded rights for domestic partners. Also serving with Stickney as board members were state representative Jim McCune and then- state representative Matt Shea, who a state house-sponsored investigation found to have “planned, engaged in, and promoted a total of three armed conflicts of political violence against the United States government” from 2014 to 2016.[4]

Stickney continued his attacks on gay and lesbian civil rights as Executive Director of the Focus on the Family-affiliated Family Policy Institute of Washington State.[5]

From May 2020 to January 2021, Stickney left the state to serve as a full-time Field Coordinator for the far-right conspiracy-mongering John Birch Society in North Texas.[6]

In April 2025, Stickney posted a link to a Breitbart article titled “Trump Should Award Pat Buchanan Medal of Freedom,” responding, “I could not agree more. Buchanan is one of the great political minds of the last 50 years and is the grandfather of the America First movement.”[7]

Stickney also provides an example of how the far-right reactionaries of the early 2000s – who sought, for instance, to deny LGBTQIA+ civil rights, but not overturn the U.S. government wholesale – would morph into far-right revolutionaries in the current period. This was visible when his son, Matthew Stickney, was charged with four counts related to taking part in the January 6th insurrection.[8]

In a 2023 response to queries from KIRO 7 in Seattle, Larry Stickney said, “My son is a fine young man with a strong sense of right and wrong. I couldn’t be any prouder of him than I am today.” [italics in original][9]

Just one day after Donald Trump issued “sweeping blanket pardons and commutations for nearly 1,600 patriotic Americans prosecuted for the presence at the Capitol,” in the historical revisionist language of the regime, Larry Stickney posted to Facebook, “Great news, the corrupt-to-the-core Biden DOJ’s ridiculous January 6 case against my son Matt Stickney has been dismissed with prejudice!”[10]

Eric Lundberg, lead pastor at the Graham, Washington-based Living Word Lutheran Church and a speaker at the CSPOA event, responded to Stickney, “Celebrating with you all!! God is a God of Justice and Mercy! Vindication comes from the Lord Our God!” State legislator Jim McCune, also speaking at the event, would declare, “Praise God.” Pierce County GOP leader Dave McMullan replied, “Awesome.”[11]

All of these views are compatible with CSPOA leader Richard Mack’s recent rants about the events of January 6th, and with CSPOA CEO Sam Bushman’s fundraising appeal for the Oath Keepers, while leader Rhodes was en route to Washington, D.C., the day before the January 6th insurrection. Rhodes was convicted of Seditious Conspiracy, but pardoned by President Trump. Out of prison, Rhodes is attempting to rebuild the Oath Keepers.

The mix of topics of the day both repeated the broken record of standard CSPOA fare and hinted at what is to come from both CSPOA aims and this cadre of Pierce County officials and far rightists.

 

NOTES

[1] Larry Stickney. Linked In. Accessed January 13, 2026.

[2] Larry Stickney. Linked In. Accessed January 13, 2026.

[3] Washington Values Alliance. Articles of Incorporation. October 31, 2028. Washington State Corporations and Charities Filing System. https://ccfs.sos.wa.gov/#/BusinessSearch/BusinessFilings.

[4] Protect Marriage Washington. Political Committee Registration. Washington State Public Disclosure Commission. November 20, 2009. https://apollo.pdc.wa.gov/public/document?docid=1686989; CBS News. Washington State Approves Gay Partnerships. November 5, 2009. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/washington-state-approves-gay-partnerships/; Romo, Vanessa. Washington Legislator Matt Shea Accused Of ‘Domestic Terrorism,’ Report Finds. NCPR. December 20, 2019. https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/790192972/washington-legislator-matt-shea-accused-of-domestic-terrorism-report-finds.

[5] Mantyla, Kyle. Dobson’s Low Profile Hides Focus on the States. People for the American Way. Right Wing Watch. August 22, 2007. https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/post/dobsons-low-profile-hides-focus-on-the-states; Larry Stickney. Linked In. Accessed January 13, 2026.

[6] Larry Stickney. Linked In. Accessed January 13, 2026.

[7] Lawrence Helge Stickney. Facebook. April 10, 2025. https://www.facebook.com/larry.stickney.9/posts/pfbid0FxAySK187dc7dUayhmgasNJZeHXiy6jUJsiDh6w3f4chV57b1jrwwKUM8vK8UTxwl

[8] Peterson, Jenna. Jan. 6 rioters with Snohomish County ties included in Trump pardons. HeraldNet. January 21, 2025. https://www.heraldnet.com/news/jan-6-rioters-with-snohomish-county-ties-included-in-trump-pardons/; Lee Lloyd. A January 6 defendant’s Google search history outlines a timeline of the Capitol riot events — and a reference to ‘Anchorman’ — law enforcement says. Business Insider. December 21, 2023. https://www.businessinsider.com/january-6-defendant-google-search-history-capitol-riot-lawsuit-stickney-2023-12?op=1

[9] Lomibao, Samantha. ‘I couldn’t be any prouder’: Father responds to son’s federal charges in Jan. 6 riots. KIRO7. December 28, 2023. https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/i-couldnt-be-any-prouder-father-responds-sons-federal-charges-jan-6-riots/.

[10] Lawrence Helge Stickney. Facebook. January 21, 2025. https://www.facebook.com/larry.stickney.9/posts/pfbid0eQB9EWxE8nKXnHrHGkWNijp3gbsjvvBHGTRC3D6zWW7WcB61FhEpJDZPvnBh1Wb4l; The White House. 01.06.2021. https://www.whitehouse.gov/j6/. Accessed January 13, 2026.

[11] Lawrence Helge Stickney. Facebook. January 21, 2025. https://www.facebook.com/larry.stickney.9/posts/pfbid0eQB9EWxE8nKXnHrHGkWNijp3gbsjvvBHGTRC3D6zWW7WcB61FhEpJDZPvnBh1Wb4l.

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In a nondescript suburban Western Washington church, up the street from a KFC and a Pep Boys, an Arizona pro-paramilitary group brought together national far-right figures and local Republican officials to outline a battle plan for the new year.

On January 9, the far-right Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) held a “Save Our Sheriffs” rally at the Experience Church in Puyallup. Nearly three hundred people filled the cushioned seats while others watched the well-produced cavalcade of conspiracists at home on Lindell TV.

The “Our” part of the “Save Our Sheriffs” rally was a curious choice, as most of the hosts and event sponsors were not from Washington State. The primary organizer of the event, CSPOA, is an Arizona-based far-right group with well-documented ties to white nationalists and insurrectionists. The other listed convening group, the American Police Officers Alliance (APOA), is a 527 political organization based in Arlington, Virginia, known mostly for fundraising robocalls, which lists CSPOA’s Richard Mack as its sole advisory board member.

Half of the event sponsors were also out-of-state far-right groups. Loving Liberty is a Utah-based non-profit founded by Kathy Smith, wife of the late “Mr. Sagebrush Rebellion.”[1] Loving Liberty plays host to CSPOA CEO Sam Bushman’s white nationalist-friendly show. Then there was Freedom Law School, a Florida-based organization that promotes bogus schemes for individuals and businesses to try to avoid paying taxes.[2] Both groups received a shout-out onstage at the Puyallup rally.

The only listed local sponsors were various local chapters of the far-right conspiracy-mongering John Birch Society, and State Senator Jim McCune’s MAC PAC.

Sponsors are one thing; what happened inside the sanctuary is what really matters. After concerted community pushback, “Save Our Sheriffs” failed to rally new law enforcement interest. However, the event exposed a worrisome conduit moving far-right ideas from the margins into the mainstream.

Short on Sheriffs, High on GOP Officials

The “Save Our Sheriffs” rally almost wasn’t.

At the start of the year, IREHR warned all Washington State sheriffs, the governor, the attorney general, legislators, and the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission about the CSPOA agenda.

CSPOA founder Richard Mack confessed, “About ten days out, I was looking at cancelling or postponing” the event.[3] Mack added that local contacts in Washington State saved the event. The event was promoted online by the Washington State Republican Party, the Pierce County GOP, and local far-right celebrities like Matt Shea and Loren Culp.[4]

The day of the event did not start well for CSPOA. A pre-rally press conference was attended by only a handful of people, much to the chagrin of rally headliner, QAnon conspiracy figure Michael Flynn.

That evening, local Indivisible chapters gathered more than a hundred protestors outside the event to express their concerns.[5]

Inside the rally, it was plain that Richard Mack’s efforts to attract sheriffs flopped. Despite CSPOA’s claims of strong support, just Klickitat County Sheriff (and CSPOA board member Bob Songer), embattled Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank, and Owyhee County, Idaho Sheriff Larry Kendrick showed up.[6]

At the same time, CSPOA appeared to gain notable support from state and local Republican party leaders and Pierce County officials. Nearly twenty GOP attendees were identified from the podium, including three state legislators, one Pierce County Council member, and several members of the Pierce County Charter Review Committee. Event speakers also announced that many precinct committee officers were also in the audience.

Local “Save Our Sheriffs” Voices

After white nationalist-friendly CSPOA CEO Sam Bushman opened the event with a song, Washington activists took centerstage for the first part of the “Save Our Sheriffs” rally.

The entire event was emceed by Larry Stickney, an aide to Amy Cruver, the Pierce County Councilmember who’s characterized the LGBTQIA+ community as depraved, scary, and lacking “family value.”[7] Like his boss, Stickney has a lengthy rap sheet in bigoted far-right politics, including multiple stints as an anti-LGBTQIA+ campaigner and time as a Texas John Birch Society organizer. He’s also the proud parent of a January 6th insurrectionist.

Related:Larry Stickney, CSPOA, and the January 6th Insurrection. Read More Read More Read More

Also sharing the stage prominently was Washington State GOP Chair and District 19 state representative Jim Walsh, infamously known for wearing a Holocaust-trivializing yellow star at a 2021 COVID denial meeting and offensively comparing vaccine requirements to Jim Crow segregation.

WA GOP leader Jim Walsh(Left) and Pierce Co. GOP chair David McMullen.

IREHR’s 2022 report, Breaching the Mainstream, found that Walsh was a member of more far-right groups than any state legislator in the country. Walsh belonged to at least 24 far-right Facebook groups, including a Washington chapter of Ammon Bundy’s People’s Rights Network, the anti-Indian Save Our Sequim, and Northwest Parents against Critical Theory, a group that declared its “purpose is to expose and destroy Critical Race Theory, the cancer that has afflicted our schools and institutions.” The campaign against the myth of critical race theory served as the precursor to the Trump administration’s racist attack on diversity programs in federal government and higher education – and its subsequent broadened attack on federally-protected civil rights.

Other state legislators involved included Washington State Senator Jim McCune, who spoke at the CSPOA event, and former Washington State Three Percent leader and State Representative Matt Marshall, whom emcee Larry Stickney described as “a rising star in the party” who “is going to be a powerhouse on our side.”

Pierce County Council member Amy Cruver spoke at the event, as did Pierce County Republican Party Chair David Mullen. Other local GOP leaders mentioned from the podium included:

• Kristen Brigdan-Brown (Pierce Co. GOP Vice Chair)
• Dave Prutzman (Pierce Co. State Committeeman)
• Steve Mosman (Snohomish Co. GOP chair)
• Greg Rohr (Lewis Co. GOP Chair)
• Nick Lamothe (2nd Legis. District GOP Chair)
• Mary Kiel (38th Leg. Dist. GOP Chair)

Stickney also gave a shout-out to several Pierce County Charter Review Commissioners, who he described as a “very important group of people who the fate of our sheriff can be in their hands, as well as they’re convening to go through the county… charter. And these folks have a vote.” Those recognized by emcee Larry Stickney included:

• Jerome O’Leary
• Brenda Milewski
• Hollie Rogge
• Sharon Hanek
• Judson Willis

CSPOA’s Mack later noted that the following day’s private CSPOA training had “about twenty-five” people, including “two law enforcement, three county commissioners, a state rep[resentative], and precinct chairs.”[8]

It took emcee Larry Stickney more than five minutes to recognize all the Republican dignitaries in attendance at the far-right CSPOA “Save Our Sheriffs” rally.

Opposing Sheriffs’ Background Checks and Accountability

Throughout the three-hour rally, amid the mish-mash of far-right mainstays, there was the consistent refrain of attacks on law enforcement accountability. Speakers railed against Senate Bill 5974.

Similar to House Bill 1399, SB5974 would establish certification requirements for law enforcement officers, including sheriffs – something Washington State sheriffs, astonishingly, are presently not required to do.

Among other things, it would require criminal background checks and an “inquiry into whether the person has any past or present affiliations with extremist organizations.”

The bill would require sheriffs to uphold the U.S. Constitution as well as “uphold and enforce the Washington state Constitution and laws, as enacted by the legislature and interpreted by the Washington supreme court.” It also bars “volunteers or youth cadets” from engagements “to enforce criminal laws or civil immigration laws; engage in pursuits; detain or arrest; use force; [or] carry or use firearms or other weapons” unless they have “completed peace officer training and maintained certification requirements.” The bill is currently in committee.[9]

Event material targeted these bills, and they were singled out by several speakers, including Bob Songer and Amy Cruver. Dennis Cummins, the lead pastor of the event-hosting Experience Church, has been calling for his followers to mobilize against sheriff accountability bills.[10]

On the topic of policy-makers placing such restrictions on sheriffs, Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank went further:

“So some people say to me, ‘Well, Sheriff Swank, you have lots of sheriffs on the east side of the mountains, and they’re conservative and they’ll really just stand up and defend you.’ Guess what? There’s a couple. The rest of them, who are members of the Washington Sheriff’s Association and the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, say to me, ‘We should compromise with them. We’ll write up our own bill of qualifications, and then they’ll accept that.’ And I told them they don’t know what they’re talking about. They don’t know politics. They don’t know Democrats. And they try to tell me, ‘I don’t know what’s going on. And I say to them, and I’m saying to you again, I won the election of a county of a million people. I know what’s going on politically, and you can count on that. So, I decided I’d start an organization of sheriffs myself, it’s called…Washington State Sheriffs with Spines. And I got one member tonight. January 15th, they’ll be discussing this bill down in Olympia. I suggest you all go down there. I’m going to change my schedule around to go down there. I’m going to wear my uniform. Uh, I’m going to wear my gun belt.”[11]

Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank at CSPOA “Save Our Sheriffs” rally.

On January 15 in Olympia, Swank’s bombast grew into threats, saying in comments before the Senate Law and Justice Committee that,

“I don’t recognize your authority to impose these controls over me, and when you try to remove me from office, thousands of Pierce County residents will surround the county city building in downtown Tacoma and will not allow that to happen. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but I and they are prepared. Are you prepared?”

As a result, the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs announced that it “intends to initiate procedures as required by our bylaws for the board to consider expulsion of Sheriff Swank from the WASPC.” The organization explained,

“[T]he inflammatory comments made by Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank at a legislative committee hearing on January 15 do not represent the views or the approach of WASPC…The scope of his testimony went beyond reasonable dialogue and devolved into what could be perceived as threatening to legislators and he challenged their constitutional authority. The manner in which he conducted himself was not in line with the professional behavior we expect of members.”[12]

While the absolute autonomy of sheriffs to enforce their perceived version of the Constitution lies at the core of CSPOA politicking, it is important to recognized that, in reality, their project amounts to engaging sheriffs in a broad-based assault on not only federally-protected civil rights, but also the administrative branch agencies attacked by the mis-named Department of Government Efficiency and Office of Management and Budget head Russell Vought.

CSPOA has signaled this, for instance, by featuring far-right figure KrisAnne Hall as a trainer at its events. Hall deems the 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments – provisions at the center of federally-enforced civil and voting rights – as unconstitutional.

In his booklet The County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope, Richard Mack displays this fact by offensively comparing the Internal Revenue Service to the German Nazi Gestapo, and unilaterally declaring unconstitutional a range of federal agencies engaged in enforcing federal civil rights, addressing economic and educational inequality, and protecting the environment and worker safety, among other things:

“The EPA, FCC, OSHA, Dept. of Education, FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, INS, BATFE, HUD, BIA, SEC, the Federal Reserve, DEA, the Forest Service, BLM, and of course, our own American version of the notorious WWII Gestapo, the IRS, all were never meant to be based upon the enumerated powers granted under the Constitution.”

Recall also that federal branch agencies are created through the processes laid out in the U.S. Constitution – the actual Constitution, not Richard Mack’s.

Call for Sheriffs to Join the Attack on Immigrant Communities

Event speakers also echoed CSPOA leaders’ desire to insert sheriffs into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) crackdown on immigrants, citizens, and Indigenous people (who are also U.S. citizens) currently underway. Sheriff Bob Songer informed the audience that he was under investigation by the state attorney general for violating a state law against cooperation with ICE, spewing that such laws were “unconstitutional,” and declaring, “I will call ICE anytime I feel like calling ICE.”

Openly defying state laws, Songer, dressed in uniform, offered that if Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan came to the state, “he could ride shotgun and we’ll go out and pick up some illegals.”

Klickitat County Sheriff Bob Songer defies state law at CSPOA rally.

Multiple speakers denigrated immigrants with the falsehood that the Trump attack on immigrants, citizens, and Indigenous people – as evidenced most recently in Minneapolis, Minnesota – is connected to tracking down violent criminals and sex and drug traffickers.

Richard Mack would spew such bigoted vitriol, while WA GOP leader Jim Walsh nonsensically lashed out at protestors outside the event as not knowing “what ICE means.”

Despite such rhetoric and nods to the Constitution throughout the day, not one “constitutionalist” present raised concerns about the repeated 4th and 5th Amendment violations underway in ICE’s drive for ethnic cleansing – including the targeting of immigrants with no criminal history, U.S. citizens, and indigenous people.

Election Denial as the Midterms Approach

The far-right sheriffs and their supporters also continued to spread lies about election fraud, seemingly prepping far-right sheriffs and their supporters for potential involvement in upcoming midterm elections.

Michael Flynn continued to show his ongoing stripe as an election denier, referring to the “fake Biden administration” and declaring, “if you’re using machines or you’re using mail-in ballots, they’re so filled with the ability to commit fraud.” Recall that Flynn’s commitment to fair elections is deeply suspect. Several Trump advisors allege that Flynn participated in a December 18, 2020, meeting at which he and others encouraged Trump to take dramatic steps to remain in power after Joe Biden’s victory—while Flynn pleaded the 5th Amendment in testimony before the House select committee investigating the January 6th insurrection.[13]

Arizona State Senator Mark Finchem took the stage to announce, “We are fighting a Marxist insurgency.” Finchem, who previously cast his 2022 election bid as a choice between “honest elections & stolen elections, ” was sanctioned by a Maricopa County Superior Court judge in 2023 for “groundless” claims of election fraud – and for filing a lawsuit to that effect, “not brought in good faith – was on hand to boost his so-called Election Fairness Institute.[14]

Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock CEO who resigned after details of his romantic relationship with a Russian spy surfaced, has spent the last several years promoting “deep state” and election denial conspiracies. At “Save Our Sheriffs,” Byrne declared, “Free Tina Peters. That’s right,” a reference to the election denier and former Colorado elections clerk convicted by a jury in 2024 of seven criminal accounts connected to an election data breach in Mesa County.[15] Byrne referred to the “fake election” as part of a conspiratorial “psyop,” or psychological operation, underway in the U.S. The “final solution to this” [his words] is that “your sheriff has to be elected by you, the people.”

At the “Save Our Sheriffs” rally, Patrick Byrne either confessed to espionage or spun a delusional fiction involving Michael Flynn and others to “hack” the election in Venezuela. 

At a 2024 CSPOA gathering in Las Vegas, Byrne stoked anti-immigrant fear with lies about “15 million military-aged males” and called for the formation of militia cells linked to Constitutional Sheriffs, with the help of Green Berets.[16]

“Constitutional” Counties and the Lesser Magistrates

In pushing for so-called Constitutional Counties, CSPOA Florida leader Bill Mitchell advocated that counties pass measures to protect their “election integrity,” a term far-right groups use to describe a range of measures rooted in false claims about “election fraud.”

Also of concern, Bill Mitchell recounted his ongoing quest to create so-called “sanctuary cities for the Constitution.” Raised by far rightists who mobilized against policies to stem the spread of COVID-19, Bill Mitchell’s CSPOA biography recounts,

“In 2020, Bill authored what came to be known as Resolution 1776, which called on the Mohave County Board of Supervisors to declare Mohave County the first Sanctuary County in Arizona for the Constitution. This expressed the County Board of Supervisor’s resolve to interpose between the unconstitutional executive orders, mandates and proclamations and therefore upholding, We the Peoples God given rights, during the Covid crisis.”[17]

At the Puyallup event, Mitchell described that now-Collier County, Florida Commissioner Chris Hall had pressed further, passing an ordinance that not only allowed ignoring laws but also authorized authorities to levy penalties for perceived violations.[18] Sarasota County would pass a similar resolution in the name of “medical freedom.”[19]

For its part, and following these moves, CSPOA took up a push for an even more troubling version of such county polices. As IREHR previously documented, this involved a push for what the group called the “Bill of Rights Constitutional Sanctuary Counties.” In the document laying out this plan, Bill Mitchell described,

“A BILL OF RIGHTS CONSTITUTIONAL SANCTUARY COUNTY is a county that, as described in “The Doctrine of the Lessor Magistrates [sic] (Matthew J. Trewhella), interposes “The Lessor Magistrate” [sic] to protect all its residents from state or federal governmental encroachment, upon the God given [sic] rights and privileges of its citizens, that are guaranteed and protected by our original Constitution and Bill of Rights.”

The CSPOA plan, in fact, cites Matthew Trewhella’s book, The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate, four times as it lays out its aims. Trewhella bases his ideas on the 16th-century Calvinist thinking, holding that government officials have a divine “right and duty” to defy any laws, policies, or court opinions that they believe violate “the law of God. As for what Trewhella believes, he has supported the murder of abortion providers, was an early proponent of forming “Christian” militias, and has written that “sodomites should be executed as God legislated in his law.”

And Trewhella has made clear that his religious “theory” includes a call for violence against higher authorities, writing that,

“There comes a time when the lesser magistrates must move beyond mere squabbling with the higher authority. There comes a time when men must cross swords. The lesser magistrates provide the best opportunity for this to be accomplished bloodlessly, but history has proven there are times when they must redden their swords.”

Not incidentally, in response to polices to address the pandemic, event speaker and Washington State Republican Chair Jim Walsh wrote in 2021, “So, we’re bringing FEMA trailers into WA now because of COVID. What can we do to stop this? I’m worried about what it means…I understand that sheriffs can’t just arrest the Governor. But why can’t they claim the Doctrine of Lesser Magistrates and just deny his mandates?”

While the presence of members of the Pierce County Charter Review Commission at the event gives CSPOA an institutional base from which to push for such a measure, the fact that far-right members of the Pierce County Council are in the minority makes it an uphill climb. But all Council members have a public obligation to speak up and oppose this far-right effort.

Anti-Vaxxer Politics

Landing firmly in the broken record department, speakers reiterated the anti-vaxxer themes prominent among those sheriffs who had opposed state efforts to address the COVID pandemic.

Klickitat County Sheriff Bob Songer, who had once threatened to arrest state officials seeking to enforce such policies, flew his ignorance and disinformation flag, declaring that “a lot of people died from that shot” in reference to the COVID-19 vaccine.

CSPOA gained support during the pandemic by arguing that law enforcement could “interpose” to stop measures such as mask requirements and vaccine mandates. CSPOA founder Richard Mack even landed a $20,000 a month gig on the board of the COVID Denial group, America’s Frontline Doctors.

Event speaker Patrick Byrne babbled about the Nuremberg codes barring forced medical experimentation, somehow implying that the COVID-19 vaccine was an example of this. Byrne continued that a conspiratorial “psyop” was underway, consisting of phases ranging from creating “COVID trauma,” to disorienting people through “Antifa and BLM,” the “fake election” and “cancel culture.”

Not surprisingly, the host venue has a history of anti-vaccine advocacy. During the pandemic, Experience Church held a “One Washington Pro Choice Vaccine Mandate” rally.[20]

Christian Nationalism

Christian nationalism undergirded much of the “Save Our Sheriffs” rally. Disgraced former lieutenant general Michael Flynn said the often quiet part out loud, which is actually never quiet for the far-right QAnon conspiracy figure:

“I’ve been called every name in the book and then the opposite name in the book. So, you know, I mean, semite, antisemite, right? Zionist, anti-Zionist, uh, you know, crazy stuff when I say things like, you know, I’m a Christian nationalist, right? [applause]… I’m a big uh prolife person. Huge. But…I don’t like the term, uh, unborn, unborn because I believe in the moment of conception…So I’m a nationalist, I believe in nationalism…And that’s fine. And I’m a Christian.”

State legislator Jim McCune, whose MAC PAC had a table at the event, attacked the left for wanting sheriffs to answer to “woke politics,” and displayed the melding of religion and law at the heart of Christian nationalism:

“The Bible is a blueprint…Law is good if one uses it lawfully. It is made not for the righteous but for the lawbreakers and insubordinate. God’s law and man’s law were never meant to be enemies…America has drifted far from its principles that made her strong. Biblical justice, moral accountability, liberty under God, and the Democrat party has been leading us adrift leftward for decades…God will not be mocked…Support our law enforcement officers, defend the rule of law, and restore the truth of real justice that flows from God.”

State Senator Jim McCune.

 

Emcee Larry Stickney asserted that “Jim’s [McCune] a wealth of knowledge; he’s, he’s read and memorized David Barton books. I know that,” a reference to the Christian nationalist pseudo-historian who dedicates himself to attacking the separation of church and state.

Experience Church leader Dennis Cummins was on hand to attack transgender people and bolster his version of masculinity, declaring that

“The world can’t seem to define what a woman is, but it’s because the church has forgotten what it means to be a man…The greatest crisis that we’re dealing with is not violent men. It’s effeminate men… When men refuse to lead, others fill the vacuum. When men shrink back, families are weakened. Systems rot. And you know what? Masculinity is not toxic. Silence is.”

Pastor Eric Lundberg of the Living Word Lutheran Church in Graham, Washington, was on hand to call far-right Christians into an “ideological civil war” with progressives, seeming to place sheriff accountability laws as part of a civilizational battle:

“I believe marriage is between one man and one woman. I believe that life begins at conception. I believe that there are two genders, man and woman. And I believe that Christians, especially pastors, must speak out about the issues of the day…What brings me here tonight is because I believe in law and order. And I believe that law and order were both designed by our God to hold society together and to protect our culture from evil. As a minister, I have noticed that over the past decade, a sharp decline of the nuclear family, a decline of morality, a decline of American values, all fueled by the rejection of both divine and civic accountability. There is a systematic agenda towards a Marxist takeover of the American ideology, citizen government relationship with truth and reality being the primary target. We can no longer deny that our nation is torn in two by an ideological civil war and caught in the crossfires of that spiritual and ideological battle is our good law enforcement officers. I strongly believe that law enforcement and public service is far more than employment and duty. It is a calling. I believe it is a divine calling to protect, facilitate, manage, and uphold the laws of our nation and the order of our society. There is a progressive agenda that works to deconstruct that calling by creating laws that are fluid, unconstitutional, and ultimately designed to serve the wicked and punish the righteous. These attempts are already working to erode the order that holds our society together and with it those who are charged with protecting that order. What we see activated in legislation and committees and boards and councils all across our area is a battle plan targeting that order with the scheme of shaping a new world outside of the accountability our laws hold us to and outside of that order that makes us a civil society. The strategy to underfund and undermine the sheriff’s department has little to do with fund availability and everything to do with the attempted removal of accountability that tethers us to American values. This is the left’s global campaign against liberty, freedom, the Constitution, and American ideals. And our officers are the last line of defense. We are watching as the citizenry, especially over the last few days, become manipulated by the left’s agenda to reject the laws of our nation and focus that rejection onto our officers at every level.”

Pastor Eric Lundberg.

C.L. Bryant, a Florida far-right activist and the only African-American speaker at the event, described the easy slide from the far-right religious politics to the Tea Party (Freedom Works) to supporting the Trump administration to joining league with the likes of CSPOA:

“I’ve served on two of President Trump’s advisory boards. I’m a filmmaker, and of course, uh, I served for 15 years as senior fellow with Freedom Works. And Freedom Works was the largest grassroots organization in the nation… Now, Annie and I were married at Mar-a-Lago about three years ago. So I’m a Trump supporter. You guys should know that [applause]…I knew Charlie Kirk when he was 18 years old. When I was working with Freedom Works, he came to us with an idea to go to college campuses. I was with Freedom Works for over 15 years as their senior fellow. And we said, ‘That’s a great idea, Charlie.’ We basically patted him on the head, sent him on his way. Charlie was looking…for us that day. Two years later, we were looking for Charlie. I had gotten out of this game, and Sam Bushman called me and said, ‘Hey, we’d like to have you on uh Loving Liberty as one of our radio hosts.’ And you can still hear the show on Loving Liberty. And Sam talked me into doing it. He and Kathy Smith. I had to get back into this game after they killed Charlie.”

Like the white nationalist-friendly CSPOA CEO, Bryant has had a show on Smith’s Loving Liberty network since 2019.[21] Since the Tea Party era, Bryant has been putting his voice to white supremacy. Amidst calls for justice following Trayvon Martin’s killing by police, Bryant called Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson “race hustlers” and accused them of “acting as though they are buzzards circling the carcass of this young boy.”[22] In the wake of the police killing, Bryant also repeated the white nationalist refrain on violence, “The epidemic is truly black-on-black crime,” Bryant told the Daily Caller. “The greatest danger to the lives of young black men are young black men.”[23]

Anti-Indian Politics

Another ideological piece on display at the event was anti-Indianism. During the press conference preceding the main event, far-right congressional candidate Jerrod Sessler asked a question implicating a call for sheriffs to step in to suppress the treaty and fishing rights of Indian nations. Sessler asked,

“So, um, general question to you again, it’s kind of the same thing. I’m an engineer. I want to know what are the steps are that we can solve or fix this problem or stop it from happening. I recently did a documentary on the Klamath River Dam removals that happened in Oregon and California. And one of the one of the questions I asked, they removed four dams down there. One of the questions I asked them is, where were the sheriffs? Why did the sheriffs not stop him from blowing up these dams?”

Mike Flynn answered by discussing sheriffs’ power, but never specifically answered the question, instead saying, “Every state constitution actually has the authority to secede if they want,” and that he did not want that.

In an under-examined aspect of CSPOA politics, the event also highlighted the strong presence of anti-Indian politics within its networks. In addition to GOP state leader Jim Walsh belonging to the anti-Indian Save Our Sequim Facebook group, Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank also recently rubbed elbows with a leading regional anti-Indian figure—Glen Morgan of the Citizens Alliance for Property Rights.

Event emcee Larry Stickney has assailed Indigenous Peoples’ Day and promoted the variety of historical revisionism that denies the atrocities committed against Indigenous peoples with the coming of Christopher Columbus.

Related:Anti-Indianism Rears Its Head at CSPOA Washington Event. Read More Read More Read More

Swank also recently mingled with a regional anti-Indian figure, also providing an example of how anti-Indian activists in such networks often run alongside proponents of radical attacks on federally protected civil and voting rights. In November, Sheriff Swank was scheduled to appear at the Liberty First Summit in Gig Harbor, Washington. Another announced speaker at the event was Glen Morgan of We the Governed.

Morgan has a history of anti-Indian organizing. While at the Freedom Foundation, Morgan opposed the inherent sovereign right of the Chehalis Tribe to develop tribal properties free from county taxation. And through the Citizens Alliance for Property Rights, where he serves as Executive Director, Morgan built a close relationship with Elaine Willman of the Citizens Equal Rights Alliance (CERA), an organization long dedicated to the outright termination of Indian tribal sovereignty and abrogation of treaties signed between tribes and the U.S. government. The Gig Harbor event also featured occasional CSPOA trainer, KrisAnne Hall.

In keeping with attacks on tribal rights, CSPOA event emcee Larry Stickney has assailed Indigenous Peoples’ Day and promoted the variety of historical revisionism that denies the atrocities committed against indigenous peoples with the coming of Christopher Columbus – in 2024, for instance, posting a meme declaring,  “Today is Columbus Day, not ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Day.’ Columbus was a great man of history who fundamentally reshaped the world we live in today. He accomplished a million times more in his life than all of his modern critics combined.”[24]

A Place for Crass Antisemites

Despite Richard Mack’s repeated refrains that this organization has no ties to bigotry, and in the face of mounds of documentation to the contrary, the event managed to find an important place for someone who has promoted antisemitism in its crassest, even Nazi-esque form.

This is Casey Whalen, a former leader in Ammon Bundy’s People’s Rights Network, a principal at North Idaho Exposed, and Richard Mack’s handpicked event videographer. On December 25, just weeks before Mack’s Washington State visit, Whalen posted to Facebook the following comments:

“Just gonna leave this here. Confirming you’ve been lied to your whole life. Post from Max Igan. Jews have been planning their world take over and the extermination and subservience of all non jews (sic) for the last 3000 years. And they admit it. The world needs to wake up and get this vermin out of your Governments asap.”[25]

A photo posted by Whalen on the first day of the event shows him operating a camera at the Experience Church.[26]

Casey Whalen at CSPOA “Save Our Sheriffs” Event

In the end, despite the lack of law enforcement attendance, the “Save Our Sheriffs” rally exposed a serious pipeline for far-right ideas to move into the mainstream. CSPOA appears to have gained support from state and local Republican party officials while providing a platform for supporters of the January 6th insurrection. Moreover, the rally demonstrated that CSPOA continues to prepare its followers and sheriff recruits for election denial activities in the lead up to the midterm election; encourages sheriffs to flout state laws aimed at holding sheriffs accountable to basic policing standards; and aims to move sheriffs into league with ICE’s attacks on immigrant communities; and pushes the notion of “Constitutional counties” that would institutionalize the group’s quest to make sheriffs unaccountable to professional policing standards and state laws.

The CSPOA anti-democratic travelling road show lays out all the reasons decent-minded community members and political leaders must speak up loudly and consistently to drive out this ongoing threat in our backyards.

 

NOTES

[1]Bert Smith is most remembered for founding the far-right National Center for Constitutional Studies with Cleon Skousen and for calling Cliven Bundy a “hero.” Gehrke, Robert. “Bert Smith, king of surplus and devout constitutionalist, dies at age 95.” The Salt Lake Tribue. April 11, 2016. https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2016/04/11/bert-smith-king-of-surplus-and-devout-constitutionalist-dies-at-age-95/.

[2] U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs. “Tax Defier and Member of Freedom Law School Sentenced to Prison for Tax Evasion.” U.S. Department of Justice Archive Website. November 10, 2016. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/tax-defier-and-member-freedom-law-school-sentenced-prison-tax-evasion.

[3] Mack, Richard. “CSPOA Posse Intel Webinar 01-14-2026.” CSPOA Website. January 15, 2026. https://cspoa.org/cspoa-posse-intel-webinar-01-14-2026/.

[4] https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1FbEP47ake/

[5] Wade, Madison. Protesters in Puyallup speak out against Pierce County sheriff’s stance on ICE shooting. KING5. January 9, 2026. https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/protesters-puyallup-pierce-county-sheriff-stance-ice-shooting/281-e9d043db-0efb-4bdd-ab7f-8cd2f6d45c3f;

[6] In the lead-up to the event, Mack indicated that Adams County (Washington) Sheriff Dave Wagner and Winneshiek County (Iowa) Sheriff Dan Marx were slated to speak. However, none of them appeared onstage. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes attributed to event speakers and descriptions of the January 9 CSPOA event are taken from the following broadcast: Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. LIVE NOW: SAVE OUR SHERIFFS EMERGENCY PRESS CONFERENCE. Lindell TV. January 9, 2026. https://rumble.com/v743y2c-live-now-save-our-sheriffs-emergency-press-conference.html; Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. LIVE NOW: SAVE OUR SHERIFFS RALLY .  LindellTV. January 9, 2026. https://rumble.com/v744b4o-live-now-save-our-sheriffs-rally.html.

[7] Yoon-Hooks, Alexandra. “Pierce County Council member won’t sit in chambers over Pride flag.” Seattle Times. July 8, 2024. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/pierce-county-council-member-wont-sit-in-chambers-over-pride-flag/.

[8] Mack, Richard. “CSPOA Posse Intel Webinar 01-14-2026.” CSPOA Website. January 15, 2026. https://cspoa.org/cspoa-posse-intel-webinar-01-14-2026/.

[9] Washington State Legislature. SB 5974 – 2025-26. https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5974&Year=2026. Accessed  January 14, 2026.

[10] Cummins, Dennis. Facebook. January 14, 2025. https://www.facebook.com/reel/33026488050328137/.

[11] Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes attributed to event speakers and descriptions of the CSPOA event are taken from the following broadcasts of the event. Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. LIVE NOW: SAVE OUR SHERIFFS EMERGENCY PRESS CONFERENCE. Lindell TV. January 9, 2026. https://rumble.com/v743y2c-live-now-save-our-sheriffs-emergency-press-conference.html; Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. LIVE NOW: SAVE OUR SHERIFFS RALLY .  LindellTV. January 9, 2026. https://rumble.com/v744b4o-live-now-save-our-sheriffs-rally.html.

[12] Washington Association of Sheriffs & Police Chiefs. STATEMENT ON SHERIFF KEITH SWANK’S COMMENTS. January 15, 2026. https://www.waspc.org/assets/Statement%20on%20Sheriff%20Swanks%20Comments%201-15-26.pdf.

[13] Cohen, Zachary; Murray, Sara; Sneed, Teirney; Grayer, Annie. “First transcripts from Jan. 6 committee reveal key witnesses refusing to testify.” CNN Website. December 22, 2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/21/politics/house-jan-6-committee-transcripts-fifth-amendment.

[14] Associated Press. “Ex-Arizona lawmaker sanctioned over election fraud lawsuit.” AP Website. March 6, 2023. https://apnews.com/article/election-fraud-allegations-maricopa-county-lawsuit-88df1d36dd9150cac62de46cc19aaa1d; Finchem, Mark. Telegram. October 29, 2022. https://t.me/MarkFinchemAZ/1924.

[15] Lofholm, Nancy. “Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters sentenced to 9 years in prison for role in 2021 breach of election system.” The Colorado Sun. October 3, 2024. https://coloradosun.com/2024/10/03/tina-peters-election-security-trial-sentenced/; Mangan, Dan. “Trump election conspiracist Tina Peters sentenced to 9 years in prison by Colorado judge.” CNBC. November 5, 2024. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/03/trump-election-conspiracist-tina-peters-sentenced.html.

[16] Sheriff Mack (CSPOA). “23 Patrick Byrne.” YouTube. October 11, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjtpRGjh6UI.

[17] South Lake Republican Club. “Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. Bill Mitchell Biography.” SL Republicans Website. https://slrepublicans.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Bill-Mitchell-Bio-3-3-25.pdf. Accessed January14, 2026.

[18] Silverberg, David. 28 Aug. 2023 A hurricane, a fugitive and the fall of Troy: Fallout from Collier County’s anti-federal ordinance. August 28, 2023. https://www.theparadiseprogressive.com/blog-the-paradise-progressive/a-hurricane-a-fugitive-and-the-fall-of-troy-fallout-from-collier-countys-anti-federal-ordinance.

[19] Kimel, Earle. “Sarasota County declared a ‘Bill of Rights Sanctuary’ in vote tied to ‘medical freedom’. “Naples Daily News. October 11, 2023. https://www.naplesnews.com/story/news/local/sarasota/2023/10/11/sarasota-county-leaders-ok-medical-freedom-bill-of-rights-resolutions/71128430007/.

[20] “Once Washington Pro Choice Vaccine Mandate.” Experience Church.tv Facebook Event Page. August 25, 2021. https://www.facebook.com/events/270723387836731.

[21] Loving Liberty Website. Homepage Archive. January 2, 2019. Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Accessed January 19, 2026. https://web.archive.org/web/20190102163748/http://lovingliberty.net/.

[22] Rosario, Frank. “Ex-NAACP big rips Al & Jesse for handling of Trayvon Martin shooting.” New York Post. March 27, 2012. https://nypost.com/2012/03/27/ex-naacp-big-rips-al-jesse-for-handling-of-trayvon-martin-shooting/.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Stickney, Lawrence Helge. Facebook. October 14, 2024. https://www.facebook.com/larry.stickney.9/posts/pfbid024pXCpv7NAP7EpyDvYJwRbqKCV1nHdT3dKekwRjE2Y1AzBUcxtHPBc6YxGKV854tPl

[25] Whalen, Casey. Facebook. December 19, 2025. https://www.facebook.com/casey.whalen.522/posts/pfbid02wwgaBNim8JBd9EXU7TEfYwHSVxNfZH1oJdFvczcdcZVwaHrhDCFD619HWYkSwfnal

[26] Whalen, Casey. Facebook. January 9, 2026. https://www.facebook.com/casey.whalen.522/posts/pfbid02JqvDxPNnf8aJ8tFCd5pxQL5HtiSHRBxgKx2yM4dnYnKycdKaojaw6KVKZJim3UJ9l.

The post Inside the “Save Our Sheriffs” Rally appeared first on IREHR.

Dialogue of Weavers: Crianza Mutua México, Vikalp Sangam India, Crianzas Mutuas Colombia - 04/12/2021 Dialogue between GTA's weavers in India, Colombia and Mexico. A first dialogue to approach each other in diversity and to weave and inspire each other. A Global

The Spanish Civil War, 1936-39, was a pivotal moment in the 20th century history of revolutionary hope, failure and betrayal. It is also the story of fascism’s rise and ultimately the beginning of World War II. Join us for a book talk and discussion with the author of The POUM: Republic, Revolution and Counterrevolution (2025).

When: Sunday, January 25, 2026 at 1:00 pm Eastern Standard Time

Where: Online, Zoom

How: Register for the event here.

Speakers

Andy Durgan, author of a newly translated book on the Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), will outline the development of this distinctive revolutionary movement and the role it played in the Spanish revolution.

Following Durgan’s presentation there will be time for discussion.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Resistance Books; modified by Tempest.

The post The POUM, republic, revolution and counterrevolution appeared first on Tempest.

Researchers have made a fascinating discovery that the place rainfall derives from—the land or the sea—has huge bearing on how well crops will grow. Rain arising from the ocean, they found, is more reliable, whereas crops relying mainly on land-derived rainfall are more likely to struggle with unpredictability and drought. 

Their study delves into what lies behind this land/ocean divide, and started with 16 years of satellite rainfall data, spanning the period between 2003 and 2019. Paired with rainfall models, the satellite data enabled the researchers to trace back where regional rainfall originated from: either through evaporation from the sea surface or from soils, forests, and other ecosystems on land. 

Then, looking at key crops like maize, wheat, soybeans, and rice, and measuring traits like vegetation greenness that can be detected by satellites—greenness being a good proxy for growth levels—they determined how rainfall patterns affected the growth and yields of those crops.

This revealed that when the share of land-derived rainfall makes up 36% or more on croplands, they tend to suffer more. Two examples are the US Midwest and parts of East Africa, regions that both rely more heavily on rainfall that arises specifically from local land-based sources. The researchers found that crops in these regions are more likely to experience lower rainfall levels, more drought, and reduced productivity. 

The study also notes that 40% of global maize and 60% of global wheat crops—two of the world’s staple crops—receive most of their rainfall from land-based evaporation, showing how consequential fluctuations in this rainfall variety could be. 

 

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Meanwhile, regions that receive less of their rainfall from the land and more from marine sources tended to experience more consistent rainfall patterns, leading to more stable growth and yields. 

The factor behind this phenomenon, it seems, is the ongoing degradation of key rainfall reservoirs on land. Deforestation, often to make way for farmland, shrinks the acreage of dense, vapor-producing vegetation. Soils that become more exposed through erosion and poor farming methods are then less capable of locking in moisture that can later be evaporated to seed rainfall. 

As these habitats are eroded, they become a less reliable source of moisture to drive rain, which in turn becomes less consistent and abundant. 

This illustrates a concerning cycle of destruction between agriculture and the ecosystems that sustain it—but also highlights focal points for action, the researchers say. 

Knowing the regions and crops that are most dependent on land-based sources could help us identify the specific landscapes and habitats that need protection to sustain the rain—whether through forest conservation, the reestablishment of natural wetlands, and better soil preservation. As the researchers put it: “Protecting these ecosystems isn’t just about biodiversity—it’s about sustaining agriculture.”

Jiang, Y. & Burney, J. A. “Crop water origins and hydroclimate vulnerability of global croplands.” 

Image: Based on Brocken Inaglory via Wikimedia Commons

Headline News:

• “Scott Pushes Lawmakers To Reconsider Nuclear Energy In Vermont” • Governor Phil Scott is asking lawmakers to take a second look at nuclear energy as Vermont works to meet its renewable electricity goals by 2030. “Previous policy decisions made in this building prioritize ideology over results,” Scott said in his budget address this week. [WCAX]

A basis for Investment (NextEra Energy May 2023 Investor Presentation, page 10)

• “Trump Claims China Doesn’t Use Wind Power. The World’s Largest Wind Farm Is There” • Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the POTUS made several dubious claims about Greenland, NATO, and renewable energy. Trump consistently criticised the green energy drive, calling wind and solar power “the scam of the century.” [Euronews]
• “The Assumptions That Broke: China, India, And The End Of Fossil Growth Models” • The idea that heavy freight would be the last redoubt of diesel has been repeated for decades, often with confidence and rarely with evidence. In December 2026, that idea finally collapsed. Battery electric heavy duty trucks crossed 50% of new sales in China. [CleanTechnica]
• “Top Economist Urges Europe To Fight Trump By Punishing US Billionaires” • Leading French economist Gabriel Zucman is urging European governments to respond to Trump’s threats to annex Greenland by taxing the super-rich who might benefit. “Access to the European market should be made conditional on paying a wealth tax.” [Common Dreams]
• “Trump Administration Scraps Multimillion-Dollar Solar Projects In Puerto Rico As Grid Crumbles” • The DOE canceled solar projects in Puerto Rico worth millions of dollars, as the island struggles with a crumbling electric grid. The DOE claimed that a push for renewable energy threatened grid reliability. Local experts refute that. [ABC News]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

This profile is part of an ongoing series that introduces members of CalCAN’s newly formed Stewardship Council. The Stewardship Council serves as advisors on our long-term goals, ensuring that our work remains aligned with our vision and mission.  CC: Tell

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The ICE invasion of Chicago – code name Operation Midway Blitz – began in early September 2025 and officially lasted two months. During that time federal agents carried out mass arrests, snatched people off the streets, terrorized neighborhoods and tear gassed communities and even the Chicago Police. They also generated mass resistance from ordinary people – turns out, most people don’t like it when their neighbors are disappeared.

Resistance took many forms – know your rights trainings, formation of neighborhood rapid response committees, protests at a notorious immigration detention center and immigration court, door knocking to educate and recruit, protecting schools and school-children, protesting at hotels and rental car companies used by ICE, community alert whistles and direct confrontation. 

Immigrants rights activists in Chicago knew that this was coming and organized an education blitz in immigrant neighborhoods months before ICE’s invasion. As Midway Blitz progressed, lessons were learned and tactics were refined. As ICE kidnapped, shot, gassed and brutalized, more and more people questioned why ICE could get away with this kind of terror in a sanctuary city and state. 

Of the many thousands of ordinary Chicagoans who joined ICE watch groups, many of them had never been active in social movements before and learned as they organized. Entire neighborhoods mobilized for street protests when alerted that ICE was harassing neighbors. Unionized school workers stood up to federal agents and refused to let their students or their parents be kidnapped. Chicago was warned by Trump to expect a deployment of National Guard troops to protect ICE from the citizens of the city. This threat didn’t materialize and was blocked in the courts.

Although immigration raids have never ended in Chicago, Homeland Security is expected to return in force in the spring. As ICE continues to recruit, uses ever-more aggressive tactics, and raids expand in other cities, these lessons feel urgent. Here we gather a few of the voices of activists from this resistance, both new and veteran. Tempest Collective members in Chicago believe that compiling these compelling oral histories of ICE resistance in our city will serve our movement everywhere as we reflect, learn, and grow together.

Eric Ruder interviews Hongmin

Hongmin has been a volunteer at the Chinatown/Bridgeport rapid response team since September, 2025. Eric Ruder is a longtime socialist in Chicago.

ER: So you’ve been out monitoring ICE activity around Chinatown and Pilsen. What are some of your observations?

H: I can summarize the work I do. I canvas every weekend in the Bridgeport and Chinatown area to residents. And this week we’re doing business canvassing. And other than that, I am also trained for rapid response, but because I don’t have a car, I’m never rapid enough to get on the scene where ICE is detaining people. I have also helped out in the Southwest area with their canvassing once—a few weeks ago when things were particularly bad. And then other than that, I monitor the city-wide chat for ICE activities every Saturday for my team. So basically there’s a big chat that all the leaders in Rapid Response Teams (RRT) are in, and then they will send texts about ICE activities that others have reported to the hotline or on social media to the chat. And then, if it’s within the designated area for my team, I will send it to the activity chat. So that’s the kind of work I’ve been doing so far.

ER: And it sounds like you went canvassing to businesses, but you’ve just also reached out to just regular people?

H: Yes. Mainly to Cantonese-speaking and Spanish-speaking people. Those are two main languages.

ER: Do you speak both Cantonese and Spanish?

 

H: No, I speak Mandarin and Cantonese, and Cantonese has been pretty useful.

ER: What has that been like? I’m really curious to know: Are people appreciative? Have they heard about ICE activity at all? Would you say people are fearful or something else? What kinds of interactions have you had?

H: It really varies. It ranges from people who have no idea what ICE is to people who have heard about all the raids. People we’ve reached through canvassing learn about their rights, and they have the materials. There was one time we went canvassing in Chinatown where there are a lot of older Cantonese-speaking people, like grandfathers and grandmothers, and a lot of them don’t know what ICE is, and so we gave them the background they needed. And for people who know a bit about ICE, a lot of them think that if they have legal status, they are fine. I think that speaks to the misconceptions people have about ICE and their default trust in government agencies, even though these are federal agencies deployed by Trump.

So we have to explain that first, ICE is doing racial profiling, so if you are non-white, you can and will be targeted. And secondly, the more people they detain, the more money they make. So they literally make money by detaining more people. And people are shocked when they hear that they want to detain as many people as they can because they’re like, “What’s the use of detaining people who are ‘legal’?” Many people think ICE is here to only target and detain so-called “illegal” immigrants. And when they find out that they’re trying to detain as many people as possible, they’re really shocked.

ER: And there’s also the idea that ICE is simply going after “the worst of the worst,” only the “criminals.” But just yesterday there was a national news story that reported that something like 83 percent of the people that have been detained so far have no criminal history whatsoever. In some areas, the number is even higher.

ICE is doing racial profiling, so if you are non-white, you can and will be targeted. And secondly, the more people they detain, the more money they make. So they literally make money by detaining more people.

H: Yes, they are even very active in Evanston. Evanston is not even that diverse, it’s like more of a middle-class suburb. I think this partly shows that we haven’t been able to tell our stories very effectively. I think a lot of the things we do aren’t proactive enough. And telling the story of what is happening here is a big part of it.

I think there are a lot of opportunities to make this like a Black Lives Matter movement. Obviously it’s a very different moment. Immigrants, especially so-called “illegal” immigrants, are not conceived of as American. This also extends to Black people at times—but in a different way—because this is a racist country. This question of “American-ness” will make it harder for this to become a national movement, but I think there is still potential, if for no other reason because ICE has shot and killed people.

Because we haven’t been able to tell our story very well, we have missed some opportunities. And because all the neighborhood responses operate individually in different areas, there have been some missed opportunities. But you could argue this is also a strength. Decentralization makes it easier to respond quickly on a local basis. But I think down the line, if ICE is here for a long time and we want to make it a movement, we should think about how to have more coordinated efforts and how to tell our own stories. I see more and more people joining in this effort, so I see a lot of potential honestly.

Geoff Guy interviews Rosemary

Rosemary is a Rogers Park community defense organizer. Rosemary is a pseudonym. Geoff Guy is a labor and tenants’ rights activist in Chicago.

GG: How has the ICE invasion impacted you and your community?

 

R: Reading through 200 messages, trying to figure out where they took my friend, trying to do my job—what are the things we could be building if not constantly reacting to crises? We’re organizing and resisting, building something beautiful here, but it’s terrifying—a military invasion in my neighborhood. The fact that an average person can’t leave their house if they’re at risk of being deported, or any brown person without threat of being detained.

We’re scared, but we’re in the streets. Chicago is organized and responding, and responding by catalyzing fear into solidarity. … We’re turning helplessness and hopelessness into action.

But also, I want to be clear about how we’re fighting back; I hate all the articles about how everyone’s afraid to leave their homes and scared. Yes, we’re scared, but we’re in the streets. Chicago is organized and responding, and responding by catalyzing fear into solidarity. In Rogers Park on the first day, ICE really hit our neighborhood—there were hundreds on the streets with their orange whistles as a visible reminder that we’re going to protect our neighbors, and people are waking up to it. It’s not just something people are seeing on the news or social media; it’s happening on their street. Our group of rapid response people is 1000 now. We have so many people trained now. Protect Rogers Park is training hundreds every week. We’re turning helplessness and hopelessness into action.

Newer folks are getting activated by just seeing this, talking to random people in the street who are following ICE. That’s what it takes – we don’t have SWAT teams, we need regular everyday people. New people coming in say they’re feeling hopeless and want to be in community with people doing something. And we’re giving constant education about why we’re doing this – not just ICE, but all forms of oppression: Palestine, policing. The number of people seeing undercover cops in our neighborhood that were never seen before, because they weren’t looking. They’re starting to see the number of cameras and the surveillance, and once they start looking, they start seeing it everywhere.

GG: Tell us about the work you’ve been doing. From the Immigration Court earlier this year to the Broadview ICE Facility to rapid response. How did these come together and form an infrastructure for the movement?

R: In June, they were kidnapping people at 55 E. Monroe (Immigration Court) for a couple weeks, then protests started. Once there was enough mobilization there and there was an embarrassing situation where they kidnapped a US citizen (protestor) in an unorthodox way. The protest worked. They effectively stopped kidnapping at court, at least for a long time. That moment where people were blocking cars from entering, that was a wakeup call that resistance works. Doesn’t work every time, and unpredictable about when it will work and when not, but in this case ICE made a calculus that this wasn’t easy picking any more. This inspired Broadview and rapid response. The more we can slow them down and waste their time, the more we can save one person.

That moment where people were blocking cars from entering, that was a wakeup call that resistance works….Just demonstrating that we do not consent to this invasion is powerful.

I think neighborhood organizing is the most powerful form of organizing—working with people you live by and know. A lot of this is a proactive vs. reactive strategy. Neighborhood rapid response is in many ways a last line of defense; this all has to work together. We have eyes on the immigration court (site of many kidnappings by ICE agents and protests) and Broadview (a processing center turned illegal detention center) and hotels housing ICE and all these nodes of ICE’s operations—we’re able to share info and warn people in much quicker and more helpful ways. Just demonstrating that we do not consent to this invasion is powerful.

Having people constantly at Broadview saying, “This is wrong,” going to the source of their operations is important. For a long time, nobody paid attention to it. There are groups who have prayed rosary there for the last twelve years but didn’t see mass mobilization until someone sat in front of the car there, and that became the focal point of demonstrations. In many ways, that site is a bottleneck for ICE. It’s a horrible facility that’s supposed to just be for processing, but now it is used for detention. It was only supposed to be twelve hours, but people are now there for days on end, sleeping there with cold food, little water. We don’t allow detention centers in Illinois. They rely on them before transferring people to detention in other states. It’s a funnel, with horrible conditions. As they ramp up operations, elected officials can’t even tour and inspect.

When JB Pritzker (Illinois Governor) sent in the Illinois State Police, we saw the true basis of police repression, which is that police exist to repress dissent and not to protect people. They are clearly facilitating ICE operations by dispersing crowds. They have beaten and arrested protestors. We have yet to see local or state police arrest ICE, even though there is a recent ruling from a judge that if ICE tries to arrest people in federal court, police in Chicago could arrest ICE. Tensions between federal and local police are getting to civil war level, and everyone is so afraid of that. They want to deny these forces work together. They prefer state repression to interstate conflict.

GG: What have you seen that’s inspired you in this work? What are your ambitions for what you would like to build? What have you learned, or what would you share with other cities? What difficulties or barriers have you encountered?

R: Build now! Don’t wait. The relationships are the thing. It can feel like patrol is a time-suck: Are we spinning our gears just flyering and maybe ICE never comes? Twofold: every action you take should build community—e.g. flyering businesses is meeting people, sharing info. Not just sitting on a corner watching people, but a chance to talk to people about why we’re here. Get to know your community, get to know organizations, try to get on the same page about what’s coming. Localize everything. Don’t wait for a citywide system, don’t wait for everybody to agree on what to do—organize your building, organize your block, then organize the city.

Build now! Don’t wait. The relationships are the thing. It can feel like patrol is a time-suck: Are we spinning our gears just flyering and maybe ICE never comes? … Every action you take should build community.

What’s possible in autonomous organizing vs nonprofits is different. Not-for-profits (NFP) can provide material resources, but maybe can’t do riskier stuff. We need an analysis of what NFPs can and cannot do. Autonomous organizing also needs principles around accountability. For example, Broadview organizing is autonomous, while NFPs are there in advocacy roles.

GG: What do you think it will take for us to win? What are the sides? What is winning?

R: Success looks like moving people from where they’re at to understand the roots of our current crisis in the true sense of radical, to uproot those roots–pushing people to understand that this is not just a fight against ICE or against Trump, but against the broader police state that we are living under. I think a lot of people believe that if we elect a new person or if we train cops better or if we change what ICE is allowed to do, that we will win. But my goal is to stop deportations, to stop all deportations. My goal is to abolish the police, not just abolish ICE. I’m a futurist—thinking about what kind of world we’re creating, not what we’re destroying.

Success looks like moving people from where they’re at to understand the roots of our current crisis in the true sense of radical, to uproot those roots–pushing people to understand that this is not just a fight against ICE or against Trump, but against the broader police state that we are living under.

We have a thousand-person chat of people ready to respond on a moment’s notice. Building popular understanding of what’s happening in our world and educating about where we go is the challenge right now. As we’re building new relationships in this crisis, we should be thinking about where this is going. That is what I hope this crisis pushes us to understand: When we get a new president we keep fighting to stop deportation and keep housing our neighbors.

GG: What can we do as organizations now to secure post-crisis?

 

R: Of primary use is political analysis. Some groups aren’t organized enough to do what larger organizations are doing in mobilizing. We can carry the political education for average people out here and be voices—not in a scolding/patronizing way—but trying to normalize. So many people are baffled in terms of what to do about this. Many people, including liberals, now have to do things they’re not accustomed to, like organizing against the police. More radical organizations have a responsibility and experience to share an analysis at this moment.

We’re not entirely sure how to incorporate lots of new people and mixed consciousness–not necessarily “we should welcome in as many people as possible,” but we should let people know they’re organizers and they should take initiative and autonomy. There is no perfect organization. I’m relatively new to this, and having a political space to lean on made a difference.

GG: What would you like to see on the other side of this?

 

R: I want to see a thousand experiments of what kind of new future we want to build and to see these communications networks and infrastructures be applied to liberatory ends, so that whatever happens, we’re not waiting for an organization or a leader to take care of us, but that we actually have what we need, that we’re self-sufficient as much as possible and having joy and community in that self-sufficiency. We can’t just fight all the time. We have to build, and building is a restorative act. It’s not just hard work, it’s lifegiving. Do a community garden! But if you’re going to do anything, do it with a political analysis. If you’re going to be a NFP, do it with an understanding that all this comes from capitalism. NFPs don’t name those things, and don’t work through that political analysis—even progressive NFPs don’t come out and say “we need to abolish capitalism.”

We can’t just fight all the time. We have to build, and building is a restorative act. It’s not just hard work, it’s lifegiving. Dennis Kosuth interviews anonymous CPS teacher ‘T’

The following interview was conducted with a Chicago Teacher’s Union member and activist ‘ T.‘ They are involved in creating a Sanctuary School in their workplace and in community defense against ICE raids as part of a rapid response network on the Southwest side of Chicago. Due to harassment and doxxing of CTU members by rightwing activists, they chose to remain anonymous for this interview. Dennis Kosuth is a Chicago Teachers Union member and activist in the Palestine solidarity, labor, and socialist movements in Chicago.

DK: How has this operation with ICE in Chicago impacted you and the communities that you are a part of?

T: Multiple neighborhoods have been tear gassed. There are literally hundreds of people who were picked up in illegal arrests, arrests that ICE is not authorized to make. Citizens have been picked up. We’ve got kids who have missed six days in a row of school. When a teacher calls the mom, she says, “I’m afraid to take him. I’m afraid to go out and travel all the way to school.”

There was a helicopter over our school last week, and the kids were asking, “Is it ICE?”

Our school’s after school programming was just cut by two thirds. I can’t help thinking that the budget was cut by two thirds and ICE agents are getting $50,000 signed bonuses.

DK: Tell us about the work you’ve been doing.

 

T: We’ve got a sanctuary team and we’re making sure our staff know what’s going on because everybody lives in different places and ICE has not hit the city evenly. We let families know that ICE is not allowed in the building without a warrant. We did see some students who had not been coming to school very regularly have their attendance picked back up right after we sent that information home.

We made sure we sent them resources from the Chicago Public School website, from the mayor’s office, from trusted organizations. We let them know how you get good information, and what their rights are. I’m really grateful that the CTU has made multilingual materials so we could distribute them school wide.

We’ve also connected with our neighborhood rapid response team and folks in the community who support the work that we’re doing. We have community members helping us do morning and afternoon school patrols. These make sure that students and parents are safe during the busiest times at drop off and pick up.

When I’m not at school, then I’m on my rapid response team and in my neighborhood, and that’s a trip because we’ve been hit really hard.

It’s affecting the kids at school; it’s affecting my neighborhood. There are other CPS employees I know who also have ICE in their neighborhood. So many people know somebody whose family member was detained or witnessed them being detained. It’s just happening so often in so many places and is increasingly violent.

DK: What have you seen that’s inspired you? Are there any experiences that give you some kind of hope?

T: This stuff definitely shows the worst of people in these ICE agents. They teargas civilians who are literally just living their lives. We also see the best of people. I’ve been surprised how some of my colleagues were willing to sign up for actions when we asked, or even folks who proactively reached out and said, “How can I help?”

It’s activated people who maybe thought that this wouldn’t happen here, and folks are willing to move to action. We see the way that people defend their own communities, how they’re willing to get to work early and patrol.

The way community members have joined in this work is also impressive. People are willing to pick up students for parents who are afraid to go out. Oftentimes this is for people that they’ve never met before and who they might not meet again after this.

We are seeing the way people are showing up to witness these kidnappings, calling for help and letting people know what’s going on. Interesting bridges and coalitions are being built because we’re focused on what matters and what matters is keeping our city safe.

DK: What are some lessons for people in other cities who are also experiencing similar things?

T: A top line, not necessarily a lesson, but more like an orientation, is how little the Feds care about anything. They don’t know who they’re detaining. They don’t care about your private property. They don’t care about your actual citizenship status. They don’t care about running red lights and causing accidents in the streets. They have no regard for the people of the cities that they’re in.

A lesson is: Be open to building partnerships that maybe in other times you would not have, with people you might not have reached out to in another time.

The power of good documentation and good communication is also important. What we’re seeing here is things moving really fast. What we organize doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be a massive network from, you know, one end of your city to the other end of your city. Start a group chat with your neighbors so you can ask them, “What’s that weird car sitting out there?”

If you can catch ICE when they’re scoping out, it’s possible that you can stop that detention, and there’s a family who won’t get separated

DK: What do you think it’s going to take to push back Trump and the anti-immigrant forces in this country?

T: I think we need to build towards a general strike. If moral pleas were going to work, I think we would have already seen a response from ICE. What I’ve noticed is when they realize that they’ll be unsuccessful is when they stop. When the cost of whatever they want to do is too high. That’s the only time they back off.

I think we need to build towards a general strike. If moral pleas were going to work, I think we would have already seen a response from ICE.

I think we need to hit capitalists in their pocket books. I would like to see what a mass work stoppage could do, and break their banks.

DK: What do you think are some of the steps that we can take now, as union or non-union workers, towards that kind of action?

T: I think workers need to keep talking to workers. Whether you’re in a union or not, or a formal union or a budding union or whatever it is, like, anybody can pressure their own workplace to establish an ICE protocol because there are only two ways that ICE can enter a building: with your consent or with a warrant.

Don’t give consent. Demand a warrant. We’re not asking anybody to, or I don’t even think you necessarily have to, be so radical as to defy a warrant. That’s not what I’m advocating at this moment. At least demand that your employer who makes money off of your back and your labor say: We’re not opening the door without a warrant.

Set up your own security teams. We’ve seen some factories here that are doing it, and really any business can decide that they’re gonna do this. We probably need some small actions before we get to a general strike.

Kirstin Roberts interview with Jorge Mujica (October 2025)

Kirstin Roberts is a Chicago Teachers Union member and longtime activist in the socialist and labor movements in Chicago. Jorge Mujica is an organizer with Arise Chicago.

KR: Can you tell Tempest readers about yourself?

JM: I’m Jorge Mujica, organizer with Arise Chicago. Arise Chicago is a worker center so basically we are focusing workplace problems from stolen wages to discrimination. Most of our members are immigrants, so therefore we have to talk about immigrant issues, although that’s not our main focus. I live now in Little Village, but I lived in Pilsen for many years as well.

KR: We are trying to let a national audience understand what is happening in Chicago from the perspective of people on the ground, ordinary people like yourself— organizers, activists, and impacted community members. Can you just paint a brief picture about what Trump is doing right now to our city?

JM: Well, I would say in general terms that Trump is terrorizing the community in Chicago. It is a psychological war, you know, because he needs to give the impression to his base that he’s keeping his promise of deporting 12 and a half or 13 million immigrants. Of course he’s not going to be able to do it. So far, in one month immigration has only detained 800 people (as of early October) that gives us an average of like 25 people every day and that’s nothing in terms of the numbers Trump wants. Of course, each deportation is a personal tragedy, a family tragedy, you know fathers without their sons, our sons without their mothers, etc. But it’s nothing in terms of real numbers. Eight hundred people every month for a full year would be 9000 people. So it’s a lot more terror, a lot more circus than anything else.

KR: I think that’s a really really good way of describing it for people. Talk a little bit about how this is impacting the community that you work in.

JM: There are a good number of day laborers in Chicago, although we are not a hub for construction like Atlanta. Many, many people look for jobs closely related to construction in the Chicago area, mostly in the suburbs, but they look for work at the Home Depot where immigration has been concentrating some of their actions. Mostly immigration has been coming after people individually, what they call “targeted operations,” but they have also conducted raids. The big difference between a targeted operation is they go after someone they’ve identified; they have an address for that person. Then they have the raids. Let’s go to Home Depot and catch everyone we find in the parking lot. These are the most incredibly vulnerable workers, to be looking for a job every single day with a different employer to do just one day’s work or maybe a bit more. But then after two weeks you’re unemployed again and you have to go back to the Home Depot and start trying to find someone to hire you. So this is despicable, going after these people just looking for work.

KR: One of the things you said is that this is a campaign of terror. What you’re describing certainly qualifies. Terrify people to get them to self-deport or just push them farther and farther underground. But there’s also something happening here in Chicago that doesn’t show up enough in the mainstream press and that is how communities are stepping up for each other. Is there anything you think people should be aware of and maybe even learn from in other cities?

JM: Well, the most inspiring thing we have had this year was hearing Tom Homan, the so-called “border czar” live on CNN saying that Chicago was a very difficult place to arrest immigrant workers because they were very well educated on their rights. So that’s like receiving the Nobel Prize for grassroots education because that’s exactly what we needed to do since Trump’s election. You know there was a lot of discussion. What do we do? Rapid response brigades or the position I took—popular education? Rapid response, maybe it’s already too late, basically coming after immigration detains somebody. Instead of that we focused on training people, educating people, preparing people for the event and for the possibility of facing immigration. We gave so many workshops. I really lost count. Immigration workshops about what to do: Keep your mouth shut and then don’t open your door. Learn your rights and have your rights card. We trained them to face the aggressiveness of immigration police.

KR: Looking forward, what is it gonna take? What kind of awareness and what kind of strategy do you think we’re gonna need in order to turn back the tide on what Trump is doing? Clearly right now people are resisting in so many ways. But every day, it’s a new outrage. Can you talk about what we need to move towards?

JM: Well, of course we need to change the regime. In order to gain that I think it’s a lot of conversation. On a daily basis people ask me, you know, what do I do? “What do I do” is not what you individually do, it is what we do as communities, what we do as groups. A community facing this thing together. We need leadership in that sense. What we need is to mobilize 200 people on that corner, and on every corner; what we need is creative participation. Like in the Little Village (neighborhood), we are distributing whistles. We are blowing the whistle and everybody starts doing it so it gets noticed. Don’t depend on an organization printing posters–if you can do it on a piece of paper or on a piece of cardboard, write down the number to the hotline and post it at the entrance of your building. We need to talk to thousands and thousands of people, telling them to be doing this kind of resistance.

You know it is natural to be fearful, to be afraid, but the more you learn, the less fear you’re gonna have and that’s what we need.

KR: Is there anything else you think would be important to let people know?

JM: You know it is natural to be fearful, to be afraid, but the more you learn, the less fear you’re gonna have and that’s what we need. I began this conversation by saying it was a psychological war so how do you get rid of that? That’s what we need you know the community to lose their fear of immigration and to start fighting because as long as you’re in panic you’re going to be frozen in place or you gonna need to try to escape. What we need, instead of running away, is facing the danger and overcoming the danger, and that only happens when you overcome the fear.

Kirstin Roberts interviews Raul Islas (October 2025)

Kirstin Roberts is a Chicago Teachers Union member and longtime activist in the socialist labor movement in Chicago. Raul Islas is a Chicago Teachers Union teacher.

KR: Can you tell Tempest readers about yourself?

 

RI: My name is Raul Islas. As a CTU (Chicago Teachers Union) teacher, I have answered the call of the teachers’ union to build a sanctuary community in my school. Basically what it is, is building a group of watchful staff, but also, if possible, bringing parents and community into it. So that’s something that I’ve been doing, connecting the staff that wants to protect students and families from ICE. Connecting them with parents and the community so that we build a strong watch community and are ready for whatever they bring at us. And today, it’s very much escalating.

KR: Can you say what happened today in Chicago? You said it’s escalating?

RI: Well, yeah, so my understanding is the National Guard has been called into Chicago by President Trump. They’re coming from the state of Texas. We’re talking hundreds. I’m not sure what the total number is, but it’s definitely hundreds. And it is specifically to aid ICE enforcement and to protect ICE agents to detain, arrest, deport people. So, yeah, that’s what I mean by escalating.

KR: Chicago has been in the national news a lot. But as people in the community, as teachers in Chicago, how do you describe this moment? What’s happening here?

RI: I interact a lot with parents, especially newcomer parents or parents who may not have legal status, and families are very scared. They’re scared to leave the house. They are scared to bring their children to school. They are scared to go and provide for their basic goods, like grocery shopping, or even going to the doctor, right? A lot of members of the community and staff, we’re trying to respond to that, and to provide them support. That could mean accompanying people to school. It could mean helping families with certain needs like grocery runs or even economic support for families. It’s becoming riskier and riskier to intervene on behalf of people who are being illegally detained. An activist was shot. ICE claimed that she attacked them, but the body cam footage is proving that to be a lie. They shot her five times. We also have a father who was shot and killed in the suburbs in Franklin Park (a Chicago suburb). Rapid response community members have also been teargassed repeatedly. Those of us who are in a rapid response community have to think more about our safety as we’re also thinking about the risk and the safety of people that we might be supporting.

KR: Is there anything that has given you hope or inspired you over the last couple of months of this work?

RI: I think there’s been a feeling of a lot of support. Whether it’s people signing up on lists to watch or to provide mutual aid for people or random neighbors, who are not a part of any groups, coming out on their own and standing up for people’s rights and taking risks, that is hope for me–just seeing where things are going and fears that people have about this administration and the boundaries that it’s pushing, fears of a dictatorship, fears of fascism. I feel rather overwhelmed by the amount of support coming in. They know more needs to be done and they’re very hungry for that opportunity to take action. I’m seeing language barriers where some volunteers are having a tough time communicating with the people, but they’re lining up to support. But when it’s an active solidarity, when there’s solidarity being felt, language becomes less of a barrier and people, they just feel the solidarity. It’s beautiful.

Whether it’s people signing up on lists to watch or to provide mutual aid for people or random neighbors, who are not a part of any groups, coming out on their own and standing up for people’s rights and taking risks, that is hope for me.

KR: You said something earlier and I want you to maybe just quickly talk about what you meant. Before we started recording you said there’s a place for everybody in this movement. Can you explain what you mean?

RI: We have some very active ICE watch. We have community activists who are definitely willing to engage ICE and to intervene when they’re seeing an arrest happening, willing to take those risks. And then we have people who may not see themselves doing that, but who want to be helping families; they want to play a role and they don’t necessarily envision themselves as activists going up against ICE per se. And then, of course, we have families who are affected, who are scared, but who are connecting us to other families that they know, organizing in their own community and putting themselves at risk. They’re affected, they’re scared, but they want to help others. There’s a role for everyone and that’s what I’m seeing more and more of, with all the layers of people that are coming out. There’s a role for everybody. It could be economic mutual aid, it could be providing a safe ride or a safe accompaniment to people to get to school, even to their jobs. It could be helping to spread posts to be viral to the public. So there’s definitely a role for everybody.

KR: How are you feeling about the political leadership in Chicago and in Illinois at this moment?

RI: I like hearing our elected leaders stand up to Trump. I think they mainly see their role as trying to stop some of what the administration is doing through the courts. Okay, I think it definitely has a role as well, but it also has major limitations. We have not been able to rely on the courts that much to stop this kind of encroachment on the people’s rights. Other elected leaders are going further, and especially more local elected leaders, where they are showing up in communities where ICE is present and they themselves are also challenging ICE on the spot, showing up to neighborhoods where ICE is, showing up to the places that people are being detained, and questioning ICE as to the legality of what they’re doing. So I think at the local level, more than the state level, more elected officials come out and be vocal. But, you know, some elected officials express that there’s only so much they can do. Their hands are tied. They’re seeing us fight back and I think they know they have to be looking like they’re fighting too. I was at the most recent No Kings rally. We had a prominent senator go up and speak, and the reception was not very good for that senator. That’s because people felt that the senator wasn’t really standing up to Trump so much. So now we’re starting to see some of these elected officials stand up a little more and you know want to make themselves look more like someone that is standing up and fighting against Trump. So I think these protests and mobilizations and organizing that are happening are making some elected officials, who normally have not been as vocal or strong, step up as well, because that’s what their constituents are demanding from them.

I think these protests and mobilizations and organizing that are happening are making some elected officials, who normally have not been as vocal or strong, step up as well, because that’s what their constituents are demanding from them.

KR: Is there anything that we want people in other cities to know that we’ve learned? Negative lessons and positive lessons?

RI: Maybe we can start with negative, okay? I think it’s important for those in the activist community that are getting involved with stopping ICE, that they’re communicating with immigrant rights groups and the groups that are working with the people affected. We hace got to make sure that the actions that are being done are working in cohesion with people who are advocating for the affected. For instance, right now, we’re definitely hearing how hard it is for lawyers or immigrant rights advocates or families to get to their loved ones at Broadview (ICE processing and detention center and site of daily protests.) That means getting things to them that they might need. Broadview is a center run by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. It’s a processing center that should not be used as the detention center. They don’t have beds for everybody. So people are made to sleep standing up! It’s been a scene of a lot of intense protests and calls for shutting it down. And for some affected families, that’s worrisome because it means that their family members will be shipped further away to states where they do have “legal” detention centers. I’m wondering how much activists are talking to immigrant rights organizations or the affected families.

KR: So we need more movement spaces where people can communicate and coordinate?

RI: The question that needs to be asked is, how is this affecting the families? Is it making it harder for families to get to their loved ones, to get support for their loved ones? Well, what are some alternatives, right? We’ve got to have more spaces where people can talk to each other from different impacted communities. We’re all impacted communities. How do we get together and talk to each other?

They’re realizing that this is beyond elections, so to speak. We have to take action beyond just voting or beyond just waiting for lawyers or the courts to do something. It’s becoming more and more clear that the people have to take action.

I do think it is positive that people are using words like fascism, like authoritarian governments, like dictatorship. Before this we were only hearing that from groups on the Left. Now that sentiment is more widespread. What if this really is a dictatorship or a fascist takeover, and what are we willing to do to stop that? It’s very regular everyday people who are saying, look at this, look at what we’re seeing. I have family on the South side, Hispanic working class, and they are sharing things and saying things that makes me feel they understand. They’re realizing that this is beyond elections, so to speak. We have to take action beyond just voting or beyond just waiting for lawyers or the courts to do something. It’s becoming more and more clear that the people have to take action. I think this is setting the foundations for what will be a strong grassroots resistance to whatever this administration tries to do.

KR: Is there anything else you would want people to know, anything else you want to share?

RI: You know, I think this is a harder conversation to have for people, but I think we need to start thinking about not only movements and protests but completely alternative organizations that really are going to authentically and consistently fight for the issues that we care about. The Democratic Party that presents itself as an opposition party has failed to act like an opposition party in very critical and crucial moments. I mean not just recently, but throughout history. So we want to be careful to be practicing the same thing; we organize, we protest, we resist, we create the momentum, and the movement to make change, but then we just hand power over to the Democratic Party, which has some very strong members and elected officials. But overall, as an apparatus, it often feels like they are part of the problem, not part of the solution. During the election, I was not hearing from Democrats or their leaders warning about what immigration actions could turn into. If anything, I would often hear them present themselves as tough on immigration, or as tough on the border as, let’s say, Trump, right? And so I think that’s very problematic, because if you don’t present yourself as an opposition party, then people are going to go for who they see as being stronger.

We need to start thinking about not only movements and protests but completely alternative organizations that really are going to authentically and consistently fight for the issues that we care about. The Democratic Party that presents itself as an opposition party has failed to act like an opposition party.

I think the Democratic Party has some very strong voices. We have some local elected members who are very strong on this issue, like Congresswoman Delia Ramirez, who’s been very strong on immigration and very vocal against Trump. But when you look at figures like that and you see the rest of the Party, you realize the good ones are the exception. The rest of the Democratic Party doesn’t look like this, doesn’t sound like this.

I think that there’s definitely an interest from those in power to have a lower paid sector of workers with less rights that they could use, for instance, to break up unionized industries. Native workers against immigrant workers, Black against Brown, which they’ve been doing as well. I mean, we’ve definitely seen attempts by Republican governors to bus migrants into specific cities to create friction in the cities. And so there’s a lot of using the immigrant community as political weapons. It certainly feels like in this city, Chicago, that people are not putting up with it. They are standing up, they’re coming out of their homes, they’re coming out on the streets, they are keeping an eye out, they’re being watchful. And it just feels like more and more people are on guard. Like, they’re kind of ready.

You know, some people have compared us to the underground railroad. They’ve talked about how there was a time in this country where there was a Fugitive Slave Act and the federal government was forcing states to hand people over who had escaped slavery and were looking for freedom. You have a federal government now that wants to force sanctuary states to hand people over, imprison them, detain them, deport them. And so there are definitely people looking back at history and saying, we know that it’s taken people working at an underground or clandestine level to support people. I’m seeing a lot of that in Chicago and I’m inspired by it. And like I said, on a daily basis, I am overwhelmed and unable to even manage and handle the number of volunteers who are contacting me and saying, I want to help. When I met with activists from L.A. in D.C. who are facing the same thing, one of the things they warned about was fatigue and people experiencing burnout, not just physical, but emotional as well. That’s one thing that they kind of told us here in Chicago to be aware that that will happen quickly. The number of people wanting to get involved could help keep this going, because by the way it looks like now, we’re gonna have to keep this going for years because so much damage is being done and so much of it is being institutionalized like a sort of superstructure being built right before our very eyes.

Kyle Gilbertson interviews Bridget Murphy

Bridget Murphy is a longtime community organizer on the northwest side of Chicago with Palenque/Logan Square Neighborhood Association. She is a founding member of 39th Ward Neighbors United. At her children’s neighborhood public school in Albany Park she helped to build a group of neighbors that walks students safely to and from school and supports impacted families in the context of hostile ICE raids. Kyle Gilbertson is a musician and educator as well as a longtime socialist and Palestinian rights activist.

KG: How has the ICE invasion impacted you and your community?

BM: It has been very intense. The closest thing I have to describing that feeling is like COVID. You know, when all of a sudden, overnight, everything is different. Everybody has to rethink their actions. Even the smallest action, like going to the grocery store, taking your kids to school. Everybody has to rethink what is the safest possible way to go about what they do every day. In addition to the fear and anxiety, every individual person is handling it very differently.

KF: Could you tell me about the work you’ve been doing?

BM: At my own kids’ school, we have a group of neighbors that has been organizing since around Labor Day weekend. We came together very loosely on a Signal thread to think about how we could potentially organize and to find out if any families needed help getting to school. We didn’t immediately know of any families who needed that. So we started just doing morning safety walks. We met with the school administration to introduce ourselves and discuss what kinds of stuff we might want to work on together. But mostly the first few weeks we were just doing safety patrols and trying to get people plugged into community defense trainings. Then about two weeks ago, things really heated up in our neighborhood. There were multiple ICE arrests at an intersection very near our school. In one case, it was a mom from our school. She dropped her kids off at school, and walked two blocks to the bus stop to go to work. ICE swooped in and took her. I hear that her husband was with her, and he just happened to go to a corner store for a minute to get something when she was arrested. So, if he hadn’t done that, their kids would have lost both parents. When that happened, word traveled among all the parents in the school. The principal called me that day and said, “Are there a few volunteers you could have come to the main office and help us walk kids home after school?” We said sure. So about six to ten people came to the office within an hour from our group and that day we ended up helping to walk home close to 40 students. Parents possibly knew the mom who had been taken in and were scared to pick up their kids. That was a Friday. The following Monday, there were many absent students. The school really came to us at that point to say, we need your help.

Right now, it’s about 65 kids every day we are walking to school. We have ten different routes with different colors and numbers. We try to have two adults on every route. So on a daily basis, to get everyone both to and from school, we need at least 40 people to raise their hands for this kind of solidarity. And people have been doing it. It’s been amazing. Every day we’re like, okay, can we make it through? Can we do it tomorrow? But so far, the outpouring of people who have shown an interest has exceeded the number of families seeking this support.

KG: What is your vision for what you would like to build beyond what exists right now in terms of movement infrastructure?

BM: I want to acknowledge that none of this started on Labor Day weekend. I and many others have been organizing in our neighborhood as part of an independent political organization since 2020. Through that, we have built a precinct captain program. We’ve connected with people in the neighborhood dozens of times, whether it was for the Bring Chicago Home referendum (which aimed to alleviate homelessness), or for candidates, or for helping people prepare for the current attacks. So I think that’s part of what made it possible to even just get started. There was already a group of people who knew each other, and knew that there were some shared values. We’ve also organized together to plan block parties. As a parent at the school, I’ve also worked with the school over the years, organizing to help stop school closings, for safety on the playground, and as a member of the Local School Council. So, there have been lots of different pieces of organizing work that happened over the years.

Now there are so many more people joining in and looking for ways to do something concrete. And there is an interest in doing something beyond a walking school bus. We have a traditional Democratic machine alderman representing our neighborhood (Ald. Samantha Nugent). So a neighbor put out a call for her to vote a certain way in city council. And some people were asking, who can run against her? At the next neighborhood school over, they have a similar Signal thread that started overnight. It’s related to mutual aid and community defense, and now has over a hundred people. A lot of elected officials on the north side are leading the charge in all this.

KG: Are there any challenges or difficulties that you’ve encountered, or lessons you’ve learned in this work that you’d like to share with people in other cities?

BM: At this moment, most of the walking school bus volunteers are white. I think it’s an important way for people to show up and use the privilege they have. But that’s not a long-term foundation for a political organization. For the real and present need right now, I think it works. I also think that people of color in the neighborhood have shared that they’re glad to see all the white people standing up for them.

I also want to acknowledge that, though we have this new walking school bus thing, a lot of families have been doing this forever–helping each other walk their kids to school. Now some families are coordinating together to figure out how to walk in bigger groups to get to school. It’s a walking school class, an organized effort with a spreadsheet. It always has been happening. Our role is to fill the gaps now, where people feel like they don’t have access to that support.

Kyle Gilbertson’s interview with anonymous activist

The following interview was conducted with a longtime social justice activist based in Chicago. They are involved in community defense against ICE raids as part of a local rapid response network. They are also involved in the Palestine Solidarity movement in Chicago. For this interview they chose to remain anonymous. Kyle Gilberston is a musician and educator as well as a long time socialist and Palestinian rights activist.

KG: Tell me a little about how the ICE invasion has affected you and your community.

A: I live in a neighborhood that has been pretty hard hit. We’re building a lot of the organization from the ground up. There is a lot of fear. One thing that we have a lot of is like false sightings, and we’ve had that for months. Every day we continue to have sightings that are people mistaking suspicious looking cars for ICE. That really shows how people are on edge. It’s also been an opportunity for people to come together. I organized, on my own, a very small scale block watch – for just a two block by two block area around my house – after somebody was abducted directly in front of my building. We had a meeting for that, and an ICE watch training. Fifty people showed up. Sadly, that might not have happened if not for this crisis. I wish we had had that kind of organization and connection beforehand. But it is becoming a big catalyst for people to connect with their neighbors.

KG: Tell me a little more about the work you’ve been doing in this moment.

A: There are various places to get involved, and one of them is on a very local neighborhood level. I am in the rapid response group in my neighborhood. I do regular patrols around a certain area near my house. I keep up with sightings in my neighborhood. That’s rapid response. The patrols are a little bit more proactive. There is the “adopt a hiring corner” initiative with Latino Union. These hiring corners and Home Depots where the day laborers are have been such a huge target. There’s a Home Depot by my house. There’s a raid at that Home Depot almost every single day. One thing people have found is that, if they are volunteers tabling and keeping watch at a hiring corner or a Home Depot, that will significantly deter ICE raids. We think that they have scout cars in the Home Depot parking lots, such that when the volunteers leave, the ICE raid will happen about 30 minutes later. People have said, why do the day laborers go out if it’s so dangerous? The fact is, their livelihood depends on their accessibility to employers. So the fact that these people are making themselves accessible to sell their labor means that they are also the most accessible people to ICE.

So people are trying to be proactive, instead of just responding when there’s a raid. It’s the same idea with the school drop off and pick up patrols, where people try to proactively have presence around schools, because they’ve been targeting parents dropping off and picking up their kids. Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez was killed right after dropping off his kid. So you’re trying to guess where they would go and then be there in advance. The third way that I’ve been plugging in is by going to Broadview and protesting there. Everyone who gets kidnapped in Chicago gets trafficked through Broadview. And the conditions–It’s not that the conditions are the only problem. To be clear, the existence of the facility is the problem. But on top of it being a trafficking center, the conditions are also terrible there. People will be taken there and within hours feel like it is so unbearable that they will sign up for voluntary removal. We have to get Broadview shut down.

There are also people who are trying to gather data on ICE operations to try to better predict their tactics. There’s a lot of different levels.

KG: What is your vision for what you’d like to build, or what you would like to see happen in the future, within the movement?

A: In the Northwest Side Rapid Response Network, when we get calls from a certain location, sometimes no one is near that location, and we have to drive. It may take 15 minutes, and that could make a life or death difference for people. What I would really like to see is for rapid response to become obsolete, because whenever they come to a block, every single person on the block will just walk out of their house. I want to see everyone who is not undocumented, or who feels that they have the privilege to step outside and take that risk, that everyone who can somewhat safely do that, is empowered to do so and is trained to do so and can respond to it in the moment. I think it just happened in Albany Park.

What I would really like to see is for rapid response to become obsolete, because whenever [ICE] comes to a block, every single person on the block will just walk out of their house.

KG: Yeah, my friend Gabe was a part of that.

A: There have been instances when people have literally come out of their houses to stop a raid. The thing about ICE is that they work so quickly because they know that we are on to them. The person who was kidnapped in front of my apartment, was walking down the street, and they ran up to him, zip tied his hands, and threw him in the back of a van, and it was over in 10 seconds. We didn’t even get a video of it. So one thing I would like to see is that everybody is empowered to do something in that situation, and that everyone feels confident that they will be supported by their neighbors in going out and taking some sort of action, whether that’s interference or not, whether it’s just recording, or whether it’s trying to offer support to the person. Just the presence of people on the street is important, because ICE is afraid of people.

I really feel like there is a utility to be a “protective presence,” which is a word people use in Palestine to describe when, for example, American Jewish activists go to Palestine and try to impede the occupation by just being there. They’re so afraid that they’ll teargas us, even though we aren’t doing anything to them. We don’t have guns, but they seem to be afraid. I don’t know what it is inside their minds, but they seem to be very sensitive to community response. So that’s my vision for how this could be.

KG: Are there any lessons you’d like to share for people in other cities?

A: Definitely. I’ve been telling friends who live in other cities, this could come to you later, and you want to get to know your neighbors beforehand. When you’re trying to build community amid this invasion, some people are not comfortable leaving their homes. Some people are going to be understandably very wary of meeting new people right now. Trying to build relationships now, while also being sensitive to people’s very legitimate fears, is way more difficult to do. If we had done this over the summer–I wish we could have had potlucks and block parties out on the boulevard, and met every single person on our block. Before this person got abducted in front of my building, I had just happened to create a WhatsApp group for my building. It wasn’t that organized, but we had about 40 people in it. Somebody posted the video there first. Then I said, can we meet in front of the building and ask people what happened? That small WhatsApp group provided a level of organization that was really valuable in that moment. I implore people: We are socially conditioned to think that it’s rude to even say hi to our neighbors. I’ve always felt kind of awkward in my neighborhood. I feel like I am living in a place where people were displaced from due to gentrification. All of that awkwardness is completely understandable and fine. But don’t wait until there’s an emergency, and somebody has just been snatched off your block and thrown into a van to think, maybe I should meet my neighbors.

We are socially conditioned to think that it’s rude to even say hi to our neighbors. … But don’t wait until there’s an emergency, and somebody has just been snatched off your block and thrown into a van to think, maybe I should meet my neighbors.

KG: Another person I interviewed for this article made a similar point. She’s involved with United Working Families. She has done tons of door knocking around the neighborhood. She also organizes block parties. She said all of that helped in making connections with neighbors, and laying the groundwork for what’s happening now.

A: That’s the other thing: You can’t do door knocking anymore, because we just told everybody not to open their door. That’s one of the biggest problems we had. We’re trying to canvas to get people to join our block watch group, but we can’t knock on people’s doors because we don’t want to scare them. But if we had done this before–three months ago, six months ago–we could have knocked on people’s doors, and it wouldn’t have been scary. I feel a lot of regret over the missed opportunity.

KG: What do you think it would take to actually win in this struggle?

A: I think it’s a combination of two things. One thing is the organization that I talked about with everybody knowing their neighbors. Presence on the street, feeling empowered, having information networks, so we can respond immediately. The second thing is that I do believe escalated tactics are necessary. I know organizations that are 501c3s cannot recommend that people intervene in operations. I get that, and I’m respectful of that. When I volunteer with organizations, I do make that commitment.

But I don’t believe in pure pacifism. I define violence as violence towards people, not towards property. I don’t even think that we need to go as far as violence towards people like agents. It’s kind of hilarious because they have already painted us as being violent rioters at Broadview. If they’re going to call us violent rioters for just standing there, then you might as well do something that is actually effective. I do think there are ways to actually slow them down.

One issue we’re dealing with at Broadview right now is Pritzker and the Illinois State Police (ISP). Weeks ago, there was all that tear gas and stuff. I wasn’t there on those days. But on those days, about half of the agents that are present in the Chicago area were tied up with protesters at Broadview and not kidnapping people. However much I do not want me and my comrades to be teargassed at Broadview, it’s absolutely preferable to go out and take whatever they want to give us if that means they are busy and can’t be kidnapping my neighbors. Since Pritzker’s police took over the security at the Broadview facility, it has enabled the border patrol and other federal agents to be freed up. That’s because of Pritzker’s policy, the ISP’s policy, as well as the Broadview mayor’s policy is to institute these “free speech zones,” which are like kettling areas because they have these concrete barriers that trap you in. It’s unfortunate, because we never wanted our fight to be against Pritzker or the ISP, but they brought it to us. Now the movement is dealing with a lot of tension about how to respond to this. Police violence against us is obviously an issue, but it is not the core issue. Yet, you can’t separate it from the core issue, because why are they beating us up?

If they’re going to call us violent rioters for just standing there, then you might as well do something that is actually effective.

To win, if we’re talking about Broadview, we need to get the ISP out. I think probably the most viable way to do it is by threatening Pritzker’s chances at a presidential run. Then we need to make it too difficult for them to traffic people through there, and that could require a lot of different tactics. So, if we can get Pritzker’s police out of there, then we might have a chance at actually being face to face with ICE again and making their operations more difficult.

KG: A number of people in Tempest are involved with the May Day Strong Coalition. It’s a nationwide coalition that involves a lot of unions and community organizations. Part of their vision is to help lay the groundwork for a general political strike to stop ICE. Do you have any thoughts about using the power of labor to defeat ICE?

A: In this country, I think the labor movement has been co-opted and legalized to the point that labor leaders will not take this on. The rank and file is not empowered to do it without the consent of the union leaders. My general impression is that we are not treating this like the emergency that it is. I think schools should be closed, most businesses should be closed, like when everything shut down for COVID. That’s the level of disruption that I feel like this deserves. Don’t go to work. There’s a reason why that doesn’t happen. It’s because everybody would get fired. But it is very worrying the way we continue to just go to work. Things are open and things are functioning. And every few minutes, somebody just gets grabbed off the street, and we’re just going to keep working. The one example that I think is a really good one is Home Depot. Home Depot’s management, they have these off duty cops that work as security guards. They are very corrupt and colluding with ICE. There was a lawsuit filed against these people because they actually killed a migrant day laborer about a year ago. So, one thing is that the Home Depot management and these off-duty cops are extremely aggressive towards rapid response volunteers who try to talk to the employees. The employees have in general seemed to be sympathetic and don’t want raids happening in their parking lot every day. However, they have also said that if they try to do anything other than just look away, they will be fired. If Home Depot workers were to strike, that would be so impactful because that’s literally ground zero for ICE operations. They feel that their employer has the power over them, but I would hope that organizing could be done. There are more of them, and they’re the ones whose labor is powering this whole corporation. So I hope that they could at some point, organize and harness that power.

KG: Is there anything else you’d like to say that I didn’t ask you about?

A: I think too many people are falling for the Pritzker propaganda. He spoke at No Kings, and mere hours later his cops beat so many people up in Broadview. There was an ambulance called for a protester and 11 people were arrested just for being there after the curfew at 6 p.m. It created an incredibly unsafe and chaotic situation and pushed all of the protesters into Maywood, into a residential neighborhood. They were literally beating people up in residents’ front yards. If that’s what his police are doing, I just don’t care about what he’s saying in the media. Pritzker’s messaging on this is starting to be challenged. I don’t like the idea of being a punching bag for him to prove that there’s no need for the National Guard to be sent in. I want the Chicago and Illinois Left to split from Pritzker. I think that’s a really important shift that needs to happen as soon as possible. Pritzker sacrificed all of us, and Pritzker is not on our side. Pritzker is on his own side.

Glenn Allen interviews Mandy Medley

MM: My name is Mandy Medley, a worker-owner at Pilsen Community Books (PCB) and also a member of PUNO (Pilsen Unidos Por Nuestro Orgullo) here in Pilsen.

GA: How has the ICE invasion impacted you and your community?

 

MM: Mostly we are just really scared for our neighbors. There has not been as much activity in Pilsen as elsewhere on the southwest side and in the suburbs, but we did have a neighbor who was taken at the restaurant across the street from the bookstore in the morning before we were open. Actually two neighbors were, and that was a real eye-opening moment for us. So ever since then we’ve been organizing with neighbors trying to find ways to help try to get educated and pass what we learn along to people and just be as present as possible in the neighborhood.

GA: So tell us about the work you’ve been doing.

 

MM:  So I joined a coalition called PUNO. It’s a coalition of different immigrant rights organizations and neighborhood groups and also just random neighbors who are committed to advocating for the protection of immigrant rights. PUNO does legal support, education, community engagement, and then they also do migra watch, which is the thing I’ve been most involved in. PUNO puts on public migra watch training to help folks learn how to identify ICE activity happening in their neighborhood and give them some tools for ways to react, encourage them to record any interactions that they have with ICE, or record any activity they see and also to collect license plates. The first training I went to was super empowering. I think we all know in the abstract ways that we could be a community defense, but to have someone go through it step-by-step was very empowering. I got involved in migra watch along with everyone else at Pilsen Community Books, and a bunch of our neighbors. We sign up for shifts to be on watch in the neighborhood and respond to reports of activity that are called in through the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights hotline.

GA: How many people have you trained?

 

MM: I don’t have exact numbers, but I bet PUNO has trained over a thousand folks. As far as I know, PUNO is the only migra watch group that holds in-person open, public trainings.

GA: So how has that changed the group? Are those people taking part and signing up for work? Are they becoming part of a larger network that is starting to form?

MM: PUNO trains lots of people. You don’t have to live in Pilsen to go to a migra watch training. If you do go to a training and you want to get plugged into PUNO, we help you get on-boarded and into our network. But because we also are connected to all different rapid response networks throughout the city through ICIRR we can help folks get plugged into their neighborhood if they’re not Pilsen based. PUNO has grown exponentially and it’s been really great to see and to meet new neighbors, but we’ve also directed countless people to other networks throughout the city.

GA: How did you decide to do in-person mass training?

 

MM: You know, I don’t know. I wasn’t a part of that early decision. But when something like this happens, when there’s a crisis, everyone’s like, “I wanna help but I don’t know how.” There have been a bunch of organizers in Pilsen and in the Little Village neighborhood and beyond who have been planning for this for a long time. They’ve been organizing around this for years and years, so this crisis wasn’t new for them. It’s my understanding that they understand the power of community engagement and they wanted to help folks get involved and you know be as informed as they could be. PUNO had the capacity to put these on in conjunction with ICIRR and it just kind of grew from there.

GA: What have you seen that’s inspired you in this work?

 

MM: I have seen so many folks who would have never dreamed of doing this kind of on-the-street work. Just get out there, even though sometimes it’s scary. It’s unpredictable. It’s just average people. It’s like dorky middle-aged people like me. It’s young people. It’s older people. Out there together, you know, across race and class barriers all in defense of their neighbors and it’s just honestly one of the most moving organizing experiences of my life.

It is like an unexpected silver lining to this. I know I’ve lived in Pilsen for quite some time and I thought I knew a lot of folks already and I did. But I mean so many folks are coming out of the woodwork and wanting to get involved because I think everyone recognizes that this is fascism here on our street.

It’s just average people. It’s like dorky middle-aged people like me. It’s young people. It’s older people. Out there together, you know, across race and class barriers all in defense of their neighbors and it’s just honestly one of the most moving organizing experiences of my life.

GA: What have you learned or what would you like to share with other cities that haven’t done this yet?

MM: I’ve learned that the more you can share information with others the better. I think having trainings open to the public is really important. It allows people to become involved in an informed and more safe way. So I encourage other cities to start thinking about what to do now and start putting that framework in place. We had talks with organizers from L.A. before all this happened in Chicago. In our PUNO meetings, we’ve talked about what we’ve learned from them and that’s been very useful. Not only for the information but also to feel like you’re not alone. Like we’re all working in solidarity fighting fascism together.

GA: What do you think it’s going to take for us to win, and what do you think the next steps are right now?

MM: You know our mayor Brandon Johnson called for a general strike. In my wildest dreams, yeah, sure I would love a general strike. I think building the power that we need to get to a general strike is the next step.

It’s been really illuminating to see how a group of people who aren’t connected in any way except geographically can come together and learn how to organize. It’s not impossible, like you don’t need organization already in place, you don’t need cadres, you don’t even need a workplace to unite if the threat is strong enough. That has been really eye-opening for me. So I think if we can continue to build power, continue to stay connected even if the threat abates, if we don’t lose these connections and don’t lose the organizing we’ve got. Then maybe in the future a general strike might actually be something that could be possible.

I was even thinking at the No Kings protest that a lot of the Left just kind of turned their nose up at it: “It’s just a bunch of libs.” And you know there is a part of that. It’s like people who don’t ever come out for anything else that come in from the suburbs. But what would’ve happened if everyone from every rapid response group had shown up with literature? Showed up with information about when you can come to the next training? I feel like people just don’t know how. If we actually had a place where they could plug in. I would have liked to have seen more of that.

GA: I thought that this rally was much broader than the previous one. I mean it was much bigger than the last No Kings too. But it was also much younger, and it was more interracial. It was much more integrated.

MM: That’s good. That’s been another silver lining of this whole thing. It’s like every kind of Chicagoan is represented out in the streets against ICE right now. It’s not just the people who are always out.

GA: I’ve noticed an attitude expressed by more conservative parts of the opposition to ICE, an opposition to the excess violence and brutality, against picking up random people on the street. But it’s fine to go after the ‘“right” people, people without papers or with criminal records. I’m wondering if you’ve seen that get any traction, and what do you say about that?

MM: You know I have heard that and surprisingly I’ve heard it more in Pilsen than I thought I would. The rise of the Latino right has not escaped Pilsen. Sometimes you hear people say ‘well they should’ve had their papers’ or whatever. There are Latino residents here in Pilsen, who feel like they immigrated the “right way.”

And obviously all the migrants that Chicago absorbed a few years back has increased tensions, because people perceive that there aren’t enough resources for everyone. So it pits people against people. But I do think there’s a real opportunity to try and take a more abolitionist perspective in our messaging when we’re talking about this. Silky Shah has this great book called Unbuild Walls, which talks about how police and prison evolution is tied to the abolition of borders. I think it’s a real opportunity for the Left to get some more expansive messaging out there. I also think the videos of what ICE is doing in the streets with tear gas and even the videos from the way Illinois State police and ICE have brutalized protesters in Broadview. People aren’t going to forget that.

There’s a real opportunity to try and take a more abolitionist perspective in our messaging when we’re talking about this.

And I think it’s up to the Left to get out there and then push this message forward. A lot of people would be open to that.  It’s just, you know, we have to do it.

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Featured Image credit: paul goyette; modified by Tempest.

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