Dispatch from Occupied Chicago

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the spring of 2020. The current moment in Chicago has echoes of that time: the feelings of uncertainty, fear, disruption, and all of it unevenly distributed. I regret not writing more about how I experienced that period, which is now difficult to remember clearly under layers of subsequent interpretation. I don’t intend to repeat that regret, so this is my attempt to write about what it feels like to live in Chicago during “Operation Midway Blitz”, the current immigration enforcement crackdown that has seen federal agents sowing violence and chaos across Chicagoland as they disappear immigrants into detention and deportation.

This is not to say that my feelings or experiences are particularly notable, but I simply want to remember what this felt like and what I was thinking about day to day during this time.

What is happening

Before getting into my personal thoughts, I want to start with an overview of some of what has happened in Chicago and the surrounding area, and a reminder: if you live in Illinois, be prepared to notify the Family Support Network hotline at 855-435-7693 if you see federal immigration enforcement agents or activity.

The crackdown started in early September. Since then, federal agents have killed a man, regularly tear gassed neighborhoods, and used excessive force against protestors. The total number of people detained is not clear, but it is clear that many people without criminal records are being taken and held in inhumane conditions.

Agents conducted a military-style raid against a residential building in South Shore, which led one resident to hide a neighbor and her 7-year-old in his apartment; the child hid under a bed.

Elected officials and candidates have been threatened and handcuffed. Journalists have been detained and personally targeted by DHS officials online. Judges are attempting to rein in federal conduct, but those rulings seem to have little effect.

The list of harrowing incidents goes on and on and spans much of the city and surrounding suburbs. Every day, more schools go on soft lockdown as enforcement occurs nearby, and heartbreaking images and stories emerge.

It also must be said that the federal agents have not faced any significant armed or violent opposition. DHS claims about violence have not held up to scrutiny. There has been sustained community resistance, but it has largely taken the form of crowds of people gathering to bear witness and tell agents to leave their communities, or people notifying others that ICE is present. People are forming school patrols. Many people have taken to carrying whistles.

For daily coverage of federal activity and local response, I recommend Unraveled Press on Bluesky, The Triibe, and Block Club Chicago, though many Chicago news organizations have done great work (as evidenced by the variety of links in this section.)

Day to day

Because the ICE activity has been scattershot and fast-moving, it’s not the case that most people are knowingly encountering ICE day-to-day. Even as federal agents hit more and more neighborhoods, it remains possible to go about everyday life in Chicago and not personally directly perceive the crisis.

This is part of what is so unsettling about it; if you are not personally managing risk or tapping into support networks, and depending on where you live, you might be able to go about activities roughly as normal. You might notice that certain areas seem emptier than usual, or see new signs forbidding ICE entry to various establishments, but it’s not nearly as overt as the early-COVID stay-at-home orders in terms of visible, relatively uniform public impact.

This means that, for some of us, the experience of this crisis is largely mediated through online information. Kelly Hayes has written about some of the risks of this type of engagement. It’s easy to feel isolated and disempowered even (maybe especially) if you are paying very close attention, but it’s also possible for some people to just tune out. I’ve also seen people, including lifelong residents, sharing inaccurate information, whether that’s unverified alarmist reports about ICE sightings or wishful thinking that the city, state, or other goups are resisting in ways that they are not (for example, the salt truck rumor.)

If you are tapped in and paying attention, the pattern has generally been that agents will concentrate in a particular neighborhood for a day or half a day, overwhelming the area with rapid actions, snatching people and (if they can) quickly moving on. So, most days your community might be totally quiet and then a day comes where things are lighting up everywhere around you all at once. One of the indicators that your neighborhood is being targeted is the presence of a helicopter hovering overhead. The sound is deeply unsettling.

How it feels

Alienation

I’ve been hyperaware of my own positionality during this crisis. This plays out on a couple different levels. First, and most straightforwardly, I am a native-born adult US citizen, as are my immediate family members. This shapes the types of risks that I might face, should I encounter ICE/CBP; while they have been detaining citizens, the process and outlook are different.

On another level, though, I’ve been reflecting on the isolation and alienation of some of my current life circumstances. I work remotely, do not have children, and am religiously unaffiliated. Staying connected in my neighborhood and community takes some degree of conscious effort (which, to be clear, I try to make).

My immediate family all live in Chicago, and I grew up here, so I have some “inherent” touchpoints. But, with a lifestyle similar to mine, it would be very possible not to speak to anyone in your neighborhood or even city for weeks at a time – to shop online, order food contactlessly through apps, communicate online with people who live elsewhere.

This insight is not new, but it’s been top of mind: the decline of organized religion, civic membership groups, and third spaces has had a very real atomizing effect, and as a remote-working childless adult I can see and feel it keenly even as I try to overcome it.

Overwhelm

Since the crackdown began, I have been grappling with constant, low-level generalized dread and stress. I feel physically tense and on edge much of the time. The constant stream of videos of traumatic events in familiar places is enraging, and the rage feels futile. It feels like there is no good path out of this. It feels like we are under siege in a way I find difficult to describe, especially since I don’t want to pretend to a greater level of personal risk than I actually have.

It feels like my beloved hometown is under profound threat and that sits like a weight on my heart and mind. It feels like the federal government is trying to tear our urban fabric apart, for precisely some of the things I love most about this my city: our diversity, our promise of welcome and sanctuary, our progressive tradition.

It feels like a new type of predator has been introduced into our ecosystem. The ecosystem is trying to adapt – and, in many cases, showing ingenuity and courage – but there’s a malign, lurking presence, all the time.

For example: yesterday I saw a video of an ICE vehicle driving within 100 yards of my childhood home and I unexpectedly burst into tears. They did not do anything particularly notable in the video, and that area is not particularly vulnerable. But still: the predator came too close to the nest.

Hope

The one counterbalance to the dread has been the rousing community response in neighborhoods across the city. Kelly Hayes wrote about Rogers Park (my neighborhood) in particular.

The strongest antidote to dread and despair is to do something with other people to help. To that end, if you live in Chicago, I highly recommend that you seek out opportunities to get involved (City Bureau published a resource on this earlier in October). It’s only when I’ve been able to get out and do something that I have felt even a little bit better.

Seeing free whistles in my local brunch spot and chalked messages on street corners has been hope-giving. There are little symbols everywhere that people care and want to help each other.

I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by the responses from many of our elected officials. Many alderpeople have been organizing community responses in their wards, and the mayor has been firm and consistent (although the practical resistance he can offer has seemed limited.) Many local media outlets have been reporting doggedly on the crisis and providing an important record of federal misconduct. It feels like many people throughout the city, including in government and other institutions, understand the gravity of the situation and are trying to help keep Chicago safe.

Focus

It’s been incredibly difficult to focus and go about work as normal, especially when it seems like people in other places (again, I work remotely) have little awareness about what is going on here. My mind is always a little bit distracted and braced for bad news. It feels very isolating from colleagues and friends located elsewhere. I both wish they understood and am glad they mostly don’t.

I am struggling to think and talk about anything else, while also realizing that to allow the fear and dread to smother everything else is to allow them a victory they don’t deserve. It is confusing to see the extent to which life simply goes on – they were playing playoff baseball in Wrigley Field until a couple weeks ago; yesterday, tear gas was deployed just blocks away from the park.

Final Reflections

The use of whistles and bikes has been emblematic of rapid responders trying to warn their communities about armed federal agents in big SUVs. There’s something very fragile and precious to me about the whistle and the bike. They’re both mechanisms that work best in dense, urban neighborhoods where someone will hear your alert and where a bike can beat a car in traffic. They also both rely on and facilitate communal responses: someone to come to your whistle, another cyclist to take over when the distance becomes too great. And the whistle is language-agnostic, a warning that can be heard across difference. I hope that these are signs of the resilience of Chicago’s communities that the feds can’t beat, no matter what they throw at us.

Recommended reading

Here are a couple pieces that, to me, have helped capture the feeling of being in Chicago right now.

• What I Need You To Understand, Notes from Chicago in Late October by Dan Sinker – the end of this piece outlines some recommendations for ways to support Chicago, which I co-sign
• The Aftermath of ICE by Jim Daley in South Side Weekly

Post image by Hands Off Chicago