It Could Happen Here - Chicago Prepares for Occupation

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

Mia talks with Unraveled journalist Raven about the impending deployment of the National Guard, ICE and the Border Patrol to Chicago and how the city is preparing to resist. Sources: https://bsky.app/profile/unraveledpress.com https://unraveledpress.com/support-unraveled/ https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pritzker-deeply-concerned-ice-targeting-chicagos-mexican-independence-rcna228752See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone.

Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell. And the DNA holds the truth.

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It's about the scariest night of my life. This is Wisecrack. available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. CallZone Media. Welcome to It Could Happens here, a podcast where my longtime home city of Chicago is preparing for a federal occupation. I am your host, Mia Wong, and with me to talk about what the fuck is going on, about a thing that, at the end, of last year, as bad as we thought

this was going to be, was basically unimaginable. With me talk about this is Raven, who's a journalist from the independent outlet unraveled in Chicago, which does a lot of really, really excellent work on the ground, reporting on social movements in the city, reporting on the government, does a bunch of incredible works and some really good stuff on

Shotspotter. Yeah, Raven, welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you for such a beautiful intro. Yeah, thanks for doing this. I don't know. I'm a really big fan of Unravelled. I think most of the newspapers in Chicago are just like just weird right wing rags

and getting actual good news out of the city is kind of difficult because it's like Yeah, we we have a good number now like digital indie outlets in the city but once you get outside of

county especially you know the Chicago metro area is huge and like yeah it's all like pink slime garbage like everything's been bought out. They don't have like real reporters anymore. So it can be a huge challenge to cover things like just in the Collar counties, which is. Yeah.

also where a lot of this ice activity might be happening in the next 45 days, 30 days, however long it lasts. Yeah. So let's, I guess from the jump, before we get into sort of the kind of long arc of ice and the feds in in Chicago for the last year, let's talk about Trump's thing to send in the National Guard and the stuff the people in the city are really concerned about. Yeah, well, you know, there's kind of two things happening simultaneously, right? Trump is threatening the National Guard, which has been a thing, like threatening the National Guard in Chicago has been a thing with him for like a while.

And it can be very difficult to tease out like what level of it is propaganda and what level of it is like really happening, right? But the other more important part here is we do know now, like conclusively that DHS is planning a large operation in like Los Angeles style. So everything that's been happening around L.A. for the last few months is moving to Chicago. This is what the chief of Border Patrol has said, you know, he just put out like a social media video that was saying they're trading palm trees for skyscrapers and bringing a few hundred guys with DHS ICE Border Patrol to Chicago. So it's pretty wild. I don't think I've ever

seen border patrol in numbers on the ground here in the Great Lakes. We've always known it's like a thing that could conceivably happen because we're technically like a border city. But, you know, to be staring it in the face now, knowing it's real, like it's actually happening. It's obviously feels like a real emergency for our communities. Yeah. And I think that's the interesting thing like talking to you and talking to other people on the ground is that like the National Guard deployment is what's getting all of the press. Right. And people really aren't that worried about it.

It's worth pointing out. So we're recording this on the morning of like Wednesday, September 3rd. Yeah. So it's possible that stuff has changed by the time this episode goes out like tonight. Because the situation is shifting really rapidly. Right, right. But, you know, there's this whole fight over whether the Texas National Guard is being deployed here on a federal deployment, but people don't really seem to be worried about the

National Guard, and I think kind of for good reason. They didn't really, I mean, they did some protest stuff, I guess, but like they mostly kind of are there to make it look like there's troops in the street. Right. While ICE and DHS does like the most horrific shit. Right. That's been sort of the understanding of what's happened in Los Angeles and then in D.C., it's gone a little a little bit differently just because they have so many feds already. So they've been able to do a lot of traffic stops in these little fed tactical teams. So you'll have like some FBI guys, some DEA guys, maybe like an HSI guy. I just read in WAPO the other day, they've crashed like six cars in DC. I mean like it's it's really dangerous the kinds of stops these guys are executing their jumpouts,

right? It's not like officer friendly like pulling you over a license and registration please. You know, It's like really violent and they're in unmarked cars and they're like trying to surprise people. So that is, you know, also what we're expecting to see alongside like the ICE operations is these Fed teams crawling through the city. You know, I don't know when they're going to be doing what, where, but like I said, the Chicagoland area, you know, the suburb, everything around, it's very big. Yeah. You know, there's every indication this isn't going to be centralized just like downcountry. Yeah, and like I think there's something that's kind of hard to understand if you're not from Chicago, but like even just the city proper is massive, right? Like it takes like, I mean, I haven't driven it in a long time, but like I think if you're trying to go from like the top of like the north side to like the bottom of the south side, that's like an hour and a half, two hour drive, right? It's massive.

Right. And this naval station where they're basing operations isn't even in the city. It's two hours north in a different county. yeah so there are a lot of questions right now i don't have the answers nobody nobody's going to know until it starts but you know there are a lot of questions now just kind of like how far into the city are they even going to go you know it's obviously um you know what we've seen out in los angeles with these like larger like workplace raids like car washes and home depot and stuff it's really difficult to imagine them executing something like that in the city i'm not going to say they couldn't try, but they would obviously need a lot of backup from border patrol to try something like that, even in the suburbs, which is what we saw in L.A., you know, that's who

showed up those first few days when they were like tear gassing the fuck out of everybody and it was like crazy. You know, that was Border Patrol. Yeah. So what our eyes are on is something like that. And to your point about the National Guard and the press, you know, it's part of the issue is like the politicians, the electives, like they can't say no. to the feds they can't say no to ice like ice is coming dhs is coming no matter what they do the guard is a little more of like a political football for them and and and pristker can can push back and there's like you know the arguments about sending one state's troops into another and so there's more legal option you know all this stuff right but the fbi yeah already has a field office here ice already has

field offices here you know like there's there's just i think also a just a disconnect there because of like the way the news reporting works is like, well, we're reporting on what the public officials are saying. Governor Pritzker did say pretty clearly, actually, like, well, DHS is coming. You know, ICE is going to do these operations and we don't approve it, but we can't stop it. Yeah. And I think before we get more into that, I want to pivot to talk about what the presence of ICE has been in Chicago already. and I want to kind of like roll the clock back to right before, kind of like, I think like literally the weekend before the big confrontations in LA started, there was a pretty big raid at a check-in and a bunch of stuff happened with that. I was wondering if you could talk about that a bit. It was around the time when things popped off in LA, I don't remember precisely, but around then, yeah. Yeah, I think it was like right before. Yeah, you know, they have these second sites where people have to go and.

Some of them are on electronic monitoring and some not. And they check in with ice. And so it was like an ambush, right? Like people showed up. And then they were like, oh, we're actually like kidnapping you. And it was very, very ugly, of course, you know, like agents ripping people away from their families and friends. And we had some local electives, like trying to get in the way of the van.

And Chicago police, of course, showed up. And then there was this whole back and forth over weather. the police really assisted ICE or not. I mean, they were there and they did crowd control. Yeah, they definitely did. Like, you know, it's, it's very interesting what's happening with CPD and ICE right now because, like, at the end of the day, cops are lazy above all else too, right? You know, and so there's this kind of tension of like, well, we support what ICE is doing and ideologically, like, of course, the cops are aligned with ICE, but they also like don't want to get out of their cause, you know? So it's kind of any excuse they have not to do something they will take.

So it's not that we've seen them assisting with like enforcement removal operations, but of course if there's a protest, they're going to show up and police that. And then also like data sharing is a huge issue there. I mean, like with fusion centers and with like block license plate databases, you know, everything. There's just the information is so porous between local cops and the feds. that it's just kind of absurd on its face to even think that they're like not sharing information. Some of these cops are on task forces and they have like group chats together, you know,

with DEA and FBI agents, right? So it's all, it's all connected. It's all porous. They're already working with the feds. You know, it's just they can't visibly be seen assisting with immigration enforcement. But yeah, that was that was a really traumatizing day for community, like an organizer here who was well-known. was taken and she was a grandmother, so she had family here too. So it was brutal.

And then around that time that that was happening, also, I started escalating arrests at the immigration court downtown, which went on for a while and ultimately was stopped by protesters continuing to show up and just have a presence there. You know, these guys are terrified of being docks, terrified. I mean, they just, they really don't want to be filmed. And it's been a very different situation here in our courthouse versus New York's, because I've seen so much photography out of the New York immigration court. For whatever reason, they allow photos there, but they don't inside of ours.

But, you know, protesters started showing up there. I mean, we had been their documentary and what's going on. Slowly people started trickling in and showing up and protesting. And eventually people started then taking it to, like, actually blocking the driveway that they were using a private parking garage belonging to the building. And so they were, like, going underground and then, like, waiting and then using the freight elevator. It was, like, this whole operation. Yeah.

But ultimately, the building put their foot down and banned them. You know, they got a lot of complaints from tenants. People didn't like that the protests were going on. Sure, but people also were, like, in the building, people were, like, in the building, people were like, we're using our freight all there. Yeah. No, put that. Yeah. You used the power of Niddiism against them. Deploy every weapon.

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. It was, it's kind of like a, you know, diversity of tactics thing there, where it's like the people who own property in this building aren't like super aligned with the like people trying to block ice fans. But at that moment, they joined forces. And, you know, so, so that that was happening. And like, while all of this is happening, of course, ice is still doing more dispersed. Yeah. Traffic stops arresting people at their homes. It's been happening. It's happening all over out in L. out in Waukegan, which is up by the base of operations, you know, where they're setting up all of these operations for what's coming this week, Waukegan, North Chicago, and that area of Lake County, there are a ton of immigrants. And they're not surrounded by necessarily like super progressive, super friendly people. Some can be. I mean, the politics of the more short, it's very like purple. Like, it's weird. It's like you can have super progressive people, but then also like it can be out in

the boonies somewhere. You'll see like Trump's. science. So it's not as sympathetic as being in downtown Chicago for sure. Yeah. And so there's a lot of concern from people up around the base about what's going to happen in those communities because there's much less coverage, too much less eyes on them. Yep. I want to talk more about sort of what enforcement has been looking like in outlying areas and what it's going to look like. But first, we need to go to ads. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Well, wait a minute, Sam.

Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate.

Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor. and they're the same age. It's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend

really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. My name is Ed. Everyone say hello, Ed. Hello, Ed.

I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer, and my mom is a cousin. What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. The 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house.

So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the... psychology podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about exploring human potential. I was going to schools to try to teach kids these skills and I get eye rolling from teachers or I get students who would be like, it's easier to punch someone in the face. When you think

about emotion regulation, like you're not going to choose an adapted strategy which is more effortful to use unless you think there's a good outcome as a result of it if it's going to be beneficial to you. Because it's easy to say like go you go blank yourself, right? It's easy. It's easy to just drink the extra beer. It's easy to ignore, to suppress, seeing a colleague who's bothering you and just, like, walk the other way. Avoidance is easier. Ignoring is easier. Denial is easier.

Drinking is easier. Yelling, screaming is easy. Complex problem solving. Meditating. You know, takes effort. Listen to the psychology podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I just think the process and the journey is so delicious. That's where all the good stuff is.

You just can't live and die by the end result. It's scary putting yourself out there, especially when it's something you really care about and something that you hope is your passion in life and you want people to like it. Let's get delicious and put ourselves out there. I'm Simone Boyce, host of the Bright Side, and those were my recent guests,

comedian Phoebe Robinson and writer Aaron Foster. On this show, I'm talking to the brightest minds in entertainment, health, wellness, and pop culture. And every week, we're going places in our communities, our careers, and ourselves. It's not about being perfect. It's about going on a journey

and discovering the bright side of becoming. Few people know that better than soccer legend Ashlyn Harris. It's the journey. It's the people. It's the failures. It's the heartache. It's the little moment. These are our moments to laugh,

learn, and exhale. So join me every Monday and let's find the bright side together. Listen to the bright side on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we are back. So I want to follow the train that you've been on about the stuff in the center of the city versus the stuff in the outlying areas and across Chicago land in general, which is also just massive, unbelievably large geographic area. It has unbelievably large numbers of people.

and also the concentrations get way smaller really quickly. And I think, I don't know, it seems like the resistance inside of the city proper had been pretty effective in a lot of ways, just in the sense of like shutting down the courthouse raids for the most part. But what have things looked like up near like O'Keegan and like, yeah, in the sort of outlying areas

in terms of like resistance in terms of cooperation? Yeah, I mean, I've seen videos out of those places, you know, really harrowing scenes like traffic stops where they're separating people from their families, showing up at people's homes. Usually what's happening is we're not hearing you got it until after the facts. And in the city, there are like rapid response groups going by different neighborhoods. But I think in general, sometimes it just doesn't.

feel very rapid because it's people are are vetting they're verifying there's a lot of false alarms you know there's a lot going on so that's what i've seen that's happened out out in the birds you know it's um kind of like i said kind of a black hole for for news out there too it's not always easy to get information you know we we also had a case of like an ice agent detaining a woman with her child uh like a well it wasn't an agent it was a contractor um contract are working for ICE, detaining an arrestee out at an hotel by O'Hare Airport. That's something that people are concerned about in a more general sense, too, right now, because we actually literally just this morning, we're looking at a letter from the mayor of

Broadview, Illinois, which is where our processing center is, outlining how they're going to be operational seven days a week for the next 45 days, which to me implies like thousands of arrests potentially happening and that facility is not set up it's not a long-term detention center yeah yeah overnight detention is banned in illinois so people have been kept there longer than they technically are allowed to even with like without some huge surge happening so it kind of thinking about what's potentially coming and then using that center it kind of follows that yeah there could be more contractors keeping people in hotels like dispersed around like there's just not enough space at that facility to keep up with that. And so because there are also

backups in the like ice logistics chain because like people have to be, they can't be kept here long term. So they have to go to Gary Airport to fly out somewhere or detention center in Indiana or Wisconsin or Michigan. So I guess there's a couple of things, kinds of sort of resistance stuff I want to ask about. I remember like got back in like 2018. I remember there was much of efforts to like block deportation flight. outside of the airport. Is that been still going? No. I mean, there wasn't a protest at Gary Airport. Very early on in the year, actually, it was like right after Trump was inaugurated, I think. I know a photographer who was arrested, some protesters, it was really random. It was like,

towards the end of the protest, Gary Police just decided to like grab and arrest a few people. And since then, I have not heard of any more protests. or attempts at intervention at Gary Airport. I mean, obviously, it's not Chicago. It's in Gary. So, you know, this is a smaller community there. People have to travel to there. I don't know if any deportation flights are leaving from O'Hare.

I don't believe so, but don't quote me on that. I'm not sure. Yeah. And it's also like, I feel like O'Hare is kind of a soft target for that in the sense of like, I mean, it's annoying to get there, but like there is just a rail line that runs directly into O'Hare and you can flood it with a bunch of people

pretty easily like what happened to like the beginning of Trump 1? Right. We haven't seen anything like that yet. Yeah, yeah.

But it's also like I wonder if they're still thinking about that in terms of like the flight logistics in terms of like wearing stuff primarily through Gary.

Oh, yeah, that might be why. Yeah. The other thing I'm wondering about is like okay, so I guess it looks like right now with the information we have

that they're planning to run their operations out of that military base. But everything that I've seen has been talking about like the National Guard operating out of that base, but do we know where the feds are supposed to be operating out of? The feds are operating out of the base. The National Guard

will potentially operate out of the base if they come, but we don't have a lot of details on like a National Guard deployment. And the other thing to keep in mind is like the National Guard are all younger, people typically is a lot of young people and they have like families and things so that that kind of information like a deployment right of like platoon or several platoons whatever the war is of

national guard um it's not going to say secret for very long right like because we would know so i have not seen anything yet as of 1230 noon on wednesday indicating that that the national Guard specifically has rolled into that base that could change at any point. You know, I don't know what's happened in the last hour that I haven't checked the news. But what we do know is that the DHS operation, Customs and Border Protection, the feds that are coming, they are setting up a base of operations at that naval station. And the Navy said that they denied them lodging and that they have to stay elsewhere, like hotel-wise.

I don't know how that will work because that's like several hundred people. I guess they're going to have to disperse a lot around the suburbs in order to do that. And I don't know the reason for the denial for the lodging. It could simply be they literally don't have space. You know, people are actually like training there, like military and Navy and stuff. Yeah. It's not like it's just empty. So they might not have had capacity for that.

But supposedly they're going to be doing office space there. I think the letter also mentioned they can do laundry there, you know, like stuff like that. Yeah. But, but yeah, I mean, that's like something that, of course, people have eyes on because if you can locate a hotel where people are staying, you know, that's like a pressure point. Yeah, and I think, I think that's an interesting point that comes back to something you were saying earlier, which is like it really looks like this is, a lot of this is going to be targeted on the places close to the base just because, like, if they're really like two hours out

from the city, it's like pretty difficult to do raids further into the city, just along to logistical level and just like, I don't know, just in terms of like dealing with Chicago traffic. Right. Yeah. I don't want to exclude it as a possibility. Yeah. It's definitely possible, but it's like.

I just think when we look at inner city or urban policing, there are certain tactics that like local police use that we see the feds also using right like these unmarked cars more covert operations trying to move really quickly and get in and out because they know that it's such a denser area and if rapid response shows up people start showing up then can get unsafe you know for them as cops and so um we just we do know that those tactics work we know that this is how they've been doing operations so far, with more DHS agents and more Customs and Border Production backup, could they try for something bigger in the city? I mean, yes. Like, we don't want to rule that out. Trust me. Like, it definitely could happen. But I think given the numbers that they are trying to

reach at this point, what we have to prepare for is it being really dispersed and just kind of everywhere. You know, like, and like that traffic, like you mentioned, you know, it's, um, yeah, it's like obviously if they're driving like three in the morning or something they're not going to face as much traffic up 9094 but like yeah there's also the like covertness of it too like you can't just drive a bunch of military vehicles down the highway for an hour and a half and not be sighted or spotted right like so then you'd be giving like you're giving people more opportunities potentially intervene so i don't know i mean i think like we'll see them in the city for sure we'll see them in the burbs for sure whether or not we're going to see like teams of like border

patrol you know in like full riot kit marching through like pilsen that i don't know i think it's something that that probably they want to do i'm sure those dudes would be amped as fuck to like you know be in downtown chicago like harassing people you know beating on people but from an operational security standpoint like for them it is like so dangerous yeah so i just I just, I don't know. So speaking of dangers, we're going to go to these ads, and then we're going to come back and talk about, oh, God. Is rumors the right word to describe something that the governor is saying about the targeting of the Mexican Independence Day parade? Maybe not rumor.

Maybe just statement. Yeah. We'll figure out the verbiage when we return. Yeah. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Well, wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot.

He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor and they're the same age. It's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them.

I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. My name is Ed. Everyone say hello, Ed. Hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer and my mom is a cousin, so like, it's not like...

What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. On 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage.

Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the Psychology Podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about exploring human potential. I was going to schools to try to teach kids these skills, and I get eye rolling from teachers or I get students who would be like, it's easier to punch someone in the face. When you think about emotion regulation, like, you're not going to choose an adaptive strategy which is more effortful to use unless you think there's a good outcome as a result of it,

if it's going to be beneficial to you. Because it's easy to say, like, go you go blank yourself, right? It's easy. It's easy to just strengthen. extra beer. It's easy to ignore, to suppress, seeing a colleague who's bothering you and just like walk the other way. Avoidance is easier. Ignoring is easier. Denials is easier. Drinking is easier. Yelling, screaming is easy. Complex problem solving, meditating, you know, takes effort. Listen to the psychology podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcast. Don't let biased algorithms or degree screen. or exclusive professional networks or stereotypes. Don't let anything keep you from discovering the half of the workforce who are stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time to tear the paper ceiling and see the stars beyond it. Find out how you can make stars part of your talent strategy at tear the paper sealing.org. Brought to you by opportunity at work in the ad council. We are back.

So one of the things that Governor Pritzker has said is that Stephen Miller, I'm going to read this quote. This is in NBC. I'm going to read this quote just that Pritzker said at a conference. We have reason to believe that Stephen Miller chose the month of September to come to Chicago because of celebrations around Mexican Independence Day that happened here every year. And, yeah, you know, he further said, it breaks my heart to report that we have been told ICE will try and disrupt community picnics and peaceful parades, he said. Let's be clear, the terror and cruelty is the point, not the safety of anyone living here.

So, yeah, I guess I want to start by talking a little bit about these parades themselves because they're a absolutely massive event in Chicago. There's like a big one in Pilsen, but also like, I've just all over the city. There's just a bunch of people driving around with Mexican flags, rocks, people celebrating. It's really cool. Yeah, it turns into more like a widespread like car caravan thing. So there'll be like a lot. Yeah. They'll jam up extra drop.

And like here's the thing. I know traffic jams are annoying to like anybody. But when it's in celebration of something, you know. Yeah, it rocks. It's rock. It's like, take the train that day. It's great. Yeah.

I mean, I understand the arguments for like, well, ambulances need to get through, things like that. But I think there's a lot of power in people taking the streets and like, you know, the cars are just the easiest way to. get mass amounts of people around and then there's a lot of like there's a street culture here around like street takeovers too and and this happens outside of like Mexican independence day where like some some people will take over an intersection and do donuts and set off fireworks and like yell at the cops and whatever right it's fun it's cool it's good as how we like it that happens in cities

and I think when it comes to living in a city it's like yeah you're trading certain things for other things and stuff like that happens

and so with Mexican Independence Day it's like we can have like sustained nights where that is just going on and on like the loop will be jammed up like everywhere will be jammed up

and of course there's like the public safety people who like whine about it and and you know yeah this is also like a big like white people of the city get really fucking pissed

about this, like, every year first like, ah, da-da-da-da, look at the Mexicans, love, blah, like, it's just like, and like, like, the most racist shit you've ever heard in your entire life, and then there's the people sort of below that who will couch it and like, oh, public safety, da-da-da-da-da-da. Right. And I'm

going to be really fucking mean to these people, which is like, if you're, if you're pissed off at a bunch of people, like, basically doing their own parade, you are not fit to live in a city. Like, get the fuck out of pierce like fuck off go back to the suburbs you dip shits you're fucking losers you're not fit for urban life like eat my dick the shit rules yeah it's yeah the reaction to it is like so so over

the top and it's the kind of thing where like when when trump is like talking about the national guard and responding to crime in chicago or disorder you know that's the kind of thing I could see him like ordering them in to respond to you know especially if there's like there's like a shooting or something that happens towards the tail end of one of these celebrations which again you know it's like that that's a risk anytime large amounts of people gather anywhere interpersonal violence breaking out right like again is a thing that happens and the direct cause of it is never like people partying the direct cause of it is usually like somebody's got a beast with somebody or somebody drank too much and lost impulse control, you know, whatever the reason might be. Yeah. So I think that is like, I think that's what Pritzker is alluding to. It's kind of like the car caravan and stuff. When he says like Stephen Miller is bringing ICE to interrupt family picnics,

like I don't know where he's getting that information. Like I don't know that that is like specifically going to happen. You know, I think given what we've seen out in L.A., unless I've missed anything, it doesn't seem like they've attacked any like festivals or like public gatherings. rings like that like in a direct way you know i think like logistically it's just maybe not as easy to necessarily like grab people with questionable immigration status at that kind of stuff and if you go to like a place where you know like the car wash or wherever where they have intel that it's like undocumented people are working here it makes more sense so so i don't want to rule out that something

like that can happen but i think yeah yeah i think there's a whether it happens or not it's like part of it is also the intention is to be have this chilling effect like to make people afraid to celebrate or come out to cause that terror you know it's kind of like we we had a situation a couple months ago where some feds who claim they were with like a financial crimes task force it wasn't even ice but i don't know what they were doing and they were meeting up at a boathouse parking lot in Humboldt park like a week before all these cultural celebrations in the area and people got really freaked out because it was just like, what the fuck are you guys doing? And they like went into the museum and were like questioning

workers and asking you to the bathroom. And I mean, just being assholes, it sounds like. And then they left. And then there were like all these questions swirling about like, well, what was this? Like were they seeking intel before these fests? And, you know, people made sure to like, we wanted to still have these fests, but we want people to show up in even bigger numbers. Like, power in numbers. Everybody show up, and that's what happened. And, you know, they didn't attack the fest. And, you know, that was a really weird situation because it wasn't ice and we didn't know what was going on. But I think ultimately, like, yeah, giving in and like staying

home and refusing to show up, obviously just plays right into their hands. And I wanted to kind of pivot a little bit from this into the way that Pritzker has sort of been framing this, where he's talking about how if anyone throws a sandwich at the guard, this is going to be used as like the excuse to do a crackdown. And like I think they're going to, they're going to do the crackdown anyways. Like I don't think that's like. I mean, this is the central kind of point of conflict. I think in like a lot of movement space discussions right now too, especially among kind of like older liberals and like the younger generation. And part of it is is like, yeah, there's this insistence that

well he's looking for a reason to send in the National Guard so don't give him one but it's like border patrol is the reason you know like they're going to show up and I don't know how it's going to go down if it's going to be in Waukegan if it's going to be in Chicago

whatever's going to happen but if somebody throws a water bottle at those DHS agents that's enough of a reason you know for them to say there's unrest like and who who triggered that the cops yeah and like it's CPD

Like, I have watched CPD do this shit to people where nothing happened. Right. Like, it was just people standing there and, you know. Right. Our attorney general said the same thing in a statement last night. Like, make sure you protest peacefully within the law. The Cook County board president, Tony Preckwinkle, said the same thing this morning. Oh, God.

Ruff Winkle's still around. No! I mean, how? All the, like, you know, Illinois, Democratic. God. Big dog people. Like, they're all... Yeah, all the machine motherfuckers.

Saying the same thing. I mean, like, honestly, Mayor Johnson kind of was a little more fiery in his rhetoric, but he's still only going to go so far. You know, like, they're politicians. They can't... They're not going to come out and say, like, oh, let's physically resist ice.

I think we all... Yeah. But it is, like, it is a very dangerous way to frame resistance. Like, to say, well, don't provoke him. You know, it's kind of like living with an abuser or a bully and then blaming somebody for fighting back. Yeah, and I think there's also, there's really, it creates really dangerous and hammocks on the ground. I mean, like, I still remember, like, one of the things I'm sort of haunted by from this during 2020 was in, in Atlanta where someone, like, the person who burned the Wendy's down. Yeah.

There was like a whole, there was like a whole thing where people were like, this is a federal infiltrator and they turned him over to the feds, which doesn't make any sense, by the way. like if your logic is this person is a Fed and we turn them over to the feds nonsensical but like this is the thing you see a lot in these kinds of protests are like people will just like hand people over to the feds and then it turned out that she was the girlfriend of a fucking

died the police had shot and that shit just like happens and I don't know and like that's like the consequence of this of this kind of stuff is like these people the peace police people feel like they are empowered to hand people over to the

actual police and I just want to sort of like take a second to talk to like directly to people who are listening to this to agree with this stuff which is okay if you are facing a fascist regime right regardless of whether you agree with what someone is doing or not do you think it's a good idea to hand them over to the legal executors of that regime like would you would you hand someone over to the SS because they resisted the SS in a way you didn't approve of no what are we doing here, right? I don't know, and I think this ties back to something from we were talking about the beginning of the week

of the extent to which people have become convinced that the ICE agents are all like proud boys or something because they can't imagine the institutions that they had supported for so long suddenly being fascist and it's like, no, actually, like these organizations have always bent this way and their organs of the state,

which means they're going to be subverted to enforcing the regime of, fascism. Right. And, and, you know, I think, I think a lot of people who kind of, and I'm not talking about the politicians, but like regular people who kind of share in this sentiment of like, they're scared. They don't want to provoke or like make things worse, you know. I think their, their hearts are in the right place. Like, they're coming from a place of like, well, we just don't want people to get arrested. We want people to be safe. Like, I think by and large, that's the motivation. But yeah, it's just kind of like a very shallow understanding of like how resistance actually looks and

works in real life. There's also just like a worry for a lot of people that like, well, that kind of stuff might endanger others who want to show up with kids or families. And I think there just needs to be like a separation in space. Obviously not every protest or every resistance is for everyone. But but at the end of the day, like some of these discussions kind of just fall to the wayside once things get to a certain point because like if border patrol rolls through your town you're you're not going to be able to control how everyone responds to that yeah like that that's a point at which you can see a more spontaneous response and and so like this sort of like top down movement organizer level like control of like the protest and how it's

going to go, just kind of falls apart anyway because by that point, like, no one's in control of any. Yeah, it's a, it's a bunch of people running out of our houses being like, fuck, fuck the fucking, like, immigration authorities, right? Right. You know, and I don't know, that's the thing that gives me hope in this situation is that like, I'm going to retreat to the metaphysical level for a second where like one of the things, I don't know, almost spiritually that I believe in is cities that cities are more than sort of the sum of their parts

and obviously like they're broken down into all of these things and you know like they're like there's something there right and Chicago is something that I believe in and I believe in the people there and I believe in their capacity to

resist this and to drive these people out because they can be driven out and you know with enough organizations and enough spontaneity and enough cost imposed on their logistical operations, they can be ran out of a city. Yeah. I think the power of a city, it's not something that's clear until it's manifested and you never know when it's going to manifest. But when it does, if you look at the entire federal deployment, even if they're bringing the National Guard, like we're talking about less than 3,000 people.

Right. There are millions of people in the city. Right. This is a fucking flea in an ocean and a flea is relying on the waves staying calm so it doesn't get drowned and this is the thing that can happen these people can be ran out of cities

they can be chased out their operations can be made impossible they can be rendered impotent and they can be made to retreat and you know this is something I'll say is this like the experience of watching these people break and run because they will break and run they can and they will

and you can do it is the most amazing feeling in the entire world because however powerful they look they are beatable and they know it and that's why they operate with this sort of

you know these like fear shock tactics because they know that if you're not afraid of them they can be defeated there have always been more of us than there are of them yeah

like that's always been true and they do rule by fear. And Chicago will fight back. And there's so much knowledge and history here of our urban black and brown communities resisting the police. Even to this day, I see on TikTok every night videos of crowds hassling the cops or pushing them out of their hood. I mean, like, this is happening right now. There are communities who do this work right now. The challenge, of course, remains building solidarity across the borders of the neighborhoods. Yeah, but I don't think this is an insurmountable thing.

No. I have never been in a place where more people fly the flag of their fucking city than Chicago. Like, it's unreal. We're basically a small nation state at this point. So this is going to get really weird, really fast. Yeah, and it's like, I don't know, like the U.S.'s record of military occupations. is not good and we can hand them another L.

Yeah, so Raven, is there anything else that you want to say and also where can people find your work? Nothing else to say. Our work is, we're mostly even posting on Blue Sky, honestly, which I know is kind of cringe, but we just, we do a lot of live

reporting. It's the only functional way to do it. Yeah, it's really good, by the way. This is like, yeah, it's a kind of coverage that I think is becoming more and more important as things go on and it's really the only way right now to get good on the ground coverage of people of how these actions are actually unfolding

and it rocks I've been there together at events at protests before and like I could I could personally vouch for the coverage being good and yeah yeah and it's also like I mean we have a lot of people on this show but like it really matters when the people who are covering a social movement are people who actually are in them and understand how they work and like have been in these places and so yeah i think it's i think it's really really important work and i think people should go support y'all because it's it's great and it's going to be more and more necessary as the occupation unfolds

What a bleak. What a terrible world. But another world is possible. That's the most important part. Yep. Don't remember. Yeah. And the only way to do it is by building it and you can do that right now. I also do think a lot about, too, how like the first, well, not the first police uprising, but like kind of the opening of this like era of what's going on, was the George Floyd uprising, which did happen in Great Lakes, in the Midwest, in Minneapolis.

Yeah. Like, yeah. I think there is, there's something about this region, specifically, we're generally not, like, the first to pop off, just because one of as many people as New York or Los Angeles. But there's such a rich history of, like, resistance to the police here. I mean, you had Ferguson and Missouri, which is, like, kind of Midwest, kind of south. But, like, these communities have such a strong history. of normal what it's like to live as like some downtowns too and some of them still are with

these like majority white police departments so it's it'll be something to watch how things unfold here specifically yeah and the uprising in Chicago was like one of the most intents anywhere in the country like they ran the cops out of the center of the city like they they lost control for days of like the giant shopping district in the middle of the city that is like the thing that like the Chicago business glitzy self-image is like based off of, they just lost it fully because people ran them out. And, you know, we did it to them once. We could do it again. Yeah. Well, and I think public opinion against ICE is much worse than like CPD. I mean, not that public opinion against CPD is great, but obviously things with ICE are reaching like a fever

pitch right now. Yeah, people hate them. Yeah. So, you know, you're not, I don't know if there's ever been an occupying army that people didn't hate, but like, it's just not going to go well for you when the locals hate you. Like, it's just not going to go well. Yeah, and I think, you know, the history, as it says this before, it was the history of American occupations is littered with defeats to fucking hand them another one. Amen. What Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app,

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