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“It is pretty wild how you can make someone mad by just holding a sign,” my 18-year-old Ro told me, as an irate driver peeled out of the intersection, shaking both his middle fingers at us but managing not to hit us. Phew!
Ro was right. It didn’t take much to turn a perpetually busy intersection in New London, Connecticut, into a discussion forum on presidential overreach, cruelty, and immigration politics — with all the excesses, including those fingers, of the Age of Trump. In fact, all it took was four of us, four signs, and a little midday coordination. Oh, and some noise makers! Our signs said: “New London cares about our neighbors” and “ICE Not Welcome” and two versions of “Vecinos, no tienen que abrirle la puerta a ICE.” The translation: “Neighbors, you do not have to open the door to ICE.”
We stood there for an hour or so, clanging noise makers, waving those signs, and telling our neighbors to be careful about the rumored activity of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) in our community. Cars slowed and beeped, drivers waved — mostly their whole hands, but sometimes just that one lone finger — and some called out “Thank you” or “Gracias!” To our surprise, even a reporter and photographer from our local paper showed up.
New London is a small city — or maybe just a big town — of fewer than 28,000 people. According to the 2023 Census, we are 51.8% White, but only 12.8% of those Whites (myself included) send our kids to the public schools. I’ve always thought that doing so was a strength in our community. And thanks in part to that, I’ve become capable of maintaining a passable conversation in Spanish with my neighbors and the parents of some of my kids’ friends.
Unfortunately, I don’t know any Haitian Creole or French, but that community is growing in New London, too. I worked for a while at a local food pantry and I loved hearing the gentleness in tone as my young Haitian coworkers helped older Haitian ladies with their food boxes. Their voices grew soft, respectful, and full of warmth.
Recent immigrants are my neighbors, friends, and have been coworkers at my jobs and other responsibilities, but when, on a recent Friday morning, I got the text about ICE entering New London, the last thing I wanted to do was launch myself into action. I had a grant application due later that day. Ro, a senior, had a random day off from school but also a looming college application deadline. We were sitting next to each other at the library plugging away and nowhere near done. But I found that I couldn’t just sit there. I had to do something.
I texted a few people, including a friend with close ties to Spanish-speaking communities in our town, passing on what I’d heard.
“Oh no,” she texted back, “what should we do?”
What Should We Do?
That is the big question, right? What should we do? What’s happening in this country all feels so big and hateful and we’re all so small. And the Spanish-speaking and Haitian communities feel so vulnerable. Of course, the Trump administration’s policies are racist and cruel (and the news only gets worse and worse). The administration began its potentially vast deportation effort by flying 104 Indian nationals to Punjab on a military airplane shackled for the duration of the 40-hour flight. The White House also sent 300 immigrants from Afghanistan, China, Iran, and other countries on a harrowing, pointless odyssey to Panama — yes, Panama! — that included being trapped in a local hotel and then bused to a makeshift prison in the jungle.
The White House announced an end to temporary protective status for Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants who would face a welter of problems back home. Trump and company then opened Guantanamo to detain apprehended immigrants from Venezuela only to abruptly airlift them all back to Venezuela. The newest plan is to use military bases across this country as detention and processing sites for people rounded up in ICE raids, sweeps, and other operations. Incidentally, though you don’t see much about this, all of it comes at an astronomical price tag. Trump’s “show of power” putting those Indian immigrants on that single C-17 Globemaster for the 40-hour flight to Punjab reportedly cost $28,562 per flight hour — more than $1.1 million (or almost $11,000 per person). So many better things to spend that money on! And we taxpayers are the ones who will foot the bill. According to the Institute on Taxation and Policy, immigrants without work papers in this country nonetheless paid $96.7 billion in taxes to the United States in 2022. Tell me how you square those two facts.
And what indeed should we do?
On a sudden impulse, I texted my friend back: “What do you think if I go hold a sign at Coleman and Jefferson? Just to let people know — and to say it’s not okay?”
The emojis came back fast. Thumbs Up. Thank You hands. Hearts.
“Okay,” I thought, “Here we go. The grant will have to wait.” I texted a few friends to see if others were hearing what I was hearing. I found out that a bunch of them were in a meeting discussing what to do if/when ICE comes to our town. “What perfect timing, friends!” I texted the group. “I was thinking of holding a sign, but let me know if you think I should do something different.”
The text I had gotten said that ICE was on Spring and Summer Streets, as well as Coleman and Jefferson Streets, conducting sweeps. Half an hour later, Ro and I joined my sister Kate and our friend Kris at Coleman and Jefferson, a very busy intersection in New London. It’s where two two-way streets meet two one-way streets, and a commercial strip becomes a neighborhood. It’s down the hill from our town’s high school and was a strategically good spot for our tiny protest/public-service announcement.
Courage is Contagious
I knew that if I got the news, half of New London had, too. Lots of people call New London “News London,” because it seems as if everyone knows everyone and everything that’s going on. We’re a city of gossips and snoops and curious curtain peepers (myself included). Unfortunately, while it’s fun to know what’s going on and it demonstrates a certain level of care and concern, it’s not enough. The jolt of fear that went through me when that text told me ICE had made it to New London was nothing compared to how that same news affected my immigrant neighbors, but it was a jolt nonetheless. I sat paralyzed for a few minutes, wrapping myself in all the work I had to do, as fear grabbed me by the throat. And I had to work through that fear before I could head out to the street corner.
Later, as Ro and I held our signs, shifting them so different groups of cars could see them as the lights changed from red to green and back again, I thought about how contagious fear is — but so is courage. The smiles, thumbs ups, and horn toots from passing vehicles reminded me that our whole country hasn’t gone mad, despite those screaming headlines daily. Good people, I suspected, were busy, scared, confused, outraged, and — yes — getting organized. Just like my friends and me.
My sister Kate and our friend Kris held their signs across the street, as it rained off and on. While we stood there getting wet, some of our friends were meeting and laminating little “Red Cards” that included a statement the holder could read or simply hand to an ICE agent. Here’s how it went:
“I do not wish to speak with you, answer your questions or sign or hand you any documents based on my 5th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution. I do not give you permission to enter my home based on my 4th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution unless you have a warrant to enter, signed by a judge or magistrate with my name on it that you slide under the door. I do not give you permission to search any of my belongings based on my 4th Amendment rights. I choose to exercise my constitutional rights.”
The “Red Card” had that statement in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole and friends were already starting to drop bundles off at businesses that cater to our immigrant neighbors.
During one of their runs, a car full of them rolled by and said they had heard that ICE agents were at the local hospital and middle school. We promptly packed up our signs, already soggy and water-stained, and went to both locations to ask around. “No ICE here,” a worker at the hospital said. “I would have seen them.”
“They knew we were coming,” I joked, “We got them running scared.”
“It’s not right,” he replied, laughing not (I suspect) at my joke but at my attempt at humor. “It’s not right. Everyone is just trying to make it the best they can.”
I nodded encouragingly.
“We all came from somewhere,” he added.
I tried not to think about what he must have thought of me — wet, unkempt, and free (in the middle of the day) to chat him up and hold a sign that told ICE to go melt somewhere else. After all, “I” (and I have to put that in quotes) came from somewhere too, but it’s been a while.
We All Came from Somewhere
Like all of us, I did indeed come from somewhere else after a fashion.
Nearly 48 million people are immigrants today — about 14% of our total population. Three of my four grandparents emigrated here. Only my paternal grandfather, Thomas Berrigan, was born in the United States. My mother’s parents both hailed from the same small town along Northern Ireland’s coast. Elizabeth O’Mullen left it first, heading for New Jersey to find her fortune far from the provincial hatred of her Catholic minority. William McAlister soon decided to leave, too. There were no jobs, no prospects at home. “You should look up the O’Mullen girl when you get there,” people told him. And so he did. They married, settled in the city of Orange, New Jersey, opened a construction business, and had seven kids.
My father’s mother was the lone German in our family. Frida Fromhardt emigrated from the Black Forest in the late 1800s and ended up in northern Minnesota with her parents as a five- or six-year-old. Later, she met Thomas Berrigan, a railroad laborer and raconteur. They were married in 1911 and had six sons. And I’m hardly alone in my connection to the “old country.” Seventy-five percent of Americans are, in fact, the grandchildren of immigrants. That is how the United States has been and remains a “nation of immigrants.”
As far as I can tell, for both the Berrigans and the McAlisters integration into White America was fairly straightforward. On both sides of the family, the path from poverty to comfort in the middle class took but one generation of hard work and sacrifice (and the G.I. Bill and the support of the Catholic Church and access to lines of credit denied Black Americans). Grandmother McAlister — like today’s immigrants who send remittances back to their families — dispatched regular packages to her relatives in Ireland’s County Antrim with food, money, and all her kids’ old clothes.
And now, here I am in an America where Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Elon Musk are fanning the flames of racial hatred and scapegoating recent immigrants. I don’t know what happens next, but I do know that holding that sign on that recent Friday was a turning point for me. It was the day that I felt transformed from someone in despair, consuming ever-grimmer news (and rumors), into someone willing to visibly resist all that in public. And in the process, I think I taught my kid something — that we can move from consumers to actors in minutes: a couple of texts, a couple of pieces of cardboard, a couple of Sharpies, and we make people mad or happy or supported or connected and become part of the news rather than simply depressed by it.
And in that, I’m nothing special. All over the country, resistance is rising. Massive marches in Los Angeles and San Diego a few weeks back demonstrated that recent immigrants are not afraid. Churches are suing Homeland Security to protect their congregants. In cities and towns across this country, people who do not fear deportation are building networks to respond to ICE raids.
That Friday when I demonstrated ICE did not actually apprehend anyone in New London. Still, we cheered ourselves up, feeling more connected and powerful that afternoon — a rare, wonderful, and motivating experience! It’s now been a few weeks and ICE hasn’t come back yet. Still, I know perfectly well that we’ll need more than a few demonstrators and cardboard signs to roll back the worst abuses of our dictator-in-the-making, but believe me, I’m prepared.
Dear Common Dreams reader, The U.S. is on a fast track to authoritarianism like nothing I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, corporate news outlets are utterly capitulating to Trump, twisting their coverage to avoid drawing his ire while lining up to stuff cash in his pockets. That’s why I believe that Common Dreams is doing the best and most consequential reporting that we’ve ever done. Our small but mighty team is a progressive reporting powerhouse, covering the news every day that the corporate media never will. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. And to ignite change for the common good. Now here’s the key piece that I want all our readers to understand: None of this would be possible without your financial support. That’s not just some fundraising cliche. It’s the absolute and literal truth. We don’t accept corporate advertising and never will. We don’t have a paywall because we don’t think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. Will you donate now to help power the nonprofit, independent reporting of Common Dreams? Thank you for being a vital member of our community. Together, we can keep independent journalism alive when it’s needed most. - Craig Brown, Co-founder |
“It is pretty wild how you can make someone mad by just holding a sign,” my 18-year-old Ro told me, as an irate driver peeled out of the intersection, shaking both his middle fingers at us but managing not to hit us. Phew!
Ro was right. It didn’t take much to turn a perpetually busy intersection in New London, Connecticut, into a discussion forum on presidential overreach, cruelty, and immigration politics — with all the excesses, including those fingers, of the Age of Trump. In fact, all it took was four of us, four signs, and a little midday coordination. Oh, and some noise makers! Our signs said: “New London cares about our neighbors” and “ICE Not Welcome” and two versions of “Vecinos, no tienen que abrirle la puerta a ICE.” The translation: “Neighbors, you do not have to open the door to ICE.”
We stood there for an hour or so, clanging noise makers, waving those signs, and telling our neighbors to be careful about the rumored activity of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) in our community. Cars slowed and beeped, drivers waved — mostly their whole hands, but sometimes just that one lone finger — and some called out “Thank you” or “Gracias!” To our surprise, even a reporter and photographer from our local paper showed up.
New London is a small city — or maybe just a big town — of fewer than 28,000 people. According to the 2023 Census, we are 51.8% White, but only 12.8% of those Whites (myself included) send our kids to the public schools. I’ve always thought that doing so was a strength in our community. And thanks in part to that, I’ve become capable of maintaining a passable conversation in Spanish with my neighbors and the parents of some of my kids’ friends.
Unfortunately, I don’t know any Haitian Creole or French, but that community is growing in New London, too. I worked for a while at a local food pantry and I loved hearing the gentleness in tone as my young Haitian coworkers helped older Haitian ladies with their food boxes. Their voices grew soft, respectful, and full of warmth.
Recent immigrants are my neighbors, friends, and have been coworkers at my jobs and other responsibilities, but when, on a recent Friday morning, I got the text about ICE entering New London, the last thing I wanted to do was launch myself into action. I had a grant application due later that day. Ro, a senior, had a random day off from school but also a looming college application deadline. We were sitting next to each other at the library plugging away and nowhere near done. But I found that I couldn’t just sit there. I had to do something.
I texted a few people, including a friend with close ties to Spanish-speaking communities in our town, passing on what I’d heard.
“Oh no,” she texted back, “what should we do?”
What Should We Do?
That is the big question, right? What should we do? What’s happening in this country all feels so big and hateful and we’re all so small. And the Spanish-speaking and Haitian communities feel so vulnerable. Of course, the Trump administration’s policies are racist and cruel (and the news only gets worse and worse). The administration began its potentially vast deportation effort by flying 104 Indian nationals to Punjab on a military airplane shackled for the duration of the 40-hour flight. The White House also sent 300 immigrants from Afghanistan, China, Iran, and other countries on a harrowing, pointless odyssey to Panama — yes, Panama! — that included being trapped in a local hotel and then bused to a makeshift prison in the jungle.
The White House announced an end to temporary protective status for Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants who would face a welter of problems back home. Trump and company then opened Guantanamo to detain apprehended immigrants from Venezuela only to abruptly airlift them all back to Venezuela. The newest plan is to use military bases across this country as detention and processing sites for people rounded up in ICE raids, sweeps, and other operations. Incidentally, though you don’t see much about this, all of it comes at an astronomical price tag. Trump’s “show of power” putting those Indian immigrants on that single C-17 Globemaster for the 40-hour flight to Punjab reportedly cost $28,562 per flight hour — more than $1.1 million (or almost $11,000 per person). So many better things to spend that money on! And we taxpayers are the ones who will foot the bill. According to the Institute on Taxation and Policy, immigrants without work papers in this country nonetheless paid $96.7 billion in taxes to the United States in 2022. Tell me how you square those two facts.
And what indeed should we do?
On a sudden impulse, I texted my friend back: “What do you think if I go hold a sign at Coleman and Jefferson? Just to let people know — and to say it’s not okay?”
The emojis came back fast. Thumbs Up. Thank You hands. Hearts.
“Okay,” I thought, “Here we go. The grant will have to wait.” I texted a few friends to see if others were hearing what I was hearing. I found out that a bunch of them were in a meeting discussing what to do if/when ICE comes to our town. “What perfect timing, friends!” I texted the group. “I was thinking of holding a sign, but let me know if you think I should do something different.”
The text I had gotten said that ICE was on Spring and Summer Streets, as well as Coleman and Jefferson Streets, conducting sweeps. Half an hour later, Ro and I joined my sister Kate and our friend Kris at Coleman and Jefferson, a very busy intersection in New London. It’s where two two-way streets meet two one-way streets, and a commercial strip becomes a neighborhood. It’s down the hill from our town’s high school and was a strategically good spot for our tiny protest/public-service announcement.
Courage is Contagious
I knew that if I got the news, half of New London had, too. Lots of people call New London “News London,” because it seems as if everyone knows everyone and everything that’s going on. We’re a city of gossips and snoops and curious curtain peepers (myself included). Unfortunately, while it’s fun to know what’s going on and it demonstrates a certain level of care and concern, it’s not enough. The jolt of fear that went through me when that text told me ICE had made it to New London was nothing compared to how that same news affected my immigrant neighbors, but it was a jolt nonetheless. I sat paralyzed for a few minutes, wrapping myself in all the work I had to do, as fear grabbed me by the throat. And I had to work through that fear before I could head out to the street corner.
Later, as Ro and I held our signs, shifting them so different groups of cars could see them as the lights changed from red to green and back again, I thought about how contagious fear is — but so is courage. The smiles, thumbs ups, and horn toots from passing vehicles reminded me that our whole country hasn’t gone mad, despite those screaming headlines daily. Good people, I suspected, were busy, scared, confused, outraged, and — yes — getting organized. Just like my friends and me.
My sister Kate and our friend Kris held their signs across the street, as it rained off and on. While we stood there getting wet, some of our friends were meeting and laminating little “Red Cards” that included a statement the holder could read or simply hand to an ICE agent. Here’s how it went:
“I do not wish to speak with you, answer your questions or sign or hand you any documents based on my 5th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution. I do not give you permission to enter my home based on my 4th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution unless you have a warrant to enter, signed by a judge or magistrate with my name on it that you slide under the door. I do not give you permission to search any of my belongings based on my 4th Amendment rights. I choose to exercise my constitutional rights.”
The “Red Card” had that statement in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole and friends were already starting to drop bundles off at businesses that cater to our immigrant neighbors.
During one of their runs, a car full of them rolled by and said they had heard that ICE agents were at the local hospital and middle school. We promptly packed up our signs, already soggy and water-stained, and went to both locations to ask around. “No ICE here,” a worker at the hospital said. “I would have seen them.”
“They knew we were coming,” I joked, “We got them running scared.”
“It’s not right,” he replied, laughing not (I suspect) at my joke but at my attempt at humor. “It’s not right. Everyone is just trying to make it the best they can.”
I nodded encouragingly.
“We all came from somewhere,” he added.
I tried not to think about what he must have thought of me — wet, unkempt, and free (in the middle of the day) to chat him up and hold a sign that told ICE to go melt somewhere else. After all, “I” (and I have to put that in quotes) came from somewhere too, but it’s been a while.
We All Came from Somewhere
Like all of us, I did indeed come from somewhere else after a fashion.
Nearly 48 million people are immigrants today — about 14% of our total population. Three of my four grandparents emigrated here. Only my paternal grandfather, Thomas Berrigan, was born in the United States. My mother’s parents both hailed from the same small town along Northern Ireland’s coast. Elizabeth O’Mullen left it first, heading for New Jersey to find her fortune far from the provincial hatred of her Catholic minority. William McAlister soon decided to leave, too. There were no jobs, no prospects at home. “You should look up the O’Mullen girl when you get there,” people told him. And so he did. They married, settled in the city of Orange, New Jersey, opened a construction business, and had seven kids.
My father’s mother was the lone German in our family. Frida Fromhardt emigrated from the Black Forest in the late 1800s and ended up in northern Minnesota with her parents as a five- or six-year-old. Later, she met Thomas Berrigan, a railroad laborer and raconteur. They were married in 1911 and had six sons. And I’m hardly alone in my connection to the “old country.” Seventy-five percent of Americans are, in fact, the grandchildren of immigrants. That is how the United States has been and remains a “nation of immigrants.”
As far as I can tell, for both the Berrigans and the McAlisters integration into White America was fairly straightforward. On both sides of the family, the path from poverty to comfort in the middle class took but one generation of hard work and sacrifice (and the G.I. Bill and the support of the Catholic Church and access to lines of credit denied Black Americans). Grandmother McAlister — like today’s immigrants who send remittances back to their families — dispatched regular packages to her relatives in Ireland’s County Antrim with food, money, and all her kids’ old clothes.
And now, here I am in an America where Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Elon Musk are fanning the flames of racial hatred and scapegoating recent immigrants. I don’t know what happens next, but I do know that holding that sign on that recent Friday was a turning point for me. It was the day that I felt transformed from someone in despair, consuming ever-grimmer news (and rumors), into someone willing to visibly resist all that in public. And in the process, I think I taught my kid something — that we can move from consumers to actors in minutes: a couple of texts, a couple of pieces of cardboard, a couple of Sharpies, and we make people mad or happy or supported or connected and become part of the news rather than simply depressed by it.
And in that, I’m nothing special. All over the country, resistance is rising. Massive marches in Los Angeles and San Diego a few weeks back demonstrated that recent immigrants are not afraid. Churches are suing Homeland Security to protect their congregants. In cities and towns across this country, people who do not fear deportation are building networks to respond to ICE raids.
That Friday when I demonstrated ICE did not actually apprehend anyone in New London. Still, we cheered ourselves up, feeling more connected and powerful that afternoon — a rare, wonderful, and motivating experience! It’s now been a few weeks and ICE hasn’t come back yet. Still, I know perfectly well that we’ll need more than a few demonstrators and cardboard signs to roll back the worst abuses of our dictator-in-the-making, but believe me, I’m prepared.
“It is pretty wild how you can make someone mad by just holding a sign,” my 18-year-old Ro told me, as an irate driver peeled out of the intersection, shaking both his middle fingers at us but managing not to hit us. Phew!
Ro was right. It didn’t take much to turn a perpetually busy intersection in New London, Connecticut, into a discussion forum on presidential overreach, cruelty, and immigration politics — with all the excesses, including those fingers, of the Age of Trump. In fact, all it took was four of us, four signs, and a little midday coordination. Oh, and some noise makers! Our signs said: “New London cares about our neighbors” and “ICE Not Welcome” and two versions of “Vecinos, no tienen que abrirle la puerta a ICE.” The translation: “Neighbors, you do not have to open the door to ICE.”
We stood there for an hour or so, clanging noise makers, waving those signs, and telling our neighbors to be careful about the rumored activity of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) in our community. Cars slowed and beeped, drivers waved — mostly their whole hands, but sometimes just that one lone finger — and some called out “Thank you” or “Gracias!” To our surprise, even a reporter and photographer from our local paper showed up.
New London is a small city — or maybe just a big town — of fewer than 28,000 people. According to the 2023 Census, we are 51.8% White, but only 12.8% of those Whites (myself included) send our kids to the public schools. I’ve always thought that doing so was a strength in our community. And thanks in part to that, I’ve become capable of maintaining a passable conversation in Spanish with my neighbors and the parents of some of my kids’ friends.
Unfortunately, I don’t know any Haitian Creole or French, but that community is growing in New London, too. I worked for a while at a local food pantry and I loved hearing the gentleness in tone as my young Haitian coworkers helped older Haitian ladies with their food boxes. Their voices grew soft, respectful, and full of warmth.
Recent immigrants are my neighbors, friends, and have been coworkers at my jobs and other responsibilities, but when, on a recent Friday morning, I got the text about ICE entering New London, the last thing I wanted to do was launch myself into action. I had a grant application due later that day. Ro, a senior, had a random day off from school but also a looming college application deadline. We were sitting next to each other at the library plugging away and nowhere near done. But I found that I couldn’t just sit there. I had to do something.
I texted a few people, including a friend with close ties to Spanish-speaking communities in our town, passing on what I’d heard.
“Oh no,” she texted back, “what should we do?”
What Should We Do?
That is the big question, right? What should we do? What’s happening in this country all feels so big and hateful and we’re all so small. And the Spanish-speaking and Haitian communities feel so vulnerable. Of course, the Trump administration’s policies are racist and cruel (and the news only gets worse and worse). The administration began its potentially vast deportation effort by flying 104 Indian nationals to Punjab on a military airplane shackled for the duration of the 40-hour flight. The White House also sent 300 immigrants from Afghanistan, China, Iran, and other countries on a harrowing, pointless odyssey to Panama — yes, Panama! — that included being trapped in a local hotel and then bused to a makeshift prison in the jungle.
The White House announced an end to temporary protective status for Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants who would face a welter of problems back home. Trump and company then opened Guantanamo to detain apprehended immigrants from Venezuela only to abruptly airlift them all back to Venezuela. The newest plan is to use military bases across this country as detention and processing sites for people rounded up in ICE raids, sweeps, and other operations. Incidentally, though you don’t see much about this, all of it comes at an astronomical price tag. Trump’s “show of power” putting those Indian immigrants on that single C-17 Globemaster for the 40-hour flight to Punjab reportedly cost $28,562 per flight hour — more than $1.1 million (or almost $11,000 per person). So many better things to spend that money on! And we taxpayers are the ones who will foot the bill. According to the Institute on Taxation and Policy, immigrants without work papers in this country nonetheless paid $96.7 billion in taxes to the United States in 2022. Tell me how you square those two facts.
And what indeed should we do?
On a sudden impulse, I texted my friend back: “What do you think if I go hold a sign at Coleman and Jefferson? Just to let people know — and to say it’s not okay?”
The emojis came back fast. Thumbs Up. Thank You hands. Hearts.
“Okay,” I thought, “Here we go. The grant will have to wait.” I texted a few friends to see if others were hearing what I was hearing. I found out that a bunch of them were in a meeting discussing what to do if/when ICE comes to our town. “What perfect timing, friends!” I texted the group. “I was thinking of holding a sign, but let me know if you think I should do something different.”
The text I had gotten said that ICE was on Spring and Summer Streets, as well as Coleman and Jefferson Streets, conducting sweeps. Half an hour later, Ro and I joined my sister Kate and our friend Kris at Coleman and Jefferson, a very busy intersection in New London. It’s where two two-way streets meet two one-way streets, and a commercial strip becomes a neighborhood. It’s down the hill from our town’s high school and was a strategically good spot for our tiny protest/public-service announcement.
Courage is Contagious
I knew that if I got the news, half of New London had, too. Lots of people call New London “News London,” because it seems as if everyone knows everyone and everything that’s going on. We’re a city of gossips and snoops and curious curtain peepers (myself included). Unfortunately, while it’s fun to know what’s going on and it demonstrates a certain level of care and concern, it’s not enough. The jolt of fear that went through me when that text told me ICE had made it to New London was nothing compared to how that same news affected my immigrant neighbors, but it was a jolt nonetheless. I sat paralyzed for a few minutes, wrapping myself in all the work I had to do, as fear grabbed me by the throat. And I had to work through that fear before I could head out to the street corner.
Later, as Ro and I held our signs, shifting them so different groups of cars could see them as the lights changed from red to green and back again, I thought about how contagious fear is — but so is courage. The smiles, thumbs ups, and horn toots from passing vehicles reminded me that our whole country hasn’t gone mad, despite those screaming headlines daily. Good people, I suspected, were busy, scared, confused, outraged, and — yes — getting organized. Just like my friends and me.
My sister Kate and our friend Kris held their signs across the street, as it rained off and on. While we stood there getting wet, some of our friends were meeting and laminating little “Red Cards” that included a statement the holder could read or simply hand to an ICE agent. Here’s how it went:
“I do not wish to speak with you, answer your questions or sign or hand you any documents based on my 5th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution. I do not give you permission to enter my home based on my 4th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution unless you have a warrant to enter, signed by a judge or magistrate with my name on it that you slide under the door. I do not give you permission to search any of my belongings based on my 4th Amendment rights. I choose to exercise my constitutional rights.”
The “Red Card” had that statement in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole and friends were already starting to drop bundles off at businesses that cater to our immigrant neighbors.
During one of their runs, a car full of them rolled by and said they had heard that ICE agents were at the local hospital and middle school. We promptly packed up our signs, already soggy and water-stained, and went to both locations to ask around. “No ICE here,” a worker at the hospital said. “I would have seen them.”
“They knew we were coming,” I joked, “We got them running scared.”
“It’s not right,” he replied, laughing not (I suspect) at my joke but at my attempt at humor. “It’s not right. Everyone is just trying to make it the best they can.”
I nodded encouragingly.
“We all came from somewhere,” he added.
I tried not to think about what he must have thought of me — wet, unkempt, and free (in the middle of the day) to chat him up and hold a sign that told ICE to go melt somewhere else. After all, “I” (and I have to put that in quotes) came from somewhere too, but it’s been a while.
We All Came from Somewhere
Like all of us, I did indeed come from somewhere else after a fashion.
Nearly 48 million people are immigrants today — about 14% of our total population. Three of my four grandparents emigrated here. Only my paternal grandfather, Thomas Berrigan, was born in the United States. My mother’s parents both hailed from the same small town along Northern Ireland’s coast. Elizabeth O’Mullen left it first, heading for New Jersey to find her fortune far from the provincial hatred of her Catholic minority. William McAlister soon decided to leave, too. There were no jobs, no prospects at home. “You should look up the O’Mullen girl when you get there,” people told him. And so he did. They married, settled in the city of Orange, New Jersey, opened a construction business, and had seven kids.
My father’s mother was the lone German in our family. Frida Fromhardt emigrated from the Black Forest in the late 1800s and ended up in northern Minnesota with her parents as a five- or six-year-old. Later, she met Thomas Berrigan, a railroad laborer and raconteur. They were married in 1911 and had six sons. And I’m hardly alone in my connection to the “old country.” Seventy-five percent of Americans are, in fact, the grandchildren of immigrants. That is how the United States has been and remains a “nation of immigrants.”
As far as I can tell, for both the Berrigans and the McAlisters integration into White America was fairly straightforward. On both sides of the family, the path from poverty to comfort in the middle class took but one generation of hard work and sacrifice (and the G.I. Bill and the support of the Catholic Church and access to lines of credit denied Black Americans). Grandmother McAlister — like today’s immigrants who send remittances back to their families — dispatched regular packages to her relatives in Ireland’s County Antrim with food, money, and all her kids’ old clothes.
And now, here I am in an America where Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Elon Musk are fanning the flames of racial hatred and scapegoating recent immigrants. I don’t know what happens next, but I do know that holding that sign on that recent Friday was a turning point for me. It was the day that I felt transformed from someone in despair, consuming ever-grimmer news (and rumors), into someone willing to visibly resist all that in public. And in the process, I think I taught my kid something — that we can move from consumers to actors in minutes: a couple of texts, a couple of pieces of cardboard, a couple of Sharpies, and we make people mad or happy or supported or connected and become part of the news rather than simply depressed by it.
And in that, I’m nothing special. All over the country, resistance is rising. Massive marches in Los Angeles and San Diego a few weeks back demonstrated that recent immigrants are not afraid. Churches are suing Homeland Security to protect their congregants. In cities and towns across this country, people who do not fear deportation are building networks to respond to ICE raids.
That Friday when I demonstrated ICE did not actually apprehend anyone in New London. Still, we cheered ourselves up, feeling more connected and powerful that afternoon — a rare, wonderful, and motivating experience! It’s now been a few weeks and ICE hasn’t come back yet. Still, I know perfectly well that we’ll need more than a few demonstrators and cardboard signs to roll back the worst abuses of our dictator-in-the-making, but believe me, I’m prepared.
The ACLU is asking a federal district court in Georgia to order the immediate release of Mario Guevara, a journalist arrested while covering a June "No Kings" protest, after the Board of Immigration Appeals on Friday ordered his return to El Salvador.
The Emmy-winning Spanish-language journalist has reported on immigrant issues in the Atlanta area for two decades. When he was arrested on the job this year, he had a work permit and a path to a green card through his US citizen son. The charges from June have been dropped, but he remains at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) center in Folkston.
ICE refused to comply with a July 1 decision that Guevara could be released on bond. The Board of Immigration Appeals has now dismissed his bond appeal "as 'moot' because it has also granted the government's motion to reopen his removal proceedings," according to the ACLU—which secured an emergency federal district court hearing on Friday.
"Mr. Guevara should not even be in immigration detention, but the government has kept him there for months because of his crucial reporting on law enforcement activity," said Scarlet Kim, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. "The fact that he may now be put on a plane to El Salvador, a country he fled out of fear, at any moment, despite a clear path to becoming a permanent resident, is despicable. The court must ensure he is not deported and should order his release from detention immediately."
"The fact that he may now be put on a plane to El Salvador, a country he fled out of fear, at any moment, despite a clear path to becoming a permanent resident, is despicable."
In a letter published Friday by The Bitter Southerner, Guevara detailed his experience since his arrest and wrote: "I don't know why ICE wants to continue treating me like a criminal. It pains me to know that I have been denied every privilege and the right to be free when I have never committed any crime."
"This whole situation has me devastated, and not only morally, but also economically, because I am the breadwinner for the home," he explained. "Since my arrest, I have lost tens of thousands of dollars, and my company, the news channel MGNews, is on the verge of bankruptcy."
"But I have to remain strong and confident that the United States still has some caring and decency left and that in the end justice will prevail," he added. "Hopefully, soon all my tears and my family's tears will be wiped away, and we can have fun and smile, triumphant, as we did before, together and in absolute freedom."
Guevara's legal team and press freedom groups have emphasized that his case is bigger than a single reporter. As ACLU of Georgia legal director Cory Isaacson put it on Friday, "If Mr. Guevara is deported it will be a devastating outcome for a journalist whose initial detention was a gross violation of his rights."
"The immediate release of Mr. Guevara is the only way to correct this injustice that has immeasurably harmed his well-being and the well-being of his family, the community, and the people of Georgia," Isaacson added. "In a democracy, journalists should not be arrested for exercising their constitutional rights to report the news."
Mario Guevara is here legally and is not facing any criminal charges.He is being thrown out of the country for nothing but reporting news.
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— Freedom of the Press Foundation (@freedom.press) September 19, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Other free press advocates also responded with alarm to the Board of Immigration Appeals' Friday decision.
"We are outraged that journalist Mario Guevara was initially detained for almost 100 days because the government believes that livestreaming law enforcement poses a danger to their operations," Committee to Protect Journalists US, Canada, and Caribbean program coordinator Katherine Jacobsen said in a Friday statement.
"This latest move allows the government to circumvent addressing the reason why Guevara was detained, in retaliation for his journalism," Jacobsen continued. "Instead, authorities are using the very real threat of deportation to remove a reporter from the country simply for doing his job and covering the news."
Tim Richardson, journalism and disinformation program director at PEN America, similarly said that "if carried out, this ruling would mark a dangerous moment for press freedom, with the United States—long considered a beacon for free speech—moving to deport a journalist in direct retaliation for his reporting."
"This mirrors the tactics of authoritarian governments the US has long condemned and sends a chilling message to reporters everywhere, especially those covering vulnerable communities or government abuses of power," he added. "We urge the court to reconsider and to allow Mario Guevara to remain in the country and continue his reporting free from fear of deportation or retaliation."
US President Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of mass deportations, and since returning to power in January, his administration has sought to deliver on that. On Friday, Free Press senior counsel Nora Benavidez warned, "Deportation without due process—that would be the new normal set by Mario Guevara's removal from the United States."
"Horrific and lawless, this is the environment the Trump administration created to promote a singular approved narrative, remove critical news coverage for communities, and chill journalists' freedom should they dare hold power to account," she said. "Mr. Guevara's case is happening live, with breaking updates occurring under a sealed case shrouded in secrecy, upon which his removal and ability to report depend."
Ahead of the developments on Friday, Benavidez had tied Guevara's case to the government's effort to deport Mahmoud Khalil over his protests against Israel's US-backed genocide in Gaza, and Disney yanking late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air after the Trump administration objected to his comments about the fatal shooting of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
"Mahmoud Khalil was just ordered to be deported for his free speech," she said Thursday. "Mario Guevara is in detention for filming police. Jimmy Kimmel taken off air for his speech. TikTok [is] being bought by Trump cronies. All of it moves towards one singular narrative Trump approves. We must resist."
Ahead of this month's United Nations General Assembly and November's UN Climate Change Conference in Brazil, climate and social justice defenders around the world are taking part in a global week of action culminating in weekend events "to draw the line against injustice, pollution, and violence—and for a future built on peace, clean energy, and fairness."
Hundreds of thousands of people in more than 100 countries are expected to take part in this weekend's demonstrations, which will mark the climax of the "Draw the Line" week of over 600 worldwide actions.
Actions are set to take place in cities including Berlin, Buenos Aires, Dhaka, Istanbul, Jakarta, Johannesburg, London, Manila, Melbourne, Mumbai, Nairobi, New Delhi, New York, Paris, São Paulo, Suva, Tokyo, Wellington, and Belém—where the UN Climate Change Conference, also known as COP30, is scheduled to kick off on November 10.
"United under a call from Indigenous leaders of the Amazon and the Pacific, people across more than 90 countries are joining marches, rallies, strikes, and creative actions to demand an end to fossil fuels, a just transition, and real climate justice," Draw the Line said in a statement.
"The mobilizations highlight escalating climate impacts, rising food and energy costs, deadly floods and heatwaves, and growing insecurity driven by fossil fuels and conflict," the campaign added. "Protesters are also uplifting community-led solutions: renewable energy systems, debt cancellation, fair taxation, and land rights for Indigenous peoples and traditional communities."
From Indonesia and Turkey, to London and South Africa, activists and campaigners are raising the call to ✍️____ Draw the Line against injustice, pollution, and violence, and building the moment for the global weekend of actions starting tomorrow⚡#DrawTheLine
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— 350.org (@350.org) September 18, 2025 at 9:35 AM
According to the climate action group 350.org:
This global moment comes at a critical time when the rich and the powerful countries and corporations continue their colonial and extractivist agenda, while world leaders fail to prevent and stop the genocide taking place in Palestine, Sudan, and Congo, and the governments across the world are veering towards authoritarianism, undoing decades of progress. With every tenth of a degree of global heating, the consequences for people and ecosystems multiply, as seen in the devastating wildfires, typhoons, cloudbursts, floods, and extreme heatwaves already sweeping across continents this year.
“We are drawing the line against deceptive tactics led by rich nations and big corporations to perpetuate fossil fuel dominance and delay the equitable just transition to a fossil-free and healthy planet," explained Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development.
"We demand a complete coal phaseout in Asia by 2035 and a rapid and just energy transition out of fossil fuels and to 100% renewable energy before 2050," Nacpil added. "We demand the full delivery of climate finance obligations of the Global North to the Global South for urgent climate action including just transition. This is a crucial part of their reparations for historical and continuing harms to our people.”
The Draw the Line actions coincide with Disrupt Complicity Weekend of solidarity with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights and against Israel's genocide, forced famine, apartheid, occupation, ethnic cleansing, and settler colonization in Palestine.
Read the full statement: bdsmovement.net/news/disrupt...
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— BDS movement (@bdsmovement.bsky.social) August 28, 2025 at 4:38 AM
“In the current, most depraved, induced starvation phase of the US-Israeli livestreamed genocide against... Palestinians in the Gaza ghetto, Palestinian civil society stands united in calling on people of conscience and grassroots movements for racial, economic, social, climate, and gender justice worldwide to help us build a critical mass of people power to end state, corporate, and institutional complicity with Israel’s regime of settler-colonial apartheid and genocide, particularly through effective BDS actions and pressure," BDS movement co-founder Omar Barghouti said in a statement this week.
"We are not begging for charity but calling for true solidarity, and that begins with doing no harm to our liberation struggle, at the very least, as a profound moral and legal obligation," he added.
The Draw the Line actions come as the world is on track to overshoot the best-case 1.5°C warming target established under the landmark Paris climate agreement. Experts argue that staying below that limit significantly reduces the likelihood of catastrophic weather events, protects vulnerable ecosystems, lowers the risk of devastating food and water insecurity, and curbs climate-related economic harms.
Not only is the planet on track to exceed the 1.5°C target, a key United Nations climate report published last October warned that the world is on course for between 2.6-3.1°C of "catastrophic" heating over the next century, unless urgent action is taken to dramatically slash greenhouse gas emissions by more than half within the next decade.
Trump-appointed Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano on Friday drew immediate fire from many progressives after he said raising the retirement age for American workers was on the table.
During an interview on Fox Business, host Maria Bartiromo asked Bisignano if he would "consider raising the retirement age" to shore up Social Security's finances.
"I think everything's being considered," he replied.
He said that he would need Congress' help to officially raise the retirement age and acknowledged, "That will take a while," before adding, "But we have plenty of time."
Bartiromo: Would you consider raising the retirement age?
Social Security Administration Commissioner Bisignano: I think everything will be considered pic.twitter.com/kqfMm5Prif
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 19, 2025
Advocacy organization Social Security Works immediately pounced on Bisignano's statement, which it noted contradicted statements made by President Donald Trump during the 2024 election campaign.
"That's a betrayal of Trump's campaign promise to protect Social Security," the organization said in a social media post. "Raising the retirement age by a year translates to a 7% Social Security benefit cut. Forcing us to work longer, for smaller checks, and a shorter retirement is unconscionable!"
In fact, as flagged by former Biden White House Senior Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates, Trump said in 2024 that "I will not cut one penny from Social Security or Medicaid and I will not raise the retirement age by one day."
Former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich also rebuked Bisignano for floating a retirement age increase, and he proposed an alternative way to improve Social Security's fiscal health.
"A worker making $50,000 a year contributes to Social Security on 100% of their income," he wrote. "A CEO making $20 million a year contributes to Social Security on less than 1% of their income. Instead of raising the retirement age, we should scrap the Social Security tax cap."
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) noted that Bisignano's call to potentially raise the retirement age came just months after Republicans passed massive tax cuts through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that disproportionately benefited the wealthiest Americans.
"Republicans gave away trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy," he said. "Now they are asking Americans to work longer. We won’t stand for it."
The social media account for United Auto Workers delivered a pithy two-word response to Bisignano: "Hell no!"