An interview with Kingsley Clarke on resistance against Trump’s War in Chicago.
Hard Crackers: Earlier this week the National Guard and ICE were deployed to San Francisco, followed by a flurry of messages, alerts, and coordination as people tried to figure out what’s coming. As we know, the Trump administration has already called off the operation.
Kingsley: Yes, indeed Newsom went to court in an attempt to block that deployment. As you know, there are also cases that have reached the federal appellate courts in Oregon and here in Chicago.
Hard Crackers: You’ve been a close friend of Hard Crackers for a long time. Could you start by telling us a little about yourself and how your work and life have brought you into close contact with people currently impacted by ICE and federal crackdowns in Chicago?
Kingsley: I’ve lived in Chicago for 50 years, most of that time on the South Side — and in what we know as the Calumet Region, defined by the steel industry. I came to Chicago more than half a century ago to work as a lawyer on the right to strike and on affirmative action with Black and Latino steelworkers. My law office was at 88th and Commercial near South Works of U.S, Steel and near where many of the current ICE atrocities are happening. I have been privileged to develop close relationships in the South Chicago Mexican-American neighborhood— the oldest such community in Chicago. My politics, in sum, have been defined by those of the Sojourner Truth Organization, a small New Left would-be revolutionary group.
Hard Crackers: For readers who may only be following this in the news, can you paint a picture of what ICE and the federal government have been doing in Chicago over the past few months?
Kingsley: People know from this reportage,that cruel repression here in Chicago has been intense, resulting in a characterization of “war zone” even by this mainstream media. ICE, and more broadly, federal agents including Customs and Border Patrol, have acted with impunity throughout Chicago’s working class neighborhoods for months: random kidnappings of the elderly, of high school students, of people who are quite obviously U.S, citizens, for what that’s worth. Often a physical beating accompanies the arrest. Perhaps most egregious, the night before Trump’s speech to assembled generals and admirals, in which he declared a “war within” the inner cities, as military exercise, hundreds of federal agents,with a helicopter overhead conducted a midnight raid on an apartment building a few blocks south of where I live, rousting out and handcuffing African American and Venezuelan residents, some unclothed and as young as five….this in the heart of the South Shore predominately Black neighborhood….a rad conducted as if it were on a military installation. Again, very much in the media, National Guard troops from Texas deployed here briefly at the detention center in suburban Broadview where for weeks there have been courageous protests in the face of ICE’s tear gas and pepper ball attacks, Scathing opinions questioning the veracity of federal attorneys and their presentations by the federal district and appellate courts sent the Texans back to their barracks here.
Hard Crackers: How does this compare to other moments in Chicago’s history?
Kingsley: Obviously I am not making a comparison to the more distant past: indigenous expulsion, Haymarket, Republic Steel Massacre, but there’s been nothing comparable since at least the Great Depression, This is state terror. Previous immigration raids, for example in the 1970s, although cruel, were comparatively scripted and directed at workplaces.
Hard Crackers: What has surprised you most about what’s happening now?
Kingsley: Both horrific and encouraging aspects. I was naive — even as a lawyer — about the fact that Customs and Border Patrol performs as if it has jurisdiction everywhere in the United States. Illinois Governor Pritzker said, “We’re not a border state”. CBP replied, “Lake Michigan puts you on an international border.” It’s absurd. They use O’Hare’s port of entry as justification for operating in an impoverished Mexican-American neighborhood 40 miles from ORD. These agents, who one would envision in checkpoints in Brownsville. Texas, are engaging in brawls on chicago’s far southeast side.They’ve snatched not only elderly, but 15-year-olds off the street refusing to tell parents where they’ve hidden their children.
Encouraging: the neighborhood response has been uplifting. One indication: WBEZ (Chicago’s local NPR station) spent a full hour paying tribute to the anti-ICE community response groups that have sprung up, and they couldn’t herald nor even name them all in the allotted time. Every neighborhood — and even in Chicago’s far suburbs — people monitoring ICE and Border Patrol: warning with whistles, sharing location information, filming encounters, an couple of unarrests…..even impeding ICE operations with caravans. It is bold spontaneous resistance on a massive scale.
Hard Crackers: You mentioned a scene at the Broadview Detention Center that struck you. Can you describe it?
Kingsley: Even when protesters are fully legal, ICE agents on the center’s roof and ground have fired pepper balls at demonstrators. I am also struck by the hypocrisy of our governor, a hero to many liberals for his anti-trump stance, in the current deployment of baton-weilding state police to Broadview where they facilitate ICE operations.
Hard Crackers: You said this moment has made you love Chicagoans in a new way. What do you mean by that?
Kingsley: Maybe not new —but a rekindled love: Fred Hampton called in “high on the people”. Less euphoric, but I do not sneer at the 250,000 at Chicago’s “No Kings” demonstration. Of course “No Kings” was mostly white and middle-class, but the sheer scale and energy were inspiring as was the fact that thousands displayed anti-fascist signs and banners.
What moves me most, though, are the spontaneous acts of solidarity. For example, subsequent to the most egregious brutality by ICE/CPB on our far southeast side, 105th and Avenue N, young Mexican-American women spontaneously organized carpools to pick up endangered people’s children from school — something that echoes the Montgomery bus boycott. There have been spontaneous marches in response from Calumet Park, where ICE hides, back to the site of the attacks.
As an aside, 105th and Avenue N is twelve blocks north of the 1937 Republic Steel Massacre, at which Chicago police killed ten workers. The spirit of resistance still lives in that neighborhood.
Hard Crackers: What are people in these neighborhoods doing and saying now?
Kingsley: They are monitoring ICE — driving around the area, filming ICE, sharing footage on social media. An African American man blocked ICE access in Calumet Park, yelling: “Now you are taking Black people!” These are working-class people doing what would have seemed impossible 10 months ago. They’ve even forced ICE to switch license plates on their vehicles in their attempt to avoid being tracked.
Hard Crackers: And in terms of organizing?
Kingsley: I am not aware of much structured organization yet — it’s mostly spontaneous,
Hard Crackers: It sounds like most of the resistance is happening in neighborhoods and the streets, not workplaces. Does that fit what you’re seeing?
Kingsley: Exactly:and people are in the streets every day with signs and warning whistles, confronting ICE.
Hard Crackers: Those whistles keep coming up.
Kingsley: Yes, but beyond whistles, I never want to diminish the more harsh aspects of this struggle in the “war zone” a protesting woman was shot by the feds — they claimed she had a gun, and the usual fabricated accusations which her lawyer says are total lie. From the lies came bold, radical, action by young Mexican-American groups — some accused of physically blocking or even ramming ICE vehicles. Fear has turned into defiance.
Hard Crackers: How has the resistance gone beyond defending immigrant rights?
Kingsley: Many immigrant-rights organizations — some around for 50 years — are now doing things they never imagined. They’re paying rent for families who lost breadwinners, providing legal civil and criminal aid, supporting people materially. But I think they were shocked by how far their own communities were willing to go — people physically confronting ICE. It’s beyond anything those groups conceived of. There is a broad air of resistance to MAGA in Chicago rising out of and tied to the immigrant struggle but border politically.
Hard Crackers: Any other stories stand out to you?
Kingsley: Well, our mayor, Brandon Johnson, called for a general strike on Saturday. That’s something, I say with some irony.
Less grandiose: the Concerned Neighbors workers’ group I was part of — which includes retired steelworkers, Amazon worker — picketed at Chicago’s busiest South Side intersection. One in ten drivers, maybe more, demonstrated fervent support of our ICE out, no war, message:honking, raising fists, some putting their hands over their hearts in reverent solidarity. It was powerful. Black Chicagoans who are enraged at MAGA and sympathetic with migrants — but, to be fair, there are others who say, “That’s not our struggle.” A figurative civil war in the minds of people…
Not a story, but an observation: many in resistance are “fighting the last war”. For example, I get caught up in the same old seemingly endless debates about the proper wording of a flyer that will go largely unread regardless. This habit-ridden pattern, doing the same thing over and over with the same inadequate result, is a grievous error of which we must take cognizance. Just as reactionary generals fought the last war (U.S. using WWII tactics in Vietnam) the left has trouble breaking from old tactics. Meanwhile Trump, Bannon, Stephen Miller, and their ilk are waging something new, far more radical. The left has to recognize that this is a different kind of war— unprecedented not only in cruelty but in strategic scope..
Hard Crackers: What kinds of responses in Chicago most inspire you?
Kingsley: The most radical acts are coming from people who don’t identify as leftists. The organized left wants to hold meetings and curate agendas. Meanwhile, regular people are shepherding children from school, protecting each other, acting without state-imposed permission or coordination….spontaniety we must nurture, embrace, and hopefully work to solidify.
As mentioned, Mexican-American women post online: “Inbox me if you need me to pick up your kids.” It may sound small, but it’s enormous in spirit.
And then there’s Josiah Williams — a 15-year-old Black man who allegedly threw an egg at Border Patrol. He was brutalized and handcuffed but smiled bravely and defiantly as handcuffed and driven away. Further, the Mexican-American community rallied behind him.That cross-racial ethnic solidarity, born of courage and compassion, is the hope of Chicago.