C (3:43)

When.

A (3:45)

When the leaders of Operation May Midway Blitz have just hightailed it out of your town. They came, they saw, they got cold, and they left and went somewhere warmer. And we're not under any illusions. I mean, they did inflict pain here in their attack on your city, but honestly, Chicago, you won. You deserve. You deserve some sort of citywide block party all across Chicagoland. You know, North Shore, south side, Little Village, Berwyn, Cicero, Old Irving Park, Albany Park, West Chicago, St. Charles, Evanston, Wilmot, Waukegan, Aurora, Elgin, everywhere. All of these bylines that all of us in the national media have been watching as we have been watching Chicago, everywhere in Chicagoland standing up because the people of this place did it right. So I'm sorry to say, good people of Chicago, that this does not mean you get to rest. It means now your country needs you to help the rest of us understand how you did it. So we're going to talk about that tonight. Your instincts, your ingenuity, your organizing, your outrage, your whistles, your tens of thousands of whistles, your car horns and your cell phone videos and your patriotism and your love for each other. I don't think that Trump's federal agents knew that they were going to be knocking on a beehive this formidable when they chose to pick on this city. So after their quick glamour shot in the snow right here in the park, they left. They left. Decided to go someplace warmer. They left to go attack another American city. There's some space on the eastern tip of the island. I hear they're off to Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina. There's been hundreds of new arrests already after that. We hear it's Louisiana. We hear it's going to be Mississippi. So heads up to those places. The untrained, indiscriminate, flailing and reckless deployment of tear gas and pepper balls are headed to other parts of the United States next. So tonight we're going to talk about what we can learn as a country from the example Chicago has set over these past few months. Chicago has, of course, come through this attack, this attack on you and on your neighbors and on your decency, as a whole lot of court rulings have made clear. It's been an attack on the rule of law here. But tonight is also about what is going to happen next. Obviously, we know that here in Chicago, you guys realize that they're probably not gone for good, that they may be back. They're threatening to be back in March. My guess is they'll push it a little bit when they get a taste of the wind. Chicagoans I know are also sending whistles and sending very practical advice to North Carolina and beyond. We're going to be talking about that tonight. We're going to hear from some Chicagoans who have been running just a clinic here for the whole country, teaching us what to do. We're going to hear tonight, in fact, from the hero from Little Village who first took up the whistle and learn about how that all came to be tonight. Timothy Snyder is also going to be here with us, the legendary historian who now teaches at the University of Toronto. His most recent book from last year is called On Freedom. It's about what it means to be really free. He also, of course, wrote one of the most influential playbooks in the world for Resisting the Tyranny and Defending Democracy. On Tyranny is a short little book. It is small by design. It fits in your pocket 20 lessons from the 20th century for stopping fascism in your time, where you live. Tim published on tyranny in February 2017. Since then, this little book has found its way into the hands of millions of people. It's found its way into the hands of a pope, Pope Francis, himself a friend to immigrants everywhere. Tim gave him the book in Spanish, which was Pope Francis first language. Tim's ideas have gone everywhere. He has consulted with President Zelensky in Ukraine and Ukraine's fight against tyranny. He has consulted with President Biden's ambassador in Kyiv. He has talked to the World Economic Forum and the UN Security, and he has spoken at the big no Kings rallies. Maybe you saw him there. On Tyranny has been read aloud by Trevor Noah on cable TV and by Rachel Maddow on what is now called Ms. Now. It has been discussed in the German parliament. Its first lesson appeared as a poster in Hong Kong, where the fight for democracy has been long and very painful. Do not obey. That same lesson, which is lesson one from the book, was read aloud in the United States Senate. Senator Richard Blumenthal exhorting his colleagues this year. He said, do not anticipate what a dictator wants and accede to it in advance. Do not obey in advance. Whenever you see those words do not obey in advance, you are seeing Tim Snyder's ideas at work in the world. And that admonition is has wormed its way into all of our consciences. Right? Start by not giving in. Lesson one. One of the other things I'm going to talk about with Tim tonight is another one of his lessons that sometimes comes to me in the middle of the night, which is his lesson 18, and that is be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Tim Snyder somehow got that essential idea down to 6. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. It now lives in my brain every day, and it lives in the world as unforgettable guidance for anybody who does have a tyrannical nightmare unfolding where they live. So on. Tyranny has now been printed in dozens of languages. I think Tim is going to be happy for you in Chicago to know that he started this shred of a napkin, rough edges and all, in November 2016. Trump had just been elected. Tim had a napkin. So he grabbed that, and it became something that I really do think ultimately changed the world. Here in Chicago, in Little Village, somebody else grabbed a whistle, a green plastic whistle and an orange lanyard. And something that small may have now changed the world as well. You can see that whistle around this man's neck here in this photo from the Chicago Trib. Baltazar Enriquez started wearing that whistle way back in June. Little Village, venerable Latino neighborhood, Mexican American neighborhood. Mr. Enriquez serves there on the Little Village Community Council. He told the Tribune the other day that people used to ask him, why, you know, what's a whistle going to do? And he said, well, the whistle is in case immigration is around. And you start blowing the whistle is for people who are undocumented to go away, to lock their doors, to lock their gates and not open the door. And what Balthazar Enriquez is doing with the whistle, and honestly with that interview with the Chicago Tribune as well, him talking about it, him explaining it, him implicitly encouraging other people to take up this tactic if they agree this is genius. It is very practical. And in Tim's book, it is lesson number eight, which is stand out, stand out. Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken. And others will follow, others will follow, and they did. So. The whistle as a form of defense and resistance is now everywhere in Chicago, miles and miles away from Little village where it started. The whistle is everywhere now because it's works. Everybody knows what it means. And I'm just going to, I'm going to show you a quick clip here. I got to say, for anybody watching this outside of this room with this airs elsewhere somewhere, if you don't live here, if you haven't heard a whistle brigade, I'm just going to say pardon the bleeping that we had to do here. Of all the wonderful things about Chicago, man. Do you know how to swear? Swearing in every sentence. Even when you're telling somebody you love them, you're swearing at them. So, Chicago, I love you and it is hard not to love you for this. But anyway, pardon the bleeps.

D (14:08)

This is our Halloween.

A (14:10)

I have children.

D (14:11)

Get the out of my neighborhood.

A (14:20)

Get the out of here. Children, this is your Halloween. How could you do this? How could you do this? Halloween. Get out of here. This isn't Halloween. My children are terrified. Get the out of here. That was bleeping Halloween morning in Skokie. That was taken by Shauna Matin. Shauna photojournalist Shauna Matin. Let the record show your neighbors appreciate what you have done. Shawna told us that school was out that day, so kids in the neighborhood, including her kids, were all home with their families getting ready for Halloween. And these agents turned up and tried to grab two men, Spanish speaking men, who were working outside in the neighborhood. They are US Citizens. She said the agents accosted them and then ultimately let the man go. Shauna serves on the local school patrol. She's one of many volunteer groups that stand guard at local schools throughout Chicago now warning people if Trump's ICE agents, his masked agents show up. Three days after federal agents tried to grab those two, those two men, those two US Citizens in Skokie. The village of Skokie joined a long and growing list of local governments here that have taken some kind of formal action to try to make it harder for ICE to attack people in their communities. And on that list is, I mean, it's a pretty amazing list in a pretty short period of time. On that list is Chicago itself, home to 2.7 million people. Also Cook county, home to the city of Chicago, also the city of North Chicago and Will county and Kane county and Lake County, Illinois, and the city of Hammond, Indiana, and Evanston and Carpentersville and Waukegan. I mean, forgive me if I'm missing your town. There's a lot Waukegan, Wheeling, Elgin, Oak Park, Aurora, Wilmette, Batavia, Arlington Heights. Joining that list of places that have just passed ordinances to rain and ice. Just this week, with a unanimous vote, Most of these local measures came into being in the weeks after 300 federal agents inexplicably brought a Black Hawk helicopter to an apartment building on the south side. Like they were invading Iraq or something. They rappelled from the helicopter because I'm sure they thought that really made them feel super awesome and masculine. I mean, they literally could have just walked up to the front door, but why do that when instead you can make TikTok videos of yourself rappelling from the Black Hawk just like you do in your video games? The agents knocked down apartment doors, they threw flashbang grenades, they ransacked everybody's apartment, they pulled people out of their beds, they pointed their guns at them, they zip tied them, they marched them out outside into the night, including dozens of American citizens. That night, they arrested 37 migrants, immigrants, for supposedly being gang members. ProPublica reports that more than a month later, federal prosecutors have not filed one single criminal charge against anybody they arrested that night. The government only even tried to claim that 2 of the people they arrested were in a gang, and they did not provide any evidence for that. And the evidence that is publicly available on those people does not support those claims. So the administration wants you to believe that they are catching the worst of the worst. Last week, the Trump administration produced A list of 614 people arrested in and around Chicago without a warrant or probable cause. 614 people turned out. 598 of them had zero criminal record at all. So I don't know what kind of welcome this apparently untrained, wholly chaotic, masked fake army expected when they got here and they started pouncing on brown skinned Chicago residents. People just trying to do their jobs, just trying to take their kids to school, just trying to live daily life. I mean, chasing a preschool teacher into her school. Yeah. Firing pepper spray into a family's car. Shooting a pastor with pepper balls outside the ice prison as he prayed for them. Arresting parents with young children in a park, Same park we are sitting very near right now in this theater. How did they think people would react? I mean, did they expect a thousand different group chats would cohere independently and instantly into a wall of oh, no, you don't. Not here. I don't know if they expected that. Did they expect the school patrols and the helicopter spotters and the drone spotters and the 3D whistle printers and the mutual aid groups that ride around on bikes and buy out the tamale stands so the tamale vendor can get back home to safety. I don't know what Trump and Stephen Miller and these masked agents expected, but I can tell you what they got everywhere in Chicagoland. It looks like a lot of the resistance that was born in the heart of Chicago, in neighborhoods like Little Village, where Baltazar Enriquez, president of the Little Village Community Council, decided to wear his whistle back in June. He was ready. He was ready. Chicago was ready because he was ready. And Chicago now they have retreated. They have retreated in disgrace and defeat. And I truly believe that you have lessons to teach the rest of the country about that. And that is why we are here. All right. The threat is, as we said, you know, bound to return, maybe here again in the spring now already elsewhere in America. So we're going to talk about that not in the abstract but in the specific. How do we as Americans conduct ourselves right now? How do we save our democracy while saving our communities and our neighbors and ourselves? Where is the line between staying peaceful and obeying in advance? How do we stake home when the unthinkable arrives? We're going to talk to Tim Snyder about the defense against tyranny now in our country. We're going to hear from some of the people who have been absolutely living it and teaching all of us. And then we're going to hear some of your hardest questions. Really, really, really grateful to be here tonight in Chicago. Let'. My uncontrollable movements called TD tardive dyskinesia felt embarrassing. I felt like disconnecting. I asked my doctor about treating my TD and learned about in a prescription medicine clinically proven for reducing TD in adults. That's always one capsule once daily and number one prescribed people taking Ingrezza can stay on most mental health meds in.

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This message comes from the International Rescue Committee co founded with Help from Albert Einstein. The IRC has been providing humanitarian aid for more than 90 years. The IRC helps refugees whose lives are disrupted by conflict and disaster, supporting recovery efforts in places like Gaza and Ukraine, and responding within 72 hours of crisis. Donate today by visiting Rescue.org Rebuild across the country, classrooms are in crisis. Students are showing up ready to learn. But their schools don't even have funding for even the most basic supplies. On DonorsChoose. You can change that. Your donation puts books, art supplies, and student smiles into the classrooms that need them most. Tis the season for action. Choose students. Make a difference today. Donate now@donorschoose.org local. Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce Professor Timothy Snyder. Hi, Tim. Hey, Rachel. As a scholar of tyranny and resistance to tyranny, how do you think Chicago has done these past couple of months?

B (24:36)

Okay, first of all, before I answer that, I mean, you know, really well, but before I just responding to what you say and what you. You did, I just think it's really important that you're here doing this. I think that people who are known nationally have to go local now and have to go live because democracy is something that. Because, like, all, not only all politics is local, all ethics is local, and democracy is something that we have to do together without a net. And so I'm just. I just wanted to say I'm really glad you're here and we're doing this and we're doing it live.

A (25:23)

There is something that is happening now that is. I think it's terrible in its impact, but it may be beneficial in terms of training us up to be better at resisting tyranny right now, which is that the Trump administration is trying things in one place and then moving on and trying them in a new place and then moving on and trying them in a new place. And they are serially trying to do the same sort of tactics, trying to create the same kind of spectacle and hurt the same. Hurt. Hurt people in the same way. But I feel like we are watching cities. We're watching the cities that are being attacked, the communities that are being attacked, learn from the experience of the cities who went before them. And so I feel like they're training us to get better at neutralizing what they are trying to do. Am I fantasizing about that or is that real?

B (26:24)

Our show is too short to get into your fantasies.

A (26:31)

Thank you.

B (26:32)

It's all good.

A (26:33)

So.

B (26:34)

No, I think you're exactly right. So, number one, like, it's one thing for these actions to be unpopular in the sense of opinion Poll unpopular. But it's another thing for people to feel the distaste. And you feel the distaste when you notice it in your own community and you act and you're physically around it, and then you communicate it to other people. And so, like, there's a different kind of unpopularity which goes. Which goes deeper, right? When people actually, when people organize and help others to organize. The second thing about this is the networking. Like, everything bad that happens is the chance to build the new tactics and the new networks and the network that you build for one. Sorry, that was just a comma. The network you build for one thing, you then can use for the next thing. And so this is training us, this is preparing us, it's teaching us that we're capable and that we can be creative.

A (27:34)

Is there anything that you've seen in the past 10 months in terms of the way the American people have responded to what Trump's doing and to the sort of attempted strongman overthrow of our country? Is there anything that we've done that we should cast aside that, like, tried it, thought it might be a good idea, not working, bad tactic, shouldn't use that. It was counterproductive.

B (27:58)

I mean, in the real world, no. And not in the real world. I think the main thing that we do wrong is that we underplay the physical world. In your opening remarks, everything you talked about had something to do with the physical world. And the trick with the Internet, we all live with it. We all have to live with it. We have to turn it to our own purposes. And the thing that we do wrong as a people is that we spend too much time on the social media, and we don't treat it as an instrument. Right. Like in times like these, you have to use it as a tool. It's there to get you and other people to do things in the real world. And so when you're on the Internet, you have to ask yourself, am I using this to get myself or other people to do something in the physical world? Am I using this to bring people together physically? Because if you're not, then you probably shouldn't be doing it. And so, like, the all. I mean, the physical stuff has pretty much all been good, but we've been too slow. Like, as a people, we've been too slow. We've given them too much time. And I think one of the reasons we give them too much time is this.

A (29:16)

The government has filed federal charges in many cases, what seem like pretty obviously wildly inflated federal charges against some people who have taken part in Protests. What do you think that our national reaction should be to those. To those prosecutions and relatedly to the administration's efforts to characterize all these overwhelmingly nonviolent protests against them as if they're all. All riots and they're all constructed, nefarious, criminal, dangerous things. Yeah.

B (29:52)

I mean, we should all know, and I'm sure we all do know, that this is how authoritarian regimes react to any kind of physical opposition. You get characterized as terrorists and criminals and foreigners and so on. This is absolutely authoritarianism 101. And we should help make sure that in. In sensitive issues like this, the media don't just repeat what the leaders say, because when they repeat it, they normalize it. A second thing is to make sure that we have the positive language on our side that we recollect that not only in this country, but pretty much everywhere. There isn't progress towards these things that we like to call freedom and justice and democracy without some friction. It just never happened. From every moment, your preferred moment in American history, whatever it is, the woman's suffrage movement, the civil rights movement, whatever it is, there's friction. There is always friction. And so we have to have the positive language. The third thing is we have to help people be heroes. Nobody's a hero on their own. Like somebody does a little courageous thing, but the people who make them heroes are the ones who donate their legal defense or the ones who write the articles about them, the ones who celebrate those little acts of courage. That is on us to do, because you mentioned a number of people, but there are more people who could be mentioned, and we need to prop them up. And the final thing, I think legally, and I'm just talking to all you lawyers out there, because this is Chicago and a lot of you are going to be lawyers, we have to go on the offensive legally. We can't just keep waiting for them to sue us and prosecute us. We have to find ways to file civil suits against them, which are going to be more plausible than their suits against us and get them on the back foot and consume their resources and force the press to cover our suits against them. We're winning a lot of cases defensively, and that's great, but I think we should be going on the offense as well, because, like, the things. Yeah, We are a legalistic people. Yeah. But like, all these wrongs that are done to people, all these violations of dignity and habeas corpus, like, those things are actionable, and I think we should find ways to take action. Okay.

A (32:11)

And if anybody's wondering why Trump went after fancy law firms. It was in part to try to, I think, neuter that as a tactic of those who are opposed to him. I mean, one of the ways that works in I spent before I was ever in the media, I worked for the ACLU National Prison Project, where we litigated and advocated for prison conditions improvements in this country. And what we did, we were the ACLU National Prison Project. We were like, we're the aclu. That's a big deal. We couldn't have taken one step forward on anything we did without the pro bono program of some rich law firm somewhere providing us tons of legal hours to get these things done. And that was working with some of the best lawyers in the country in house. And that's true of all forms of civil justice and social justice and civil rights litigation. Even when it is civil cases, you need lawyers and law firms that have time on their hands to help. It's not something that you can cobble together yourself. And that's why I think he targeted the richest law firms in the country to try to neuter them. Which leads me to my next question. I feel like Trump's tools are more susceptible to protest than Trump in terms of changing their behavior. So if there's 7 million people protesting on no Kings Day against Trump, he decides he's not going to watch TV that day, or whatever it is. He decides that this is not happening. They're all paid protesters. They're all members of the Soros family or whatever he has to call himself. I don't feel like he's going, he's going to, he's going to move himself because he's like, distressed by the disagreement of his people. That said, if you get a significantly smaller portion of those people saying, I am no longer going to use an AT&T cell phone plan as long as AT&T has a contract with ICE and Border Patrol. Even a much smaller, more targeted protest with a public facing entity like that can be quite instrumental, whether it's AT&T or whether it is those law firms, or whether it is universities that are caving, or whether it is Disney and ABC or whether it is Home Depot and their parking lots, or any of these other entities where they're allowing themselves to be used or they're eager to be used. I see tactically, Tim, how protests targeting those types of tools of Trump would work. And yet I also worry about the fragmentation of the message and the fragmentation of tactics into having too many different targets.

B (34:50)

I think the important thing is to pick a target that you care about. So there are going to be different levels of organization. So like the no Kings protest, for example, those are going to keep coming and those are going to be national as well as local. And those are moments where everyone can focus on a whole bunch of causes at the same time. But the way that you gear up for those things is you pick your target. So I actually don't think you can go too small. I think what you're talking about is actually a source of hope rather than a source of concern because it's the local protest against this or the state level protest against that which people actually care about. You were naming your targets and then people were spontaneously saying with their target, it's going to be okay, do it right. You're doing it if you mention it right. So it's. I think that's actually quite good. And I don't like. I'm not worried about the fragmentation, I'm worried about the practice. Because if you practice on any, on any of these targets, you're preparing yourself for the next thing. KFC presents a tale in the obsessive pursuit of flavor. Colonel Sanders spent decades perfecting his spicy wings and his fluffy potato wedges. But as soon as all of America fell in love with them, we took them off the menu. Yeah, it doesn't make much sense to us either. The Colonel lived so we could. Chicken.

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@Miracare.Com. How do you think the judiciary has been holding up? Well, it's a mixed bag, right?

B (37:53)

There's, there's so much we could do with that, what you just said, but.

A (37:58)

Definitely put us down for a quarter billable hour.

B (38:00)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or, or it's. Yeah, exactly seven or seven and a half. Seven and a half minutes.

A (38:06)

Yeah.

B (38:08)

So, okay, first of all, with every branch of tactics, there will be people who say it's not worth doing that thing because that thing isn't going to solve it. Right. We're very, I mean, not you, you're all very wise. But we're, we're consumer, we're a consumer minded nation and we want to push a button and we want something to come out of the vending machine and for it to be over. And there is no one political tactic which gets you that. You need a whole bunch of things at the same time. You need protest, you need boycotts, you need local organization to protect vulnerable people. You need the law, you need to win elections. There are all kinds of things you have to do and you have to do all of them. And if you're working towards any of those things, you're doing fine. So with the law, I want to say that all of this work to file lawsuits that people have been doing is very much worthwhile. We have won a ton of lawsuits. And sure, maybe the judiciary isn't working the way we would like, but frankly, in this first seven or eight months, we have won more lawsuits than most people would have predicted. And we've gotten better, and we've gotten better opinions in many cases than most people would have predicted, including from judges appointed by Trump himself, including from judges appointed by other Republicans. And I want to connect that back to protest, by the way, because all of these things are connected. If you care about the rule of law, it makes it easier for judges to care about the rule of law. And if they care about the rule of law, it makes it easier for you to care about the rule of law. But every American who does something in defense of the Constitution is actually making it easier for the judiciary. I would separate out the Supreme Court from everything else. In most countries, the Supreme Court is the good guys. That's the weird thing about Arcade. Like in our case, the Supreme Court are the people who have this huge supply of magic dust which whenever something reaches their desk, they throw up the magic dust and they say, okay, now this is what we're going to rule. Or they have this other thing, the shadow docket. We're like, okay, it's very quiet now and we're going to decide something and give no rationale. So the judiciary, I actually think it's been very worthwhile to do what we're doing better than one might have expected. It's worth it, although there are a lot of lawyers out there who could be more courageous and do more things than they're doing right now. And the Supreme Court is not just wrong, it's also weak and therefore vulnerable. Vulnerable to larger currents and society. I'll put it that way.

A (40:56)

In terms of the Trump administration's interactions with the courts, we've seen, I guess the taboo is gone now in terms of naming individual judges, putting them in crosshairs, targeting them and their families, like, that's just a matter of course. We saw sort of feeble pushback along those lines from Chief Justice John Roberts early on. It had no effect. And so now he doesn't say anything about it it anymore. We are also seeing the Trump administration sneering at the courts and sort of small scale defying the courts in individual cases. And I say small scale in the sense that they're not proudly and openly defying the court and saying, we're going to defy the court and here's why. They're instead just sneaking around and lying to the courts and trying not to get caught for it and coming up with excuses. Do you think that we are headed toward open, braggadocious defiance of the courts? And do you think we should see that as an important red line, or is that just somewhere else on the gradient?

B (42:02)

So I think it's interesting because they're very passive aggressive. Like, it's like they defy the courts the way a sophomore in high school defies the principal. They do it, but they're maybe not proud of it or like, they brag about it one day, but then they're not sure on Monday how they feel about it. So it's interesting because I think they're in this gray zone where they talk big about not caring about the rule of law. So, for example, when the President says that Democratic lawmakers should be hanged, that is talking big about not caring about the rule of law. It's hard to. Or when they, when they murder people on the high seas. Right. They are violating the rule of law. On the other hand, they can't quite get themselves to say that we're going to rule by lawless king. They don't have the theory, they don't have the apparatus. They're not exactly sure how it would work. And they're not sure why anybody would listen to them. So I think it's an interesting issue because it could go either way. My own view is that we are the ones who have to empower the courts directly and indirectly. I do think it would be. It would. If the. If the Trump administration says we're no longer going to obey the law at all, that would be a red line. I actually see the fact that they haven't gone that. That far as a surprisingly good sign. Yes, right. Like, it's very good. It's very easy to talk about all the things that have gone terribly wrong. And that is my day job, I feel like many days. But it's interesting that they haven't. That this much time has gone by without them actually making a direct statement to that effect. They haven't declared a state of emergency, they haven't declared a state of war, they haven't invented some kind of martial law. And every week they don't do it. I think it becomes harder for them to do, or every week they don't do it. The crisis in the real world, they would need to make it happen, becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. So that I actually, I feel some reassurance on these lines.

A (44:20)

You wrote recently about on your substack. You wrote about that you're less worried about the idea that there will be a coast to coast, totally autocratic Trump dictatorship than you are worried about the idea that what Trump is doing to the country may pressure us and damage us in such a way that the country breaks up. I wanted to know if you could just elaborate on that a little bit.

B (44:50)

Yeah, I'm actually much more worried about the republic breaking up than I am about coast to coast Trump authoritarianism. I think a lot of things would have to go right for them. If you think about it from their point of view, what they're trying to do is actually quite hard, and their plans have more or less been exhausted at this point. But what I think we're in is this kind of gray zone where in pushing for coast to coast authoritarianism, they could break things. Right. So part of that, I mean, reason number one, is that they're doing this very unusual thing historically, which is breaking the government as they make it more oppressive. That is not usually how you do regime change. You usually keep the government going and make it more oppressive, but they're breaking the government, which means that there will be crises. I mean, sad to say, and I wish knocking on wood could stop it, but there will be epidemics, terrorist attacks are Much more likely there are crises which could redound against the notion of having a central government, because the central government has failed so badly. Also, if you're in states like California or Massachusetts or New York or possibly Illinois, at a certain point you begin to wonder, what is the cost benefit analysis of this whole thing that we are in? Right. Maybe we haven't reached that point yet. But by but goodness, I mean, you're paying an awful lot of tax money that goes to, you know, other parts of the country or is just being pocketed by people around Trump. And at a certain point, one begins to wonder what the point of all that is. And the other thing I worry about is the clash of federal institutions with each other, because as Trump or the people around him, you know, Miller especially, push federal institutions to do things they weren't meant to do, then they can start to fracture. Also, I'm worried about the economy. So you put these things together, and I think the risk is greater that we'll have some kind of crack up. And the main reason, though, Rachel, I'm worried about this is the fundamental naivete of the grifter. So when you're infinitely cynical, you're also infinitely naive. And if you're a grifter and all you've ever done your whole life is grift people, then you live inside a grift, grift bubble. And what you don't understand about the grift bubble is that in order for the grift bubble to keep getting bigger and bigger, you have to suck all the oxygen from the outside. You don't understand that your grift has limits. You think you can keep doing it and doing it and doing it. Right? So let's say that you're a person who was never rich, but pretended to be rich and became president by pretending to be rich and then got rich. And that was your grift, or let's say that you're a person who says, said that you understand about poverty, and poverty is the result of gay people and billionaires and immigrants. And then you rise to power thanks to a gay billionaire immigrant. Let's say that's your stick. Like, then, Okay, I feel like it was a moment of understanding.

A (47:52)

It's the funniest Peter Thiel joke that has ever been said without saying his name.

B (48:01)

So, but the thing is, if you've gotten away with that, then you think you can get away with anything, right? And that is their mentality. Like, the grift bubble gets bigger and bigger. You take bribes from this dictator that dictator, you do these absurd things, you try to make money on peace talks, like things that are unprecedented. And, and you don't realize this is your naivete, that the only reason you can grift is that there are tens of millions of Americans who are actually out there working and living by the rules. Right? And as you grift and grift and grift and as you break those rules, then that world outside your grift starts to break down and the grift bubble pops. And that's one reason I'm worried about this, is that I think that Vance and Trump in this way are fundamentally very naive. Like they think no matter what they do, there's going to be an America. And I'm sad to say that's not true.

A (49:08)

We're going to be joined by a couple of people who have been doing the work here on the the ground in Chicago. Baltazar Enriquez is here tonight a little bit. Everybody now blows a whistle when they see immigration agents from Chicago, New Orleans. And Bazar is here tonight with Pastor Julie Contreras of United Giving Hope, which is based in the Severb of Waukegan. Pastor Contreras ministers to migrants and their families throughout Chicagoland. Again, Pastor Julie Contreras, Baltazar Enriquez, we are honored to have both of you here. Thank you so much for being here.

D (50:00)

Thank you for having us.

A (50:02)

So, Baltazar, let me, let's ask you first just to tell us this story. When you started wearing a whistle, why the whistle occurred to you and how it sort of took off from a small scale idea to being as big.

C (50:20)

As it is at the beginning, I just wanted to inform my community about ICE agents and to take cover. So I actually have a whistle.

A (50:34)

There it is.

C (50:36)

And you know, people said, what is the whistle going to do? And I was to inform the community that ICE agents are around. If you are undocumented, lock your doors, lock your case, lock your windows, and, you know, stay safe. And people were still doubting it. And then we talked to our brothers and sisters over in la and they said, baltazar, when they came, they came like savages. And they came through our schools, through our parks and our hospitals, and they turned off the cell phone towers with a Stingray. And then I said, well, you can't turn off the whistle because. And before I go on, I want to thank my volunteers, Lily, Alex, Liz, I don't know where they're at. And I also want to thank my mom because she's so scared for me. You know, but my volunteers are what made this campaign happen. I was just the one with the idea. They came out in the morning and patrolled the neighborhood. And when we will see ICE agents, you know, and it's four or five of us blowing the whistle, they got freaked out. They say, what? What is this? But the people started then, you know, going away and rapidly understanding that the whistle was a form to. I mean, a method to inform ourselves. And we will blow the whistle every Wednesday under the arch at five o' clock for one hour. We'll piss out whistles and know your right cards. And we had ice, ice out holsters. And, you know, it started with 13 of us. And it got to a point where we were like 600 of us.

A (52:34)

Wow. Wow.

C (52:42)

And the movement grew like wildfire. You know, people were now passing out wessels on the north side, on the south side, in the suburbs. And, you know, it just became a method to fight this administration, to fight Gregory Bombino. And without guns, without violence, without impeding. But we were going to blow our whistles.

A (53:09)

Pastor Contreras, you are based in Waukegan, and I'm not from here, but that's like an hour north, is that right? Yes, ma'.

B (53:15)

Am.

D (53:15)

The Illinois, Wisconsin borderline?

A (53:17)

Yes.

D (53:17)

Okay, Walktown.

A (53:19)

Did you guys in Waukegan know that this attack on Chicago was coming to you as well? That it wouldn't just be in the city proper?

D (53:26)

Yes, I believe the operation that was done was done kind of at the same time. It wasn't just Chicago. So there's operatives and the raids, that's something. That's a continuum, no matter how it is. So Midwest Blitz, there was Operation Buckshot years ago, Operation Big Rig. There's a lot of operations that they run throughout their courses. And I think it's important for us to educate individuals so they. We know that this operatives are everywhere 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. We can't let our defenses down. This is about defending and protecting our families.

A (54:10)

Can you talk a little bit about the way that you organize around those principles, defending and protecting your families? What kind of training do you do? What kind of community building have you done?

D (54:20)

So I'm a server of the truth and liberation of all God's people. I. I grew up on 18th street in Pilsen. I love my sovereign nation. I believe in democracy. They have their operative. We have Operation Save the American Children of America. Bringing unaccompanied minors across that border to be reunified with their Families and safe. They're children. They're not criminals. We have trained with U.S. customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol, HSI, the FBI, to sit on a table so that we can talk about the base and the reality. We're very strong with the missing migrant program. We have human beings, women, children, men, that are brought across the border in an illegal format by criminals, real criminals. Those are the individuals that Border Patrol was trained to catch and incarcerate. Unfortunately, today, this president is allowing them to lose their integrity. But we need to be strong as America. We need not to lose our humanity. Because the real enemy, the real criminals are out there, but they're not Juan Maria Jose or Guadalupe. They are just guilty of coming here for a better life. And the unaccompanied minors in this nation are children. They're not criminals.

A (55:56)

Balthazar One of the things that seems really important about the organizing that you've done in Little Village is that this is not organizing that started when Operation Midway Blitz started. Even the whistle specifically started this summer in June. You're the president of the Little Village Community Council. I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about that, about being organized now, being organized in advance before a concerted attack like this starts. It seems to me like that really puts you on better footing once this new crisis arrived.

C (56:32)

So we been organizing since January 20, when President Trump was inaugurated and we were out there. It was really cold. It's like below something zero. And we had a caravan of 12 people, and we went around to the temp agencies and we gave the employers or the employees know your right cards. We said, in case there's a raid at your job site, you know, don't say nothing, don't sign nothing, and ask for an attorney. Then we went to our day laborers. They'd stand out at Home Depot and also educated them on knowing their rights. And then we had workshops after mass at the schools, and we prepared people to know about their rights, not to open the door without a judicial warrant signed by a judge. And we showed them all the tricks that they used. And even Tom Holman said Chicago was a very difficult city. And, you know, I have to say we have to educate our community because education is key. If you're educated, they're not going to do much to you. But if you're not educated, they would take advantage. And that's why so many people has out of court themselves, because they didn't know that they have rights. And right now we're educating our community about the Constitution. What is the purpose of the Constitution. And we have to defend the Constitution from foreign and domestic terrorism.

A (58:40)

Pastor Contreras, I understand that part of your work, including literally today, is supporting families as they go to immigration hearings in court. Talk about educating people in terms of the Constitution and the protections that we were led to believe that we had. I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about the situation that you're seeing with families in court today.

D (59:02)

Praise God. The judge continued the hearing. It's a family that was waiting a decade, but we walk on the bridge with unaccompanied minors, introduce them to Customs and Border Protection, because children are the most vulnerable. And in this current time, President Donald Trump wants to send ICE agents out to the homes of these unaccompanied minors and try to accuse their parents of trafficking their own children to reunify their family. And this is something that we are not free today in the United States of America. Whether you're documented or undocumented, this man is destroying our democracy. And children, again, are not criminals. They're innocent children. And we stay with those families. As recent as three weeks ago, one of our unaccompanied Honduran children that came during the influx, Marjorie Urbina Contreras, became a US Citizen.

A (60:13)

Oh, wow.

D (60:17)

That is what America is about. That is who we are. And his politics are not appreciated. And our senators and our congressmen need to do much better jobs.

A (60:41)

I wanted to ask you about something that I think has made a lot of people in Chicago mad, at least from me, trying to follow what people are talking about here and what we've been covering. And that is the presence and the role of state and local police. While this attack was happening in Chicago, during raids or at protests, we've heard a lot of people saying that the police have been cooperating with ICE way too much, even though they're not supposed to be doing it. They've been helping ICE locally. The line is that they're only supposed to be keeping the peace. But we've heard a lot of complaints that they've been doing more than that, that they've essentially been taking the part, taking part in what the feds are doing. Is that a fair critique? How do you see that?

C (61:27)

So in Little Village, we have the 10th district and when they came and did a raid, they were trying to arrest an 11 year old girl and the police was being complicit. The community was trying to, they were trying to avoid from her getting arrested by ICE agents. And the police started beating on the people instead of protecting us they were protecting them. And you always see them, their back is towards the ICE agents and their front is towards us. If they were protecting us, their backs will be at us and protecting us from them. So we have seen the Chicago Police Department being complicit and working with ICE agents. And it's always going to happen because there's that law enforcement, that brotherhood that always is going to exist. So if they were really protecting the residents of the city of Chicago, they should be arresting those agents because they're trying to arrest an 11 year old girl. She is not in any way in any shape a criminal or a harm to them. But this is something that we saw in our neighborhood and that now has traumatized our children, has added another layer of trauma and nobody's being held accountable. And this is something that we have seen in the city of Chicago with adam Cholito, a 13 year old boy that was killed by the Chicago Police Department. And the officer is getting disability checks. He's suffering now. And the reality is that the community is suffering and we are the ones that need the resources. We need a mental health clinic in Little Village. Little Village is on fire and all we have is a bucket of water. And that's how our neighborhood is treated in Chicago. And minorities are especially Latinos in Chicago are, you know, we, we get crumbs. We don't get all the resources. We have to put 10 mothers in a hunger strike just to get a high school. We have to fight for our lungs because our air is being polluted every day. So this is how we have to struggle every day, just because of the texture of our skin and for being Latino. So yes, we have seen CPD being very complicit and collaborating with the ICE agents during these raids.

A (63:51)

Tim, can I ask you to reflect on that for a moment? The idea of local police vis a vis the feds in this kind of a moment.

B (64:01)

In places like this, there's, I mean, as important as the local cases. The point that Balthasar is making goes to the texture of what kind of government we have on the scale of the nation. One of the things that makes it hard to have a tyrannical regime change is federalism and local precincts. The decentralization of the United States is a tremendous advantage as compared to, for example, Germany. One of the things they had to do in Germany to make that transition the 30s was to turn all the little national, all the little police forces into one larger group. Right. And so when you find the. When the federal government uses undocumented People as a pretext to get cooperation going and then centralization going. That's a bad sign, not just for the people who are directly affected, but for. For all of us who are hoping to have some kind of. Of normal rule of law existence.

A (65:04)

Pastor Contreras, let me ask you about what you're seeing from faith communities. It has been moving to see again from the outside, to see different types of clergy from different communities, from different churches, from different types of faith traditions show up physically show up, either at Broadview or in the street, at mass protests or sometimes in efforts to try to protect people who were being accosted by these agents. But as a pastor yourself, how do you see the faith community's response thus far? Has this been the kind of leadership that you want?

D (65:39)

So just recently in Little Village, since I'm from Pilsen and my dad was one of the first Mexican Americans that owned a Shell gas station in the Midwest on 26 in Kedzi, we grew up partly there, too. So we were both neighborhoods growing up in a segregated Chicago. Right. I gave Balthazar a call, and we had heard that Commander Balvino was on his way to, I guess, box with Governor Pritzner. And we said, we're going to go there and we're going to shut down the street. We had a few flustered aldermen that day, but we shut that street down with peace and prayer. And we had pastors and priests and people from the Muslim faith, the Jewish faith, there praying. A young man from a. He was a union member, but he said, I'm Jewish and I know how to pray. So he made his grandma proud that day. He did a good mitzvah. So for me, what amazes me today across the nation as a person, person of faith, what scares me, what I'm always telling the immigrant community, que todo vas tarbien. Everything's gonna be good if we put God first. Because without him and without this Blessed Virgin de Guadalupe, who crosses the border every day without documents, we need to have faith. And it concerns me that we have people across the nation worried about a Muslim mayor in New York when we got a felon as the President of the United States. And something important. I have border patrol agents that help me every day save lives at the US Mexican border. And that border doesn't belong to the United States or to Mexico. It's by pure corruption. But what I want people to know that's important is that we have to be united as one in this time if we want to save our nation's Humanity, democracy, it's going to be there. And the will of the United States, of America, of our people, is going to be the law of the land. But it needs to be awoken, because we're still not free. And we haven't been free for a long time. We've been allowing ourselves to believe in something that doesn't exist. And that's the politics. And I don't know about all of you, but to my barrio, U.S. border Patrol came in my barrio like a thief in the night and has stolen families, children, mothers and fathers. And it's not just today, not just when the cameras are on us today. We have been the hunted. We have been the incarcerated and the deported for decades. From Clinton to Bush to Biden to.

C (68:45)

Obama.

D (68:48)

Trump, there's been a fire burning for decades, and Trump is just putting more wood on it. But he, like every other president, their term is going to end. And I'm going to pray for his soul, because when he's traveling up that river to what I believe to be into the great unknown, he's going to need our prayers or maybe a few.

A (69:16)

Drops of water, a gallon of water. Pastor Julie Contreras, Baltasar Enriquez, it is, as I said, an honor to have you both with us here tonight.

C (69:26)

Thank you.

A (69:26)

Thank you so, so much for being here. It. All right, so we got a lot of questions from you guys. Really, really good questions in preparation for tonight's event. So we're going to go to some of those now, which is exciting. The first question, I am told, I was told I have to go to a specific first question from dawn from Mount Prospect, and I was told that I needed to go to this one first and I needed to know that this is dawn from Mount Prospect. I have not seen this, but I am told that it is dawn in this video. Are you guys looking for an actual person? Are you looking for an actual person?

C (70:40)

Yeah.

A (70:42)

Why is there a police helicopter for one person? This is crazy. Do you. Do you know where you are? Like you're in a sleepy little suburb of Chicago. We don't want you here. We don't want ice here. October 19th, Mount Prospect, Illinois. Dawn from Mount Prospect. Hi. Nice to meet you. Hi, it's a pleasure. Hi.

D (71:13)

Thank you.

A (71:16)

So I know you have a question for us. First of all, tell us what was going on there and then tell us.

B (71:20)

What your question is.

A (71:21)

So that was the day after the no Kings rally that I was a lead safety marshal at in Mount Prospect. I was absolutely flabbergasted that we had this massive ice sweep in our little tiny neighborhood. Just strolling down our sidewalk claiming to look for an escaped criminal. They told me that they were looking for a murder suspect, a sex offender in reality. We found out after the fact that they had conducted a raid at Walmart and somebody ran, wow, that's who they were looking for. With a helicopter. 10, like, heavily. They looked like armed vehicles and 20 military agents marching up and down our streets. When you shouted at that person and he hustled away, were you on your own? Was there anybody else around at that particular moment? I was. You saw another gentleman walking towards me. But at other points in time, my neighbors came out of their houses and started shouting expletives. Swearing is a form of prayer. It's a form of resistance. It's a form of resistance, yeah. Well, thank you for letting us show that and thank you for being here tonight. You have a question for us? I do. So over the past several months, I have witnessed a militarized ICE sweep in my neighborhood, a landscaper abducted from my parkway, and my village board refused to limit cooperation with civil immigration enforcement. What concrete steps can residents take beyond voting to protect civil liberties? When local leaders show indifference.

B (73:25)

Okay, number one is that the local leaders who show indifference have to be given names and profiles. And that means taking local media seriously. It means looking for people who have bigger than local profiles. It means trying to make the experience, which you've articulated quite beautifully, into an experience which a lot of other people understand. Taking what is local and making it seem bigger than local is a way of changing the local.

A (73:56)

Right.

B (73:58)

A second thing to do is to take your experience and moralize it. Talk about what's right and wrong in the biggest possible terms, Change the atmosphere, the moral atmosphere around what's going on. That can have long term effects as well. And the third thing, and you know this, I'm sure very well, given what you've already told us about yourself, is to help the organizations. Because, yeah, the people you elect sometimes don't do the things you want to do. But as we know and as we have seen, there are groups that we can join and that we can fund. Right. Sometimes a little bit of money can help as well. So those are my three little bits of advice. And then the other thing you know very well, since you're protesting and organization organizing is that. And this is just kind of for everybody all the time, you just keep doing the thing because the news is usually bad. The news is almost always bad. But you win by continuing to do the thing and by not giving up. Hi, I'm Craig from Highland Park.

A (75:09)

Hi, Greg.

B (75:10)

What are your thoughts on the strength of the autocratic movement in the United States? Is it centered in Trump because of his popularity with still a large segment of the population, it seems, or is there enough drive coming from behind the.

A (75:23)

Scenes players like the tech oligarchs to.

B (75:25)

Keep the movement together after he's no longer in power?

A (75:29)

So the strength of the maga movement of the, you know, it's a. I think it's very hard to answer because it involves making some predictions and I'm terrible at that. So for me, it's hard to answer. But one of the things that I feel like it's healthy to resist is the tendency to personalize what they're doing, to think that this is all sprung from Donald Trump's mind or that there's. There's something important about Elon Musk's personality that explains what's going to happen next to our country? One of the things that I found really helpful in Tim's work is recognizing that all of these guys are the same, that they're all a really, really predictable type. And it doesn't mean that they're not individuals and they're not human beings. I'm not trying to make them out to be less than that. But I mean, what Trump has done and what his project is for the country is exactly the same project as all of these other guys. I mean, they all have weird hair, they all like decorate stuff with gold, like even stuff that shouldn't have decorations on it, like putting dingleberries on everything. They all buy the media, right? They have their billionaire fence by the media. They're all incredible thieves. They all have the. They are so in love with the sound of their own voice that they're. Their speeches start off at 45 minutes and by the end of their, you know, their first period of rule, their speeches are four and a half hours and they don't even notice that people are walking out like they do. They have all of these similar characteristics. And so therefore I feel like we can kind of just generically say, like, oh, we've got a strongman challenge in this country. We don't need to get too into the various soap operas of what's happening between these guys, because I think it is. It's power politics rather than it is personal. Hi. Hi there. I'm Heather from Denver, Colorado.

D (77:56)

Hi, Hub.

A (77:57)

Hi. It's a, It's a far out Chicago suburb. Yeah, it was a bit of a drought.

B (78:03)

It's a Westland. Yes.

A (78:06)

My husband and I are Gen X parents of a 10 year old. We've marched, we've voted, we've spoken out, we continue to do so. But lately we were asking ourselves, when do we, when is the time to leave? We thought our red line would be mandated religion in public schools, but now with the targeted political persecution and the erosion of higher education, it feels like those are coming first. How do you know when your child's future and their right to think freely are no longer safe here? Wow, that's a difficult question. I mean, Tim, I, I want to ask you to answer this because Tim now teaches at the University of Toronto and not at Yale. And I know that that's a decision that is more complicated than I think you're given credit for, broadly speaking. But I guess if you'd answer her directly in terms of how to think about this and how you and your family thought about it.

B (79:07)

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to put those two things together because, like, in addition to this political work which Rachel's helping me to do here, I'm also a person. And I kind of moved to Toronto because they have a major league team downtown. And I moved to Toronto because of things like it did have to do with my kids, but not for a very dramatic reason. And it had to do with my spouse and it had to do with actually wanting to be able to organize my life in a way which is more public facing than Yale allowed me to do. And politically, honestly, I mean, since you asked, it had to do partly with wanting to teach at a big public school rather than a smaller private school. So, like, I can't link these things too well. But what I will say is this. Some people are going to go and they may have good reasons for going. And it's very important when people, this is a history point. When people go, it's very important to keep the connections and to network because domestic political opposition needs the things that people can do abroad. So sitting in Canada, I notice how a lot of conversations in my university are a lot easier than they are in American universities. That's just a fact. And there are public discussions, sad to say, which are a lot easier to have in Canada now than in the US So if people go, you have to stay friends with them and take advantage of that and try to turn that diaspora into something positive. My general answer about the line, right here's what I. This is like, this is what I tell everybody. I'll tell you too. You have to decide the line for yourself. The trick is not deciding what it is. Here's the trick, it's actually doing the thing. So if, if there is a line, you have to write it down, tell your friends, this is the time I'm going to go. And then when you reach the line, if that's what you really believe, then you have to, to do it. Because if you, it's like everything else, if you don't do what you think you're going to do, you will then normalize. Right. So some people are going to go, it's going to happen. Some people already have left. And I'm afraid some people have left for very good reasons. But like with everything else, you can't, you can't normalize. You got to draw the line yourself. So, you know, in the meantime, like, be as courageous as you can is one of the lessons of on tyranny. And I like it's be as courageous as you can for a reason. Some of us are in a position to be more courageous. Some of us have reserves of courage. Some of us have support systems. Not everybody does. And it's very important that as we move into the situation where we've been doing unconventional things, that we're also empathetic and we're also supportive.

A (81:44)

Right on. Hi, I'm Marie from Mundelein. Hi, Marie. Hi. So I attended the mass outside the Broadview ICE facility just recently, a couple weeks ago. What are your thoughts regarding the election of a Chicago born Pope at this crucial time in US History? I think that it turns out to have been a bad idea for the Trump administration. I think I said something like this on the air the other day, but like, in what universe do you take a Catholic church that has just said goodbye to Pope Francis and his message of not just empathy, but solidarity with immigrants the world over? You take a Catholic Church that is primed on the prayers of Pope Francis. He is then replaced by a new Pope who is may have lots of differences with Pope Francis, but it turns out not on this point. And he is American and he is from Chicago. And then you, as the Trump administration decide you're going to go attack Chicago immigrants like it was just, it was like it was grown in a lab to radicalize American Catholics. And I was born and raised in a conservative Catholic family and I'm a Catholic myself after having not considered myself that for some time. But I do consider, consider myself to be back in the faith. And I think that one of the things that if you are a member of the Catholic Church, the Pope and the actions of the church and the actions of the bishops honestly matter in terms of how you think about morality and our responsibilities as Catholics and as Christians. But I also think beyond that. A pope who speaks to a universal conscience and a universal heart can move the whole world, people of all faiths. And there is something about, again, whether or not you are a Catholic, there is something about the role of the pope that is unlike any other role on earth. And if he can soften people's hearts and also sharpen people's vision on this topic, I think that he may change the world. And I think they will regret messing with him the way they have. Sarah. Tim, before we wrap up tonight, I was hoping that you would give us just some closing thoughts of things to think about as we go home tonight.

B (85:05)

Okay. Okay.

A (85:06)

So.

B (85:09)

Rather than plan my remarks, what I tried to do was to listen to Rachel and to listen to Pasha Contreras and Balthazar and see how you were reacting to things and think of three or four big points or kinds of summary that I thought we might try to take home with us. The first thing, and this draws very much from our conversation about ICE and local organization, is that democracy really depends upon things that are more fundamental than democracy itself. So democracy is a word that we use and maybe a bit overused, but the idea of rule by the people is something inherently hard, is something inherently dramatic. The people have to want to rule. And why we want to rule is brought home by very basic things which we've heard about. Very basic things like the body, very basic things like children, very basic things like dignity. Democracy is a way to have some kind of control, autonomy over those very fundamental things. And so when we say democracy, we think about democracy. We have to remember its connection to those more fundamental things. And we have to remember that to talk about those more fundamental things, we need a moral language. The moral language has to be on our side. The other side tries to monopolize it. It thins it out, it skims it away, it abuses it. But you can't do democracy without a moral language. That's one thing that I'm going to take away from all of this. The second point that I was thinking about, that there was no good place to insert here, but I'm going to insert it now, as a historian, is how we think about ice, Chicago, America, in connection with what we know about the past. Some of these points came through, I think, already indirectly, but I'm going to try to make them directly. There is a long tradition of using undocumented People as a first step towards creating zones of statelessness, zones where the law doesn't apply. The Nazi regime in Germany, as almost nobody remembers, its first really large scale act of oppression was the deportation in the autumn of 1938 of undocumented people, undocumented Jews. That was their first major action. And it was a step towards border zones and concentration camps, or as we prefer to call them, detention centers. So there is a history of this. There is also a history, as I alluded to before, of using the undocumented as a kind of exceptional case as a justification for centralizing the police, which is what happened in Germany after 1938 too. Different kinds of police organizations are brought together under one heading, which makes things possible that weren't possible before. So this is a reason to be historically to be very concerned. And I say this because as locally important as ICE is in Chicago or in any city, it is also a very important example of the transition that they are going for. Because ICE isn't just what it's for. ICE is also for what it's meant to become, which is a national paramilitary organization answerable only to the president, which can act against citizens as well as non citizens. That's. That's what it's meant to become. It doesn't have to become that. And what it means also is that local resistance is also national resistance. That there's significance to what we've been talking about, which goes even beyond the protection of individuals and their dignity, because acts of resistance locally are also slowing down this transition to a new kind of regime. Which leads me to the third thing I wanted to talk about, which is resistance and what resistance is for. One thing that I think is very important, and I'm sure you've noticed it too, is that the people who actually organize and do important things, they are very often, in fact, almost always humble. The people who talk a whole lot are generally not doing a whole lot. And that's tricky for us because we are a people who talk a lot, and we are a people who react to certain kinds of charismatic gestures. And it's important to remember that the organizers are often humble. And you can tell who's a real organizer by how they're humble. And that means you have to look out for them. It means you have to listen to them. It means you have to join them, even if they may not have the loudest voices. And you have to support them with your time, with your energy, and also with your money, if you can. The other thing I was thinking about with respect to Resistance, and this is a point that I just wanted to say again, is that you have to keep doing the thing. I mean, it sounds very simple, but in my life, I'm reminded of this when I go to Ukraine, when they're almost at four years of war, and when I can go to the front, it's because I'm in the hands of people who have been doing civil society organization in peacetime, during revolution, during a war. And I'm in relationships of trust which people have built. And I'm not actually very worried. But the things that they are doing are absurdly difficult and risky. Risky far beyond what most of us hopefully will ever even have to contemplate. But they keep doing the thing. They just keep doing the thing, no matter how bad circumstances seem. And that's the lesson that Rachel kindly cited earlier in her remarks about being calm when the unthinkable arrives. Various kinds of unthinkability have already arrived. More unthinkable things will arrive. And resistance involves. You still keep doing that thing. And I just want to stress, although I think many of you will already understand this, that to resist this doesn't mean that you alone or your group have to do everything. We get demoralized by the Hollywood notion that there's one thing, there's a happy ending, we're going to solve it all. But the reason that's demoralizing is it creates the impression that you today have to solve it all. You don't. You today have to do something. You have to do it with other people. You have to do it in a zone where you feel somewhat comfortable, but also somewhat uncomfortable. You have to do it with people that you didn't always know before, and you have to keep doing it. And so long as we're all in that zone, I really do think that it's going to be okay. Thank you.

A (92:24)

I want to thank Pastor Julie Contreras and Balthazar Enriquez and Professor Snyder and all of you so much for being here tonight. We learned more from Chicago than you'll ever learn from us. We're so grateful for you. Thank you. Thanks you guys.

B (92:47)

Thank you.

A (92:48)

Thank you, guys.

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