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The SkyePod
The SkyePod - Protesting ICE in Chicago with David Swanson
00:27:14
Skye talks with his friend, Pastor David Swanson, about his confrontation with Border Patrol agents at an ICE protest in Chicago. What's really happening with "Operation Midway Blitz," what should churches and Christians do when the government is...
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- [00:00]
David Swanson
And all of a sudden, I realize that the officer who's getting right up in my face is Commander Bovino himself.
- [00:21]
Sky Gitani
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Sky Pod. I'm Sky Gitani. Joining me is my friend David Swanson. Hey, David.
- [00:26]
David Swanson
Thanks for having me.
- [00:28]
Sky Gitani
You've been on the Holy Post a number of times. We go way back. We were both pastors out here in the western suburbs in the early 2000s.
- [00:35]
David Swanson
Yeah. Every time you say this, it's longer ago.
- [00:37]
Sky Gitani
It is longer. So, backstory, for those of you. None of you probably know my relationship with David. I got hired by a church in Wheaton. You got hired by a church in Glenelly, which is the neighboring suburb. And I don't know how we first met.
- [00:51]
David Swanson
I think it was through our mutual friend, Marshall Shelley, who was at Leadership Journal.
- [00:54]
Sky Gitani
That explains it.
- [00:55]
Podcast Announcer
Yeah.
- [00:55]
Sky Gitani
Marshall then became my boss at Leadership Journal, part of Christianity Today. He was a part of your church, as was his wife. And we were both sort of younger pastors trying to figure out ministry in suburbia and shared a lot of similar values and outlooks.
- [01:10]
David Swanson
Yeah, and angst, maybe.
- [01:11]
Sky Gitani
And angst, yeah.
- [01:12]
David Swanson
For sure.
- [01:13]
Sky Gitani
And then you abandoned me.
- [01:15]
David Swanson
I did.
- [01:15]
Sky Gitani
You left and went to Chicago, into the city. And long story short, you are now the pastor of New Life, Covenant Community. New Community. Covenant Church. Church, sorry. In Bronzeville.
- [01:28]
David Swanson
Yes.
- [01:29]
Sky Gitani
Which is 15 years now.
- [01:30]
David Swanson
15 years this year. Yep. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. We started it 15 years ago.
- [01:34]
Sky Gitani
Okay. For people who aren't familiar with Chicago, describe Bronzeville, the neighborhood you're in, and describe your church.
- [01:42]
David Swanson
Yeah. So when people don't know Chicago all that well, I will say that Bronzeville is our Harlem. Okay. Same timeline, same legacy. African American individuals and families moving up from the Jim Crow south to urban centers beginning at the turn of the century. Different waves exacerbated by different social factors, often fleeing racial terror or looking for economic opportunities. And Bronzeville, on the near south side of Chicago, becomes really the only place that these folks can move with some degree of safety. And so it becomes the home of cultural institutions, financial institutions, vibrant church life, similar to Harlem. Smaller, but has a similar symbolic and historical meaning to this very day. So our neighborhood continues to be majority African American. And then, like much of Chicago, racially segregated also borders on neighborhoods that are majority white. Chinatown is nearby, and so on. And so when we planted our congregation in Bronzeville, it was with the idea of being deeply rooted in this particular community as a multiracial congregation, as a church that was living into the biblical vision of reconciling across cultural lines of hostility and division for the sake of the gospel. And so, you know, fits and starts, always imperfectly. That's what we're still trying to do today.
- [03:07]
Sky Gitani
Okay. For those who aren't watching this on video and just listening, you're a white guy.
- [03:12]
David Swanson
Quite, quite, quite. Yes.
- [03:14]
Sky Gitani
But even back when you were a pastor here in Glen Ellen, and we were young pastors in the suburbs together, you and I talked a lot about these issues of diversity and race and stuff. Share a little bit about your background and why these issues matter to you, even as a young man.
- [03:27]
David Swanson
Yeah, so I'm a missionary kid, grew up in Venezuela and Ecuador. My dad flew small little airplanes into hard to access areas of Venezuela. So that was my earliest childhood memories all the way up until middle school when our family moved to Southern California. And so, yeah, certainly something about that childhood experience really opened my heart, I believe, to a kind of kingdom vision, not just of diversity for diversity sake, but of how we understand more of who God is, of God's mission in our world, of how it is that we live out that mission in different cultural contexts. And I think impacted how I read the New Testament and how I understand what's happening in the early church as the gospel spreads throughout the Roman Empire and beyond and brings people together who otherwise would have no business being together. And it seems to me that that still is very much central to what church is meant to be. Where our witness certainly includes what we say, but our witness is primarily who we are together in a way that just doesn't make sense or fit into our larger culture.
- [04:37]
Sky Gitani
And you've written a number of books on this topic. We've talked about some of them. Remind everybody what.
- [04:42]
David Swanson
Yeah, so the first one was really trying to make the case that our majority white churches have a role to play in the reconciling mission of the church. So rediscipling the white church was the title of that book. And I just got tired of friends who were pastoring in majority culture settings saying things like, david, I what you're doing, I think it's so cool. But, you know, I'm in a majority white suburb or town or my church is majority white, so I don't really have a role to play. And for a long time I was like, yeah, I think that's true. Well, no, it's not true. Actually, there is a really important role that we need all of our churches to play. And I understand that through the lens of discipleship. And then more recently, the latest book is called Plundered and it tries to tell the story of the way that the sins of greed and theft lie underneath the great systemic injustices of environmental degradation and systemic racism. And that when we take these one at a time, we. We miss the connective tissue that hold them together. And that as Christians, we have ways to think about greed and theft inherent to our faith. And so while others get overwhelmed by these big systems, I think our tradition, our scriptures, our discipleship actually allows the church to live together in our particular places in a way that starts undermining both of these really terrible systems.
- [06:00]
Sky Gitani
Okay. And if you're interested in either of those books, you've talked about them on previous host podcast episodes, so you guys can go back in the archives and search for those. But that's not why you're here today. So the reason we reached out to you is because there's been a lot happening in Chicago with federal troops, Border Patrol, ICE agents. People are seeing this in the headlines in their news feeds, on social media. We're going to get into some of your experience with that. But the reason you came to my attention is a photograph of you was in U.S. news and world Report, and originally the caption said you were being arrested by a Border Patrol agent. Turns out that wasn't entirely accurate, although that's what it looked like. But you were involved in a protest and explain what happened, where it happened, and what the photograph was actually showing.
- [06:53]
David Swanson
Yeah. So in the Chicagoland area, the main Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility is in a suburb called Broadview that is more or less 10, 15 miles west of the city. And so this is where when someone is detained, they are. They are typically processed in that facility. This has been the case for a very long time. And I want to say that there have been faithful Christians very quietly gathering and praying at that facility. Mostly Catholic Christians praying at that facility. Facility for years and years when there was no notoriety around this, just faithfully praying for more humane, loving treatment of our. Of our immigrant and migrant sisters and brothers. And I'm deeply grateful for that legacy. More recently, as the federal government has really placed Chicago under the microscope and more federal troops have come, ICE has been a really strong presence. There's been more attention given to this facility because this has been the staging ground for a lot of the raids that are happening all over the city. And so protests have escalated there. And as a part of an interfaith group that I'm a part of that's been gathering to stay informed, know how we can support each other in this, in this Moment I learned that on this particular Friday there would be some protests happening and that there was an invitation for, for faith leaders and clergy to show up simply to be a peaceful presence in what can feel like a very volatile space. And as. As things have gotten more provocative in our neighborhoods, as the ICE have become very brazen and sometimes even violent, there was a request for faith leaders to be present.
- [08:36]
Sky Gitani
And so I'm assuming the request did not come from ICE very much.
- [08:40]
David Swanson
No, yeah, that's correct.
- [08:41]
Podcast Announcer
To be fair, though, I could understand.
- [08:43]
Sky Gitani
If there were law enforcement. I mean, there have been law enforcement agencies for a long time that have wanted clergy, chaplains, others to help, but this was not the case.
- [08:51]
David Swanson
I think that's actually a really important point for reasons that I'll get to in just a minute. I have been at protests many times in Chicago over the years, maybe a vigil protesting gun violence in our neighborhood or so on. And I have always experienced law enforcement as being grateful for the visible presence of clergy. A clergy person can become an intermediary, can become a spokesperson, can just become a calming presence in a space like that. That was not my experience this time, but anyways, myself and some other clergy friends, we. We accepted that invitation. We showed up in Broadview early on Friday morning, a little before 7am and there were already some protesters gathered there on either side of the street leading into and out of the facility. On that particular morning, there was a group of, I'm guessing about 40 or 50 Jewish men and women, including different, different Jewish leaders who had gathered to pray and to sing in that space. And so myself and some others kind of hung back near, near that, that group of folks just to be supportive there and then kind of walk around, just keep an eye on what was, what was happening. And the, the state police were there to open up a lane of traffic basically so that these, these vehicles, ICE vehicles could get, get in and out as they went out to do their missions or completed their missions, bringing back folks that they had detained. And honestly, it was a pretty benign scene. There was a lot of folks there, but everybody kind of stayed in their lane. The state troopers doing what they do, the protesters doing what they do. And I thought that would be the end of it, to be honest. I had some meetings I needed to get back to. So around 9 o' clock, I said goodbye to my friend and was about to head back to my car when you could just kind of feel something shifting in the tone of the crowd that had gathered. And so I looked down the street toward the ICE facility. And at that point saw that a group of. Of ICE officers kind of, you know, dressed in fatigues, you know, seemingly ready for a confrontation, had gathered and were starting to make their way down the street toward the protesters. It didn't make a lot of sense because there was nothing that would have provoked that. Again, everything was kind of happening as it should have as. As this. A group of, I would say about 20, 30 officers got closer to us. Rather than staying kind of in the street, they. They moved off of the street, and it became evident they were just trying to clear everybody away from just the. The general vicinity of. Of that street. And at that point, I was standing more or less off to the side on the other side of a permanent street barrier with a smaller group of protesters, thinking we were, you know, well, well clear of the action. No reason to, you know, to. To come toward us. But in fact, that's what happened. The. The commander of ICE operations here in Chicago is a man named Commander Gregory Bovino. Bovino was the. The man in charge of the operations in Los Angeles. He's the. The commander who a couple weeks ago, on the record in an interview, said that his agents were racially profiling people to determine who. Who they were to detain. This man leads a small group of those officers over the barrier and begins coming at our small group of folks.
- [12:20]
Sky Gitani
Okay, before you continue with the story, a couple things to clarify. First, are the state troopers still there at this time? And they, in your estimation, had been sufficiently keeping things orderly?
- [12:32]
David Swanson
It's a hard job. I mean, you can imagine tensions are high. Sure, not everybody's Christian in these spaces, so you can imagine the emotions and the anger. And yet from. From everything, I could see that the state troopers were nothing but professional holding the line they'd been asked to hold. You know, interacting with the protesters in a very, you know, respectful, humane way and doing a really difficult job, but doing it really well.
- [12:58]
Sky Gitani
And was there any evidence that the presence of the protesters were inhibiting the ability of the ICE officers or the border patrol officers from getting in or out of the facility?
- [13:08]
David Swanson
The of presence for the couple hours that I was there, we watched multiple vehicles come in and come out. None were stopped. None had to turn around. None were turned away. They were all able to get in and out.
- [13:18]
Sky Gitani
And I've read some reports on this event, this protest, and I haven't read anything that said the protesters provoked a response or became violent or in any way interfered with.
- [13:30]
David Swanson
That's right.
- [13:30]
Sky Gitani
The functioning of the facility. So Commander Bovino and his troops came out on their own accord. It sounds like they weren't responding to something or feeling like the state troopers weren't able to control the protesters.
- [13:46]
David Swanson
This is my speculation, I think two possibilities we have seen. We could call it the memeification of our federal government where these videos are made overlaid with lyrics or scripture passages and songs and then put on social media that I, you know, I, I really, I think a lot of them are just blasphemous, especially when they include Christian scripture. It felt a little bit like that, like this was gonna be staged for some kind of video, a show of force of, you know, triumphing over these rogue protesters or you're something. Something like that. I remember thinking that in the moment. But the other thing is that Kristine Noem was at that facility that morning.
- [14:37]
Sky Gitani
And she's the head of Homeland Security.
- [14:39]
David Swanson
And behind that group of officers that came toward the crowd, there was a kind of armored personnel carrier, tank like vehicle that came behind them. And I believe she may have been in that vehicle. And so I don't think that was necessary for her to depart the facility. Again, there were vehicles coming in and out, but it did feel like a display of force or a show of force for this, for this person.
- [15:09]
Sky Gitani
Okay, so you and the folks you were with are quite clear of all the action, but Commander Bavino came over to you and your group anyway and what happened?
- [15:21]
David Swanson
Yeah, so very, I would say, very aggressive. I don't know if I've mentioned this. I was dressed as clergy.
- [15:27]
Sky Gitani
I had my, I noticed that in the picture.
- [15:29]
David Swanson
Black clergy shirt on my little white tab. The only time I wear a clergy shirt is in public.
- [15:35]
Sky Gitani
Like, I know, I know other Protestant clergy who normally do not wear clerical collars, but when they're at protest, they do because it's the only visual way of distinguishing yourself as clergy.
- [15:45]
David Swanson
That's right. That's right. And again, historically, for me, that has been a positive thing for folks on all sides of these things. I was at a, at a different event later that weekend and I had a lawyer come up to me and just say, hey, I'm, I'm really glad that you're here. You know, we need more of your presence in these kinds of spaces. It dials the temperature down.
- [16:06]
Sky Gitani
And just to be clear, like, you're not a self appointed clergy. You are ordained by the Evangelical Covenant Church. So there is an ecclesiastical body behind that.
- [16:16]
David Swanson
Yes, yes, that's correct. That's correct. So, yeah, so the commander and his troops are coming at us. And I Just have to. It felt extremely aggressive profanity being used against the protesters. I felt in that moment that my role was to remain as visible as possible, to comply with the orders to move backward, but to not turn and run, to not turn and flee, to not turn my back on what was happening. And so I slowly backed up in the photo that you mentioned. I have my hands behind my back. I'm just trying to be visibly non aggressive in any kind of way. And all of a sudden I realized that the officer who's getting right up in my face is Commander Bovino himself. And I recognized him from media name is on his, you know, on, on his uniform.
- [17:07]
Sky Gitani
So this was a case where his face was exposed. He wasn't wearing a mask.
- [17:10]
David Swanson
That's correct. A lot of the other officers did have masks on, but it's become a.
- [17:13]
Sky Gitani
Big issue around the country.
- [17:15]
David Swanson
He. He seems very happy to, you know, to be very visible. And again, just so he can see I'm a pastor, you can see I'm a clergy. There was never any, any instructions of, hey, this is why this needs to happen. This is why you're, you know, in this space illegally, anything like that. It was just, you know, very aggressive. Ends up, he. He actually shoves me a couple of times backwards and then. And then says something like, you know, you know, don't. Don't make me tell you again. Which sounded to me like, you know, he would arrest me, you know, if I didn't continue to leave. We get kind of pushed into a sort of hedge, like section of trees and make our way through that out onto the street. And at that point we've. We ended up where they wanted us to be, and so kind of, they leave us alone. At that point, I reconnect with some of my other clergy friends who were there. We sort of debriefed the moment and then had to go home to other pastoring stuff, you know, that, that, that, that later that morning. But it was again, having been to a number of protests and vigils and rallies over the years, this, this was a unique experience.
- [18:29]
Sky Gitani
So some of the other reports that have been coming out around Chicago at some of these protests seem to indicate that there's not coordination happening here between these federal agents and local law enforcement, whether state troopers or CPD folks. And some are even arguing that we're pitting one set of enforcement officers against another because they're not coordinated. And Chicago police officers for officers, for example, are challenged to think, well, what's our job here? Are we supposed to Be protecting the citizens from these federal troops? Are we protecting the federal troops from citizens? There's also been stories of ICE agents and Border Patrol agents firing tear gas and actually into crowds with Chicago police officers where other officers are being affected by the tear gas in a way. It's just not well coordinated. Usually I'm not, like, experienced at protesting. My understanding is in the past, when other protests have become unruly or difficult, there are multiple warnings given by the authorities before tear, tear gas, or other deterrents are employed so that people can voluntarily leave, get out of there. That's not happening in these cases. What have you seen or what have you been hearing from other folks in your community who participated in these things that make you think this, this is not your normal run of the mill engagement of protesters and law enforcement?
- [19:54]
David Swanson
Yeah, well, we've not talked about this, but, you know, the event that I've been describing was Friday, Saturday. I'm trying to wrap up Sunday's sermon and get a notification from a friend who pastors in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago that there had just been a confrontation with, with ICE agents. It was getting heated, a crowd was, was forming. And so I asked, hey, would it be helpful to, you know, to have clergy presence there? And he said it would. So I drove over there about 25 minutes from where we live. And a lot of what you're describing is what I, what I observed the, you know, the ICE agents there, but then Chicago police had arrived as well and were working to, you know, kind of hold back the crowd. Although I have to say that the crowd itself was actually the neighbors itself were also organizing themselves to work together to, you know, avoid any kind of confrontation at all. Very impressive. Just the way that neighborhood leadership, including, I happen to know a ministry in that neighborhood, and some of their, their leaders immediately present working to kind of keep distance between law enforcement and neighbors.
- [21:02]
Sky Gitani
And the Little Village neighborhood is very Latino, correct?
- [21:05]
David Swanson
Yep, yep. Part of Chicago. Yep. Historically Mexican American neighborhood. And yeah, so this was my, my first experience breathing tear gas. Was, was that on that, on that Saturday? And the Chicago police officers, as best I could tell, did not have gas masks at the ready, whereas the ICE officers were all masked up. The police officers weren't. And I did see some footage afterwards of police officers having to walk away, pour water in their eyes, trying to get these chemicals out of their faces. And so that question of coordination, I think, is very real. And I don't, I don't know what it must feel like to be a police officer in Chicago right now, where you're. You're called to serve and protect the citizens of the city. And yet those citizens oftentimes are feeling afraid or terrorized by this federal government force that has made itself very visible and present in our city. They seem, you'd have to feel caught between two different contingencies there constituencies.
- [22:09]
Sky Gitani
One of the weird things that is going on here is I saw footage on social media this week of people walking around, like, not the neighborhoods you're talking about, we're talking about the Loop, like the touristy parts of Chicago. And with their phones, they're capturing images, videos of Border Patrol agents in full fatigues walking around like Michigan Avenue. Like, it's just bizarre to see federal troops in these parts of. This is not the part of Chicago that's crime ridden, let's put it that way. But it caught my attention because two years ago, I went to the southern border with a bunch of other Holy Post folks to Tijuana and San Diego, and we met with folks on all sides reporting on some of the immigration challenges. And we also met with a Border patrol agent, a Christian agent, actually, who informed us of a lot of things. He was super helpful and really interesting. And one of the things I learned is that Border Patrol agents only have jurisdiction within a certain distance of the borders of the United States. And this agent happened to attend a church that had a lot of Latino church members, including some who were undocumented. And he would joke, as he taught Sunday school, that they would joke like, come arrest me. And he's like, I don't have any jurisdiction here, so they don't have to worry about it. There are Border Patrol agents in Chicago, including this commander you mentioned Povino. Chicago's not near an international border. I think that the statute is these agents have jurisdiction within 100 miles of an international border. Chicago is not within anywhere near 100 miles of an international border. And the closest border we are close to is with Canada, which isn't exactly where the problems are. So what I read, the justification they've been given is they've now decided that Lake Michigan is to be considered an international border, even though across the lake is Michigan, not Canada, not Mexico, not anything. So what are you hearing either in your community or from other clergy, you're talking to anyone in city government about efforts to combat this. It just seems completely illegal. It's one thing to have ICE agents. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But border agents patrolling Chicago in military fatigues.
- [24:29]
David Swanson
Yeah, yeah. I think this is one of the real confusing elements of all of this. It doesn't feel legal, what's happening. To go back to my experience at Broadview, I would have assumed that somebody from, you know, the federal government would have had to come and say to the protesters, here's what you're doing. That is illegal. Here's why you need to move. You know, typically, if a police officer is going to tell a crowd they have to move, they have to shift from this sidewalk to this sidewalk. There's an explanation given the raid that happened on the south side last week in the middle of the night in the South Shore neighborhood. There are residents from that apartment building who are citizens of the United States of America. And yet ICE captured everybody in that building. Everybody.
- [25:35]
Sky Gitani
For those who haven't read up or seen what happened, this was a raid that occurred, I think, at 1am it was the middle of the night. Black Hawk helicopters flew over this apartment building, and agents rappelled down on ropes like they're going into Osama bin Laden's.
- [25:49]
David Swanson
Compound, knocking down the doors, knocking down.
- [25:51]
Sky Gitani
The doors, breaking windows. And they rounded up everyone. And they claim they did this because they had information that some of the residents of this apartment building were members of the Venezuelan gang. And reports have come out that after rounding everyone up, including children, they separated black residents and brown residents, assuming the black residents were probably US Citizens and the brown ones were not. But we now have heard from attorneys, a number of those who were arrested were US Citizens, and they were arrested.
- [26:21]
Podcast Announcer
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- [26:42]
Sky Gitani
Hear this dumb announcement again, but you'll.
- [26:44]
Podcast Announcer
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