Those ICE Guys Could Have Been Worse!
But Not Much Worse
Even for those who agree with the mission of the thugs who snatch Chicagoans off the street on the off chance that they might be undocumented, it would be hard to like the masked men themselves.
But they could conceivably be worse.
The ICE bosses might have recruited in a Rogers Park cop bar I used to patronize. Once or twice a week, the bar welcomed a lingerie show. You probably wouldn’t have liked the guys who liked it.
It was a fun day when the bar’s two owners drew on each other. Fortunately, they were lousy shots.
ICE might have had its pick of the guys who patrolled the expressways looking for accidents in the dark of night.
Some of these gents carried fake badges. Some carried guns. Those were real.
These scoundrels and miscreants were tow truck drivers who “rolled heads” — pressured woozy nighttime accident victims on Chicago expressways for the benefit of personal injury lawyers, who paid them well. Body shops paid, too, though not as much.
One driver apparently turned his back momentarily on his newly-found pigeon and lost him to one of the others.
The wronged driver saw the other guy at the counter of a head-rollers hangout and shot him off a stool.
Despite one of the spécialités de la maison at Jeri’s Grill being the “Jailhouse Special” — fried baloney and eggs — I don't think anybody ate their next baloney sandwich in the dormitory at 26th and California.
Just sayin.’
At the turn of the current century, cops working in Highland Park, Mount Prospect and some other north suburban garden spots were caught racially profiling drivers in their towns, stopping them for no reason other than they looked different. The most memorable moment of that scandal was when one cop said it seemed illegal to drive through Highland Park “wearing a hat.”
That’s because the less-than-clever code word among officers for a Hispanic driver was “a sombrero.” For a car with Black riders, it was “a load of coal.”
The head rollers and the rest certainly don’t remind me of legit law enforcement officers. Neither do the performers of the ICE Capades of 2025.
Legit cops don’t mace other cops. Not reporters or protesters, either. They don’t grab people off the street just because they don’t like the looks of them.
Like the guy in Jeri’s Grill, they shouldn’t be shooting people who don’t need killing.
Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, 38, is the guy who tried to get away from them in Franklin Park, IL, Sept. 12, and didn’t live to see his three kids again. He should still be alive, despite what ICE and DHS said. How many lies did they tell to make it look like he was attacking them?
Did Miramar Martinez, the woman who rammed or collided or interfered with the ICE machine on Chicago’s southwest side Oct. 4 really need five bullets to dissuade her? And have we already heard all the lies about that incident we’re going to hear? We already know the Feds’ claims that an ICE Kiddie Cop was seriously injured should be edited down to an injury to his pants.
For a while now, citizens have been following the ICE machines around, sounding their horns and yelling out warnings. And they have whistles.
Martinez was allegedly in a convoy of drivers following ICE cars, and planning to block the feds’ vehicles when they stopped. If done correctly – and that might not be easy – it could bring protests and alerts to the next level without necessarily inciting violence.
Blocking ICE cops seems like a strategy worth trying for people of courage.
Non-violently, of course.
There’s risk? That’s obvious, especially now. But I don’t know how to defeat this Seven Days in May scenario we find ourselves in without any risks.
This is not Call of Duty on Xbox. Not dueling Facebook posts, either. The revolution will not be streamed.
Sorry, Gil Scott-Heron.
In our smartphone society, we expect everything to come instantly, from sandwiches to home loans. But winning back our country does require risk-taking, and it also requires time.
It takes more than fingertips. The hopeful days of the Arab Spring are almost 15 years in the past, and the worst Neanderthals – like the ones running our country now – have generally figured out how things like Twitter work.
Ald. Andre Vasquez, Chair of the Chicago City Council’s Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said Sept. 29 that he wanted to let people know how meaningful taking risks is right now. But not enough people who could make a difference are taking those risks, he said, especially fellow leaders.
“We’re in a moment where we’re watching ICE agents downtown, where there’s a detention center in the suburbs. And we’ve got a whole lot of people who are quiet, or oblivious, to what’s happening. At moments it can feel a little challenging and lonely. I’ll be honest. To be calling things out that you know need to be called out, and then looking around and seeing people who you know would similarly be calling it out being oblivious about it — there’s just something about that that gets underneath one’s skin.
Ald. Andre Vasquez in Rogers Park (click for video)
“We’ve got allies who don’t mention it at all, some that like to show up for just the thrill of it but won’t say things in uncomfortable spaces … I know it’s not easy for everyone but in a moment like this, when you’re seeing it all creep up, injustice left and right, just saying something shouldn’t be the hardest thing.”
Lee Goodman must feel lonely at times, too.
Lee frequently dons a striped pajama uniform, similar to those worn in Holocaust concentration camps. On the shirt is a blue triangle like the ones immigrants were forced to wear when incarcerated by the SS. He paints a sign decrying U.S. treatment of immigrants, and engages people in conversation, often in front of government buildings.
He writes well-considered descriptions of what happens on his travels and posts them on Facebook. They’re deftly written, and he usually gets hundreds of “likes” for every essay.
This has been going on for months. Last week, I asked him if anyone has contacted him, seeking to accompany him.
“Not a single one,” he said.
He also mentioned that whenever he sees TV news crews, they usually behave as if they can’t wait to be somewhere else.
Results of activism are hard to achieve. They might be slow in coming.
They may never come.
There won’t be any miracles like Moses parting the Red Sea with his walking stick. In fact, Moses himself wasn’t able to do it, according to lore. He needed somebody else, a man who seemed willing to put his life on the line.
As the story goes, a young man named Nahshon was among the crowd of Israelites waiting for a safe crossing. And it wasn’t happening.
Everybody else was freaking out. They could hear the chariots coming.
Nahshon felt a little different. Their instructions were to first start into the water in order to get it turned off.
Weren’t they?
Well, if he was right, he should go. If he was wrong — well, he wouldn’t know he was wrong until it was a bit too late.
He wasn’t guaranteed a good result. He did what needed doing, and resigned himself to accepting whatever result there might be.
But the water didn’t recede. He went further, and came to the point where discerning people might worry about being swept away.
Still more, and the water flooded his mouth and nose.
And then something started happening. The path became passable, and Nahshon became a hero.
He would lead the tribe of Judah. His line would include kings David and Solomon, and Jesus, too.
But like Moses, he didn’t live long enough to reach The Promised Land of Canaan. Neither did anyone else there that day. That wasn’t part of the deal, anyway: in those days, you took care of business and didn’t count on everything falling into place.
Nahshon, reading a book in the Sistine Chapel.
The people who will lead us out of the desert this time will probably do so without knowing upfront if they’ll be effective.
Some of you might be among them. Plant your trees, even if you don’t know if you, or anyone else, will ever sit in their shade.
The No Kings/Hands Off Chicago protest starts at noon today in Grant Park. Elsewhere locally:
Algonquin
Arlington Heights
Aurora
Bartlett
Bolingbrook
Buffalo Grove
Crystal Lake
DeKalb
Elgin
Elmhurst
Evanston
Forest Park
Geneva
Gurnee
Highland Park
Homer Glen
Joliet
Lagrange
Lombard
McHenry
Mount Prospect
Naperville
Oak Park
Palatine
Park Ridge
Pingree Grove
Rosemont
Schaumburg
Wheaton
Wilmette
Get your shoes on, Nahshon. I hear chariots.
We will be part of the protest in a town in CA. May this massive protest top ten million nation wide all rising up. Enough!
My man! Right on the nose Irv.