De-ICing Chatham

Listen up, white people

If you have been wondering, “Where the hell is my Chatham Dispatch?” like the phone calls I would get when I was an actual paperboy, I have been in an existential funk inspired by the events in Minneapolis.

Instead of writing, I sat on my ass. I laid on the couch. I slept a lot. I got mildly annoyed with most of my friends (and wife) who found peace, love and understanding with the Buddhist Monks walking through town. Don’t you know there’s a war going on!!?? They are killing us without consequences. I thought of the lyrics to the Talking Heads song, Life During Wartime.

This ain’t no party

This ain’t no disco

No time for dancing

Or luvey-dovey

I ain’t got time for that now…

Then Bruce Springsteen did what he does best - put a stake in the ground and a splint in your spine with his release of Streets of Minneapolis. (WATCH IT! and come back.) Around the same time I read George Packer’s article in The Atlantic “What Should America Do Now?” which I will gift to you if you click on here.

Goddammit, let’s go. Get Ready. In the next three years you will get your chance at the goons who come for your neighbors. You don’t have to go to Minneapolis. They will come to you. Come for you. Come over you.

As a person who values action over deliberation, a playground sense of justice and a Holden Caulfield personality, I gripped my weapon of choice - an iPhone 16 Pro. Let’s go get the bastards.

And as a Southern boy I know something about the glory of being in a fight with long odds. There are some things no amount of learnin’ can erase.

There’s another childhood relic from my Eagle Scout days: Be Prepared. Here we go.

The brave people of Minneapolis have taught us how to do it right. Not only have they mobilized a cadre of disciplined, de-centralized and hyper-local teams of folks who deliver food, escort school children and patrol neighborhoods looking for ICE agents, they have done it in a mostly non-violent way that has won the hearts and minds of apolitical citizens. Amazingly, no one has taken a shot at ferral federal agents.

Chatham is not Minneapolis

Minneapolis consists of suburban neighborhoods that make movements and targeting suspects easy, thereby being cost effective for ICE and yielding a higher success rate. Fish in a barrel.

Chatham is mostly rural with a concentration of immigrants in Siler City. Most of the white people that could serve as protectors and documentarians live 25 minutes away in North Chatham. Therefore, to be effective when ICE invades us, folks will have to be parked in Siler City in shifts or Lowe’s Home Improvement in Pittsboro, ready to spring into action.

If you are going to record ICE actions, rehearse what you are going to yell at them while recording. Obscenities are fine, but try to get under their skin with insults like, “Are you making your (mother/kids) proud?” Stay on whatever script you rehearse.

If past is prologue, you may end up in Durham or Raleigh if you want to go to where the action is. This might also include protesting at detention facilities and hotels hosting ICE agents. Have you ever tried to sleep at a hotel with car alarms going off? Impossible.

Chatham is Minneapolis

Everyone has a part to play, and ye shall not criticize anyone for not doing more, or what you think they should be doing. Some folks just want to hold signs at the courthouse circle. Some folks make phone calls. Some folks make soup for volunteers. Some folks want to get in the face of ICE agents and get arrested. All of that is good.

Download the Signal app. It’s encrypted and private, and unlike the other message apps it does not track user activity. If the thugs take your phone, they won’t know who you’ve been texting. It’s likely that what ever group you join will use this for communication.

Make sure whatever GoFundMe campaign you see for bail money, closed businesses or food assistance is legit. Scammers love you just as much as the genuine victims.

The scammers can also be ICE agents, who are actually taught to use fake appeals to trap immigrants. In Minneapolis, ICE saw a flyer distributed to parents at an elementary school and produced a fake one to use as bait it to find immigrants.

My cousin’s daughter in St. Paul is not the confrontational type, so she is delivering food and supplies to folks on the front lines AND would-be victims too afraid to leave the house. The Chatham Dispatch will let you know who organizes this.

Back in 2019, when I was a member of the group advocating the removal of the racist confederate statute from the courthouse, the neo-losers accused us as being Antifa. Well guess what? Come back whoever you are, we need you!

According to the Guardian newspaper, Antifa in Minneapolis is unmasking ICE agents by using software to identify them and posting their identities on flyers and email chains. Yeah, baby!

We also need to film local ICE supporters for public shaming later.

Listen to leaders in the immigrant community

White privilege is useful when employed correctly, but not when it supplants the will and wisdom of the people you’re supposedly helping.

Siembra NC, which has the best app for tracking and documenting ICE activity and Chatham’s own Hispanic Liaison are two that come to mind. They both do workshops for teaching immigrants their rights, training on how to react to a knock on the door and organizing the white helper people to assist in any way possible. Did I say they accept donations?

Ilana Dubester, founder and executive director of The Hispanic Liaison, says, for instance, they have been advising community members to write powers of attorney who can access their financial assets in case they are detained, and health care powers of attorney for their children who may be left behind with a guardian.

“The current regime is now forcing American citizens to carry papers. (Having to show papers) is an infringement on all of our rights,” said Dubester.

“We’re not telling people to resist arrest. It’s absolutely an individual’s choice, but something that is worth thinking about ahead of time instead of in the moment.” Not bad advice for white people, too.

The Liaison staff has also advised non-profits, government agencies and businesses how to protect their workers if ICE comes to their door. Yes, we are prepared, Mr. Boy Scout.

And now we wait.

Donald Trump has vowed to go after sanctuary cities, like those in the Triangle, which includes Pittsboro, Siler City and all of Chatham. The purple politics of this state make it hard to predict when. Some people say that because Republicans run the state’s legislative and judicial branches, Trump has put North Carolina lower on the list.

But now that GOP Senator and Lame Duck Thom Tillis has been the rare Republican critical of ICE tactics, Trump may move us up in the queue. It doesn’t take much to make the so-called president get pissed off.

I hear my editor saying, “Wrap! Wrap!” in my ear so let me leave you with this:

Indivisible, the organizers of the No Kings rallies, is having an on-line organizing event 8 PM, Thursday, February 5, to train people how to document and record Ice activities. You can sign up here: https://www.mobilize.us/nokings/event/892452/?share_medium=native_share&share_context=event_detail_page&force_banner=true

Be Brave, lovers of democracy. Please post your suggestions in the comments.