Laura Rote

I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…

Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

How to report ICE

SALUTE acronym with instructions

An ICE watch zine (Chicago edition) being handed out today.

Hungary banned anything that “promotes homosexuality,” which means Pride.

However, today over 500,000 people in Budapest told the government to fuck off. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

LET'S GO QUEERS

Illinois follows the law — we expect the federal government to follow the law, too.

We won't participate in abuses of power.
We won't violate court orders.
We won't ignore the Constitution.
We won't defy the Supreme Court.
We won't take away people’s right to peacefully protest.

Try this instead

Jon is a Marine Corps veteran who served at Camp Pendleton. Here’s what he thinks of Pete Hegseth’s threats to deploy Marines in Los Angeles.

live from the huge spontaneous anti-ICE protest after the agency used military-style tactics during a series of raids in Los Angeles today.

Anyone who is against building transit and bike infrastructure really hates their life cause these commute times within the city are absurd

Parks, libraries, museums: here’s why Trump is attacking America’s best-loved institutions | Margaret Sullivan The president’s funding cuts and bullying are about dividing Americans and tightening his grip on power

‘Take away natural beauty, free access to books and support for the arts, and you end up with a less enlightened, more ignorant and less engaged public. That’s a public much more easily manipulated.’

Via @sulliview.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Opinion | The Profound Inhumanity of ICE Raids

Not my usual essay, but sometimes the world gives a writer no choice of subjects. When terror comes for your neighbors, you stand witness. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/o...

Wtffffffff. More reason to wear your masks, folks. I for one enjoy not being sick.

Oh, it’s not just a jersey thing?

What could have made this a national issue? What change at the FAA in the last 6 months? Impossible to tell.

I got stressed and cut my own bangs again. 😞

And he was a Lyft driver?!

Somas Sur

Ana Tijoux killin’ it at Sleeping Village. April 20, 2025 🇨🇱🎶 #livemusic #chicago #independentvenues

Ahhhhhhh 🙏 Thank God someone is doing the work!

Embarrassing and evil.

The Mars Cheese Castle sign is iconic in Kenosha (a must stop on the journey from Chicago to Milwaukee).

Bronz Fonz on the Milwaukee River

Inside the lakefront Milwaukee Art Museum and the cathedral-like Windhover Hall, designed by Santiago Calatrava.

Olafur Eliasson’s “Rainbow Bridge” at Milwaukee Art Museum

Timeline cleanse. I went to Wisconsin, ate some cheese, saw some art. #wisconsin #roadtrip

I hope everyone remains safe and also that people know that a corporate spaceflight of only women astronauts for a company owned by a deeply destructive billionaire who is enabling fascism is just public relations for fascism and has absolutely nothing to do with feminism

I went to the sport for T-shirt gun but yes same. I stand for T-shirt gun!

This is helpful to see!

Graphic: As many as 69 million American women lack access to valid birth certificates

Are you a woman who changed your name when you got married?

Congress is considering a bill that could make it much harder for you to vote.

Call your rep—this is not a drill. indivisible.org/resource/cal...

So much more interested in celebrating and supporting this rather than “luxury” vintage. 🥳

The stupid coup's stupid energy policy--coal is just a dirty, expensive, moribund way to make electricity, and it's also some kind of symbolic Ye Mannehood of Olde stuff that the right gets all sentimental about, while screwing over actual coal miners.

Moronic

Titanique, Chicago style 😍