matilda

'BEYOND THE LAW?'
Lexis-Olivier Ray (2025)
#ShotOn35mm 🎞

Rotating view from the top of the Shedd Aquarium where Chicago meets Lake Michigan. // Image captured at: 2026-02-28 07:06:04 UTC (about 1 min. prior to this post) // Image sourced from: fox32chicago.com // Current Temp in Chicago: 46 F | 8 C // Precip: few clouds // Wind: NW at 11 mph | 19 kph // Humidity: 62%

Current* conditions near Chicago, IL:

This is the second time a cop has charged with abusing ALPR data to stalk a former partner. (It is not the second time it has happened).

FWIW: cops abusing data to stalk partners is one of the most common reasons they are arrested.

the fact that most American workers live in such precarity that they can’t afford to travel to other parts of the world and see how other people live is not a coincidence - it is part of this country’s very design.

As a former drive through worker, I hate this for them so much.

Even in the age of dinosaurs when I worked fast food, management put those with fast processing speeds on drive though because you have to simultaneously take in so many streams of information. Imagine a digital voice bleeping at you

And when we are arrested, in states like Kansas, under their new laws making it criminal for us to exist, this is the kind of treatment that awaits us.

This is what trans people, particularly trans women, are facing in prison, when they are arrested as part of the growing effort to criminalize us.

They get the axxon api setup to direct feed this shit into their facial rec system so they don't have to carry phones and can free up their hands for more canisters and triggers

At the end of the day, the Black Lives Matter era was about whether people should be killed in the street, and lots of people decided yeah and put those little blue flags on their cars. It spread to everyone because it stopped for no one.

bro there’s a gofundme to crowdfund attorney fees for a preschooler who was kidnapped by our federal government and shipped across state lines and his senator is posting about high school hockey while every other elected official is debating whether to give a zillion more dollars to the kidnappers

I saw this video of a Vietnam vet in the fur coat yelling at ICE and thought to myself, "this is missing something," before I realized, "Ah, of course, the Ether instrumental. It's so obvious."

From here: www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1922-l...

The calls for local police to protect people from ICE really feel like a rejection of the Movement for Black Lives.

The demand was to defund and it still applies.

A photo of Sonya Massey on the left, and Sean Grayson on the right

PEORIA, Ill. (AP) — Illinois deputy found guilty of murder in the shooting of Sonya Massey, a Black woman who called 911 asking for help.

ICE and CBP Agents Are Scanning Peoples’ Faces on the Street To Verify Citizenship Videos on social media show officers from ICE and CBP using facial recognition technology on people in the field. One expert described the practice as “pure dystopian creep.”

New: Videos show ICE/CBP agents are scanning peoples' faces on the street to verify citizenship. ICE has tool to instantly look up unprecedented number of databases with just a photo

“I’m an American citizen so leave me alone”

“Alright, we just got to verify that”

www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...

Ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee Bennie G. Thompson said in a statement “Mobile Fortify is a dangerous tool in the hands of ICE, and it puts American citizens at risk of detention and even deportation.” He also said “ICE officials have told us that an apparent biometric match by Mobile Fortify is a ‘definitive’ determination of a person’s status and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship—including a birth certificate—if the app says the person is an alien. ICE using a mobile biometrics app in ways its developers at CBP never intended or tested is a frightening, repugnant, and unconstitutional attack on Americans’ rights and freedoms.”

New incredible detail here: ICE says a match in its facial recognition app Mobile Fortify is a "definitive" determination of a person's status, and that this overrides birth certificates. This is an app ICE is using in the field to scan people

www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...

This is just to say

i have taken back
everything
i ever sent you
in the chat

and which
you were likely
quoting
in a story

Forgive me
you're not a journalist
so it's weird
just letting you know.

A Tragic Homecoming The casket of Silverio Villegas González rests inside his family’s modest home in Michoacán.

In her first interview since he was killed by federal agents, Silverio Villegas González's partner Blanca Mora talked about the impact his death has had on their family.

Be sure to read this moving piece by Alma Campos about Silverio's final journey back to Loma de Chupio, Michoacán.

CHICAGO (October 14, 2025) – A 15-year-old American citizen was detained by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents today in a manner reminiscent of authoritarian regimes, holding him incommunicado in a federal building garage for five hours without informing his family, stating any charges, or allowing him to call an attorney. The teenager, who is Hispanic and African American, was grabbed off a Chicago East Side street at approximately 12:30 p.m. CST slammed to the ground, kneed in the back, and zip-tied by CBP agents. He was then transported to a federal law enforcement facility not affiliated with CBP or ICE, where CBP agents held him, handcuffed, in the back of a vehicle in a garage—never booking him, never reading him his rights, never stating why he was detained, and never allowing him to contact his mother.

For five hours, his mother had no idea where her son was or whether he safe. Federal agents provided no information about his whereabouts, no phone call, no explanation for the arrest. His mother’s terror was amplified by her son’s heart condition and the complete absence of any information from authorities. "This is how people disappear in autocracies—grabbed off streets, held in unmarked locations, no calls to family, no stated charges, no due process," said Founding Partner Antonio M. Romanucci of Romanucci & Blandin, the firm that obtained his release this evening. "A 15-year-old American citizen was effectively 'disappeared' for five hours in Chicago. This is not law enforcement; this is the playbook of authoritarian regimes."

The 15 y/o detained by CBP today in the East Side neighborhood has been released per a statement from his attorneys.

Story tk in the morning.

“the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa”

This picture shows well what I really want people to get -- this is not an industrial park, far away from people's homes. This is Broadview and Westchester and people live very close to where ICE is deploying tear gas. There's also a Black church very close by.

let all the mamis know you’re a huge racist narc with a pair of this season’s “predictive policing rules!” boardshorts

Amid these ICE raids, something folks should understand about the Chicago suburbs is that a lot of stereotypes about the era of white flight from the city do not apply. A lot of these folks were priced out of Chicago and many commute to work here. They are part of the same social fabric.

My moral code does not include a requirement to show abject deference to the dead and dying simply on the merit of them being dead or dying. Death is morally neutral and doesn't absolve you of criticism past, present, or future.

Meet Rayhunter: A New Open Source Tool from EFF to Detect Cellular Spying Rayhunter is a new open source tool we’ve created that runs off an affordable mobile hotspot that we hope empowers everyone, regardless of technical skill, to help search out cell-site simulators (CSS...

Is ICE about to go buck wild using cell site simulators? Good thing EFF has a project to help you detect them:

www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

www.forbes.com/sites/the-wi...

ICE Spends Millions on Clearview AI Facial Recognition to Find People ‘Assaulting’ Officers A new contract with Clearview AI explicitly says ICE is buying the tech to investigate "assaults against law enforcement officers."

New: ICE just spent millions of dollars on facial recognition technology to track down people the agency believes have 'assaulted' law enforcement officers. Comes as charges are dropped around the country because officers misrepresented what actually happened www.404media.co/ice-spends-m...

Chicago’s Public Defender on Why Illinois Should Fight Trump's Threats on Cashless Bail - Bolts President Trump on Monday issued an executive order that purports to block federal funds from state and local governments that have moved away from cash bail in an effort to... Read More

NEW: Trump this week issued an order to withhold federal funds from cities & states that restrict the use of cash bail.

Illinois has fully ended cash bail, & Chicago's public defender responds to Trump: 'this is tyranny 101."

He explains why cash bail was a disaster. Well worth reading:

“Chicago spends millions, MILLIONS, on nonviolence and street intervention,” she said in the video. “Multi millions to organizations led by white people who don’t know what the f–ck they talking about.”

Texas Democratic legislator to stay in state capitol after refusing law enforcement escort to leave State Rep. Nicole Collier of Fort Worth on Monday said she will remain locked in the Austin statehouse chamber until the House reconvenes on Wednesday morning.

“‘I refuse to sign away my dignity as a duly elected representative just so Republicans can control my movements and monitor me with police escorts,’ Collier said in a statement that called her a ‘political prisoner’ for refusing Republican ‘surveillance protocol.’” www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcn...