Steph Landry

You know us. For years, you watched and listened to our coverage of the Chicago area. As journalists, we did our best to bring you accurate, objective information about the people, events and issues that mattered. We hope we gained your trust. So please trust us now when we say that what is happening in the Chicago area is wrong. The fact that some federal immigration forces may be leaving soon is cold comfort given the damage they’ve done and what they may do in other cities. We are retired, but our colleagues who are still on the job have shown you a brutal and illegal campaign against fellow Chicagoans, mainly Latinos: violent abductions, gutting families, using tear gas around children, roughing up witnesses, ramming cars and even taking a day care teacher from her school.

"You know us...So please trust us now when we say that what is happening in the Chicago area is wrong."

Powerful letter from retired Chicago broadcast journalists about what ICE/CBP is doing to our city: "it is terror"

www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/13/l...

"This woke Me-Too bullshit has gone too far," said the former Harvard President and Secretary of the U.S. Treasury to the billionaire pedophile sex trafficker in a private email that the Justice Department under both parties kept secret for years

This makes me so angry

My ACA current plan is going from $385/mo to $821/mo.

Pepper-sprayed Berwyn family rattled after getting caught up in federal blitz Southwest Side politicians condemned Saturday’s pepper spraying and the federal sweep of Little Village as “state-sponsored terrorism” at a news conference Sunday.

Arianna Sofia Veraza and her parents were driving to Sam's Club for milk, eggs and diapers yesterday when they heard helicopters and horns blaring yesterday. They had turned around to leave when a federal agent pepper-sprayed them through a car window.
www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/09/c...

I'm struck by how many Chicagoans have seemingly felt compelled to write and share reflections on "this is what it feels like in Chicago right now". We know we're going through something awful together and we want the world to understand it.

Threading several of these pieces below.

A speech to a group of bike riders at Park 567

The 606 trail with a line of bikers, as trees turn yellow for fall.

The 606 trail with a line of bikers, as trees turn red for fall.

Lovely fall ride with CyclingxSolidarity and @sharrows.bsky.social to get some street treats.

“In a time when the levers of power are so limited, the steadfast organizing in Chicago remains a beacon of hope and essential guide for activists across the country.”

- @silkys13.bsky.social

This beautiful piece by @mskellymhayes.bsky.social encapsulates the loving & fierce power of Chicago ❤️

When Republicans win elections: The people have spoken, we must let them implement their agenda.

When Democrats win elections: This totalitarian FREAK must be prevented from implementing the policies he ran on
nypost.com/2025/11/05/o...

Remember kids, it’s not socialism if the state funding is for the bros.

Easily several hundred people have packed into this plaza in Chicago's North Center tonight in response to ICE abducting a daycare worker early this morning.

This is a neighborhood that has largely been spared until now from the "Midway Blitz" terror campaign. But everyone knows someone affected.

this is such a great encapsulation of why this race feels existential even to people outside NYC. Cuomo as the final boss of everything wrong with the current Democratic Party, Mamdani happily grabbing the third rails everyone’s told are too dangerous to touch (trans people, Muslims, socialism)

folks, the baseball is good

It’s his day.

I gotta be real, I did not suspect we would reach "roving mobs of white folks chanting "shame" at ICE" within 9 months, and it really feels like a sign of how much more horrifying it must be on the ground than those of us not there can even imagine.

from sarah gorden:

Indoor trick-or-treat events. Candy dropoffs. Neighbors patrolling with whistles.

This is how Chicagoans are helping kids have a safe and ICE-free Halloween this year: blockclubchi.co/47qJSzi.

“I have learned to accept the fact that we risk disappointment, disillusionment, even despair, every time we act. Every time we decide to believe the world can be better. Every time we decide to trust others to be as noble as we think they are. And that there might be years during which our grief is equal to, or even greater than, our hope. The alternative, however, not to act, and therefore to miss experiencing other people at their best, reaching toward their fullness, has never appealed to me.” - Alice Walker

Chicagoans continue to run out of their homes to confront ICE, guard schools and churches, buy out street vendors so they can stay home, and grocery-shop for vulnerable families.

The people are what makes us a sanctuary city. Whenever I start to despair, I try to remember that

What the sign says 🗣️🏳️‍⚧️

i keep saying this again and again, if your party is going to claim that you're the alternative to fascism than you have to offer people a vision for the future that's better than what they have now. fascism lies and does that, your platform can't be the status quo with slight technocratic tweaks.

Nine months ago I put most of my hope in major institutions continuing to hold fascism in check, but had little expectation that regular people with little to no power would step up and put themselves at risk.

I had it exactly backward.

jesus christ man, we can’t ever get used to this and normalize it.

10:45 AM - Two U.S. Citizens were kidnapped by ICE after patrolling the area and learning of immigration federal agents present at Allen Elementary School, Aurora, IL. One of the patrollers was pepper sprayed and assaulted by federal agents, and were transported to Rush Copley Hospital, Aurora, IL. They were forced to leave behind their young child, who was in the arms of an officer from Aurora Police Department.

What's happening in my community (Aurora in the Western Chicago Suburbs - a heavily Latino area) is devastating.

Here's what our local Rapid Response team posted on social media:

As his two sons watch and cry, ‘Pa, te amo,’ federal agents arrest man outside of Naperville apartments A Naperville man was hauled away by federal immigration agents Thursday as his two sons cried and begged for him not to be hurt.

As his two sons watch and cry, ‘Pa, te amo,’ federal agents arrest man outside of Naperville apartments. Story from Carolyn Stein www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/25/f...

Rahm Emanuel covered up the murder of Laquan McDonald by Chicago police

Dozens of neighbors were just confronted by federal agents as they conduct immigration raids just outside Little Village, Chicago in Cicero at Ogden/26th. At least one person was pepper sprayed by an agent as they exited.

@blockclubchi.bsky.social @franciagarciah.bsky.social

They were already living in one of Chicago’s worst apartment buildings. Then came the ICE raid. In what appears to have been a warrantless operation, the federal government will not say how many people were detained, who remains in custody and what happened to the children.

“No public criminal charges have been filed against anyone in connection with the raid … The @chicagotribune.com has been able to confirm the identity of only one immigrant taken into custody by federal agents that night: a 41-year-old pizza delivery man … who has no apparent criminal history.”

So why am I clucking about all this here?

Simply this: I don't believe there's a way forward to a stable pluralistic multi-racial society without aggressively rooting out our tendency to dehumanize. It's insidious. And it's killing us. We need to stop. We can stop.

To be clear, the violent anti-migrant actions and rhetoric from the Right are FAR more responsible for the current state of anti-immigrant policy in the States. FAR more responsible. And these actions and rhetoric are surely some of the main drivers of anti-migrant sentiment in the general public.