Brian Straw has become a familiar face in the media the past six months, due to his status as a member of the so-called “Broadview 6,” the individuals under indictment for their actions at a protest outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility on 25th Avenue in Broadview last October.
Straw has frequently been videotaped entering the Dirksen Federal Building downtown for court hearings and standing in the courthouse lobby afterward as his attorney addresses the media.
On Saturday morning, May 9, the human side behind the image was on display at the Democratic Party of Oak Park’s bi-monthly gathering. Straw gave voice to the pain of consequences he never anticipated, not just for himself but for his wife and young children, consequences he must endure, he said, simply for exercising his constitutional right to protest against his government’s policies and actions.
Don Harmon is both Straw’s constituent as an Oak Park resident, and the Illinois State Senate President. He called the U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois’ decision to bring felony charges against Straw and his co-defendants “an unprecedented abuse of government power.”
“There are so many ways that the current administration is touching Illinois,” Harmon said. “But I don’t know that there’s one that has touched Oak Park more closely than the way it has touched our guest today.”
Straw, Harmon said, “is facing the full force of the U.S. Attorney’s office, the Department of Justice and the federal government, for saying ‘what you’re doing is wrong.’”
“The good news is the felony charges have been dropped,” Harmon said as applause rose up through the room. “The bad news is the U.S. Attorney’s office is apparently treating the misdemeanor (charge) as if they were (a felony) and putting Brian and his co-defendants through the whole two-week trial, potentially, on a misdemeanor charge.”
Straw began his remarks with humor, thanking the attendees for inviting him “to share an exciting 30-minute presentation on pedestrian and cyclist safety in Oak Park.”
Straw said such issues as streets, infrastructure, trash and recycling and public safety are his usual focus, not facing the risk of tear gas and arrest while manning the barricades of American Democracy.
“I never expected that I would be standing before you because in two weeks I’m facing a federal trial related to a protest…” he said.
Not a bystander
“Each of us has a moral responsibility to stand up to the actions of the Trump administration,” Straw said, reading calmly from his notes, that is, until the words caught in his throat and his shoulders shook. “Sorry,” he managed to say, his voice quavering as he struggled to relate explaining his indictment to his 6-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son.
Straw said his daughter replied with, “This is what normal people do.” Our neighbors were being taken away, she told her father, and her dad “was being an upstander, not a bystander.”
Straw readily admitted he’d have preferred to remain what his attorney, Chris Parente, called him at arraignment, “a boring suburban dad.”
“None of us has a responsibility to be a hero,” he said. “But each of us has a moral imperative in this moment to respond with empathy and do what we can to stand with our community.”
“This goes beyond the unconstitutional actions of ICE,” Straw said. The Trump administration, he said, is celebrating a host of actions, including cuts to nutrition supplement programs and elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs at all levels of government.
“We have a responsibility to stand up,” Straw said. The list of “abhorrent and unjust actions of the Trump administration,” he said, is a long one. “But the point is this: these are not normal times, and we cannot pretend they are.”
But standing up to the massive power of the federal government, he acknowledged, “is not without risk.” Donald Trump, he said, “has warped the Department of Justice, such that instead of enforcing the rule of law, it has become an instrument of retribution.”
The reason for that is simple, Straw said. “The Trump administration wants us afraid,” adding, “And it works.” He grew emotional again as he recounted his daughter telling him about her classmates asking her, “if her dad was going to jail.”
Straw struggled to speak about the nightmares his daughter suffers, fearful that her father will go to court and not return home. Of threatening phone calls that required him and his family to stay with other family, and Oak Park police monitoring his house. Of his son’s nightmares of “someone shooting up our house.”
He said his wife, who he met 20 years ago, told him last week, “I’ve cried more in the last six months than I’ve cried in the prior 19-and-one-half years combined.”
Regaining his composure, Straw said, “I know how to deal with nightmares about the monster under the bed. It’s much more difficult to deal with nightmares that are based in reality.”
Straw said the mere fact of being criminally charged and forced to defend oneself is the point of it all. “Regardless of the outcome, the process is the punishment,” he said. “Defending a federal felony case costs hundreds of hours and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Just the expected two-week trial itself, he said, would cost more than $100,000. It is, he said, reasonable to be afraid in such circumstances. Fear is what the Trump administration wants, he said, “because when we’re afraid, we’re less likely to stand together.”
“Standing alone against this administration is scary,” he said. “When we stand together, we are strong enough to shape our future.”
Tears of gratitude
While Straw and his loved ones have shed tears of both fear and trauma, there have been other emotions as well.
“Many of the tears have been shed out of gratitude for the way this community has stood beside me in fighting the Trump administration,” he said. “The outpouring of support from this community has been incredible.”
“I’m getting more comfortable with a wide range of emotions,” Straw said, smiling. That includes gratitude at Harmon’s continuing commitment of support, including matching contributions to his legal defense fund to the extent permitted under law.
Straw noted that the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office, which historically has had a conviction rate well into the 90% range, has seen only two guilty verdicts out of 26 Operation Midway Blitz cases resolved so far, a stunningly and uncharacteristically low success rate.
“As a community, we are standing together and we are winning,” he said. “When all of us stand up for each other, we can’t help but change the world.”
Asked what average folks could do to help, Straw said that besides contributing to his defense fund, one of his pastors was working on organizing a prayer service on the eve of his trial, which is scheduled for May 26 at 9 a.m.
“More details will be shared about that,” he said. “If people want to just come and be in community and be in witness with me, that’s another way you can show up for me.”
They can also show up in the courtroom, he said. “Looking out and seeing folks from the Oak Park community in the courtroom with me throughout this process has really helped me know and understand that people are standing with me.”