Delivered during the Community of Congregations’ Multifaith Thanksgiving Service at Unity Temple on Nov. 23:
Over the last year I have been honestly amazed at how organized the faith communities of Oak Park and the western suburbs are, how principled, how faithful; y’all have been throwing down especially over the last few months in such powerful ways.
Before starting to organize with Arise Chicago this past February, I spent a little more than half a year in Guatemala, accompanying and building solidarity with indigenous communities who were organizing against nickel mines and hydroelectric dams being built in their territories and fighting for post-genocide transitional justice.
While I was in Guatemala I learned a piece of Torah, of sacred teaching, from the Esh Kodesh, Holy Fire, a Rabbi who wrote and taught in the Warsaw Ghetto. In a discourse on the Biblical story of Noah, the Esh Kodesh establishes a difference between those who are kishui oref, stiff-necked, stubborn, even when they are tested and those who are hafachpach, flip-floppers, who shift their principles to fit whatever is comfortable. God criticizes the Israelites for being kishui oref, but Moshe responds that it is exactly this quality of kishui oref that merits the Divine Presence. Like every quality, kishui oref can be used for good or used for bad. But in moments of trial, of overwhelming violence, whether in the Warsaw Ghetto for the Esh Kodesh, or the Ixil territory of the 1980s in Guatemala, a little bit of kishui oref is required to insist on the liberatory threads of our traditions, to insist that when our sacred scriptures talk about loving our neighbor, talk about tearing down the rich and powerful who exploit them, we take them extremely seriously.
The last three months in Chicago has been a moment of trials. It has been the closest I’ve ever been to large-scale fascistic violence. Between Sept. 9 and Nov. 15 of this year, more than 3,000 of our neighbors have been abducted from their homes, workplaces, schools, communities, places of worship:
- On Friday, Sept. 12, Willan Gimenez, a day laborer and member of the workers center Latino Union, was detained by ICE on his way to a barber shop in Little Village. His lawyers believe he was targeted because he had been involved in a lawsuit against Home Depot for racial profiling.
- The same day, Silverio Villegas Gonzales was murdered in Franklin Park. ICE stopped his vehicle as he was on his way back from dropping his kids off at daycare and on his way to work. When Silverio attempted to drive away, ICE officers shot him in the neck.
- On Wednesday, Sept. 17, six roofers in Naperville were surrounded on all sides by ICE agents while fixing a roof. The ICE agents kicked down the ladders so all the roofers had to jump off. Five of them did jump, try to run, and were detained. The sixth worker remained on the roof until ICE was gone. All six of them were documented.
- On an overnight raid Oct. 3, ICE detained every single person in a building in South Shore Chicago, zip-tying children together – putting the Black residents on one side and the Latino residents on the other. Thirty-seven undocumented immigrants were detained, and citizens were asked if they had any outstanding warrants.
- Oct. 17, our worker member at Arise Chicago, Diego, a 28-year-old immigrant from Guatemala, was leaving his shift at El Milagro Tortillas when he was abducted by ICE. He spent four days at the Broadview Abduction Center where he reported there were no showers, insufficient toilets, and they kept the temperature intentionally cold in order to pressure detainees to sign self-deportation orders.
- On Oct. 26, here in Oak Park, ICE detained a man about a block from Whittier Elementary School right as children were being dropped off at school. Nov. 6, ICE agents forced their way into Rayito del Sol daycare center. Pushing aside students and parents dropping off their children, ICE abducted the teacher, Diana Santillana Galeano, an immigrant from Colombia.
But stories of violence are not the only stories from the last two months. There have also been stories of solidarity, of courage and compassion, maybe also at a scale this city has never seen before.
Immigrants and their neighbors took a whole host of strategies to fight back, in which I know many people in this room have participated:
- We have organized school patrols to accompany our neighbors dropping off their kids
- We have accompanied neighbors to court appointments
- We have distributed thousands of whistles to signal ICE presence
- We have donated and delivered food, baby formula and medical supplies to neighbors who don’t want to leave their houses
At Arise, we have trained hundreds of business owners on their rights in case of an ICE raid. We have targeted enabling businesses like AT&T and Relo Direct to end their contracts with ICE. We have participated in lawsuits limiting ICE’s ability to use tear gas, and to detain immigrants without a warrant. We have passed state legislation that limits ICE’s ability to enter educational institutions, hospitals, and courthouses, and local ordinances to prevent ICE from operating in public institutions.
At Arise, we worked with ICIRR to form a new interfaith coalition called MIJA Chicago (Multifaith Immigrant Justice Alliance), which has already mobilized hundreds of clergy to dozens of actions, turned out faith communities to help pass the ICIRR veto session legislation, and coordinated a campaign to provide pastoral care at Broadview.
And we have protested at the Broadview Abduction Center. We have been, in other words, a stiff-necked people, kishui oref, in our insistence on loving our neighbor.
ICE escalated their tactics: they used tear gas, pepper bullets, began dragging protesters into the facility to detain them. We were undeterred, and came back each week stronger than the week before.
Many of the clergy engaged the ICE agents in theological conversation. Are you Christian? we asked them. Do you go to church? we asked them. What verse, in any part of the Bible justifies tearing parents away from their children? “Love your neighbor, love your God,” we chanted, “Save your soul and quit your job.” “A world without cages,” we sang, “is at the tips of our fingers, in the palms of our hands.” “Who do you serve, who do you protect?” we chanted. “Do your duty and defect!”
The initial activists organizing the protests were, I think, a little surprised and caught off guard by how many of the people showing up to these protests were people of faith. On Oct. 3, the day after Yom Kippur, we organized a traditional Jewish Shacharit service, where over 150 people came out to pray together, sing together, and then brave tear gas together in solidarity with our neighbors. The next week a group of Protestant Clergy came to offer communion to the detainees – they were denied. The next day a group of Catholics processed from a nearby parish, including dozens of priests and a bishop to give communion – they were denied. The week afterward the Mennonites organized a service, and the week after that the Unitarian Universalists held a flower Communion.
The Broadview protests brought about unusual combinations. After our Jewish service, we sang and danced traditional Jewish psalms of praise combined with Indigenous Nahuatl curandera songs of freedom. On Nov. 1, a Catholic People’s Mass was immediately followed by a Halloween costume party techno rave. On Nov. 7, as part of an interfaith service, Muslims prayed their jummah prayers and Black pastors led gospel songs.
Our goals in bringing people of faith to Broadview were simple:
- Get in the way. Do everything we could to impede ICE operations in our city.
- Build pressure on ICE to allow religious ministers to enter and pray with detainees.
- Use the platforms of people of faith to highlight the moral and spiritual desecration happening in our city, and amplify the call to “Shut Down Broadview,” kick ICE of our city, and kick ICE out of everywhere.
On Nov. 14, we tried for the fifth time to peacefully enter Broadview and provide pastoral care. God does not suffer cages we said; God has a special feeling for the immigrant worker, we said; God demands freedom. This time, the Illinois State police responded with violence: they arrested 21 of us, including seven clergy, tearing away our banners, kettling a large group of people in a small space, breaking wrists with their batons. We drew out the violence of the system: we knew that whatever the police and ICE would do to clergy in broad daylight, so much worse was happening to brown-skinned immigrants behind closed doors.
I spent the next 13 hours in the Maywood County lockup – the first six hours singing and reciting poems with fellow protesters, the next seven hours alone in prayer.
It was that same week that some good news started coming. On Nov. 13, we heard that at long last CBP had left Chicago, and while ICE continues to operate in Chicago, Broadview occupancy has returned to its pre-Midway Blitz levels. Day laborer Willan Jimenez was released. Arise member Diego was released in Brazil, Indiana, where a group of religious sisters and one of my Arise colleagues coordinated to get him home. Daycare worker Diana Galeano was released and welcomed back by loving parents, kids and community members. Another 600 immigrants, of which it was revealed 97.5% had no criminal background whatsoever, were ordered released as well.
When CPB left Chicago, Bovino promised he would return with four times as many agents in the spring. Whatever it is, we know Arise Chicago will be on the front lines fighting alongside immigrant workers, and I know many folks in this room will be right there with us.
And maybe this is the true meaning of kishui oref, stiff-neckedness – that despite the cycles of acceptance and demonization, detention and release, attack and withdrawal, a Democratic deporter-in-chief or Republican, we remain fixed on not only what we’re fighting against, but what we’re fighting for. Even as ICE and CBP prepare what my coworker Jorge Mujica calls “el proximo engano, the next trick,” we too tend to our wounds, analyze our mistakes, mend our fractured coalitions, and get back up again, sing again, about a world without cages. Put our bodies in the breach again. Because we can see the Divine Presence doesn’t just dwell in a utopian future. I know I’m not the only one who’s felt her – hearing news about an immigrant who’s been released and returned, or moments of prayer and song that burn through the tear gas like holy fire: at Broadview and every place neighbors choose to cross lines of race and language and class and faith to fight for each other.
So this Thanksgiving, I want to end by blessing us all with rest after a long three months and, with kishui oref, stiffneckedness, the persistence to, in the face of trial, dig in a little deeper, commit a little harder, holder our neighbor’s hands a little more tightly, insist with all our heart and all our soul and all our might on a world overwhelmed by grace and love.
Ethan Aronson is a faith community organizer for Arise Chicago who lives locally. You can find his bio at https://www.arisechicago.org/staff.
