Chinga La Migra

Late in the day Wednesday, as New Yorkers, including me, were going about their daily routines, we started seeing horrifying scenes from an ICE raid against the vendors of counterfeit goods that have long occupied Canal St. The folks selling these items for a livelihood used to be primarily Asian but now include a lot of young men Africa, especially Mauritius. These are just the street level people who without legal access to employment permits or benefits like food stamps, are trying to survive. The people doing the actual counterfeiting and masterminding the whole thing - and making the big money from it - are not out there on the fishy sidewalks of chinatown. The NYPD can and does arrest these vendors sometimes - I have been at Central booking after a protest, sitting in the big cell where they toss all the women they arrest throughout the night, when they have brought in women who were selling fake designer bags, etc. But leaving things to local authorities is not enough for this cruel administration, so ICE, with their riot gear and armored tank/truck hybrid, rushed in, grabbing people and causing chaos. New Yorkers tried to resist them, including one woman in a navy polka dot dress and handbag who went viral standing in front of the tank/truck with the middle fingers of both hands raised, a classic NY fuck you. An emergency protest was organized for the following evening at Foley Square. A call went our for marshals, but both my very anxious client and my Nicaraguan asylum seeker client wanted to come and I knew they would need a lot of my attention. I wound up helping tell the crowd not to take the bait when the usual rightwing trolls showed up near where I was standing. It was oddly dark with all the antique-style lamposts that dot Foley Square and come on when they sense the light fading off. The ones across the street at the court houses were all on making us wondering if the park had been intentionally turned off. It didn't matter that much since all the cameras had flashes, and then we filed out of the park to march north on Centre St to Canal to where the raid took place. Foley Square is deceptive - it holds more people than it looks like so you don't get a good sense of how many people there are until you start marching. When we got to Canal St, we filled in the entire eastbound side, not a common activist maneuver because Canal's packed and often reckless traffic present a safety challenge. I passed Jamie and Alexis working hard in their green vests to keep everyone out of traffic. At Broadway we turned south, heading back down to Federal Plaza. Looking up, I saw people framed by the lights of their fancy apartments, filming the march or, like one man and little boy, waving. I thought about old ACT UP marches, how when we passed scores of gay men at the sidewalk cafes, we would yell to them to join us. High up behind their closed windows, there was no way to invite these people. We reached 26 Federal Plaza, the immigration building, and stopped. The drumming and chanting was loud. "ICE OUT of NY" "Chinga La Migra!" I wondered if the people detained in that building, 10 floors up, could hear the commotion and if they knew what it was. We stood there on Broadway for a long time. Over my shoulder, I could see traffic, including a city bus, building up behind us. Eventually, the clients and I decided to leave as people were peeling off. Even two blocks away from the march, we could still hear the chanting. The next day, sitting at my desk, the phone rang. It was Laurie, prolific maker of iconic black and white signs and activist apparel. "Would you wear "Fuck ICE", she asked. "Definitely," I told her. "If I can wear 'fuck trump' in Bay Ridge, I can wear 'Fuck ICE'." "I know Bay Ridge well," she said. "It's changing a little," I told her. I told her the story of meeting Lenny on the train, which led us to discussing holocaust resistance and how in this modern highly surveilled world, you can't just hide in a basement any more. Laurie and I both know they know who we are, so we might as well keep speaking up. Saturday, the pre-planned Rise and Resist action at Trump Tower had been energized by the raid, with a crowd of several hundred. People with signs were on both the Trump Tower side and packed onto the sidewalk across the street. I found Alexis with a banner that said "democracy needs your courage," and stood next to her with my "hands off NY" sign. We were facing outward so that people making their way along the narrow pedestrian passageway could see the messages. Saturday afternoon on that part of 5th ave the foot traffic is mostly expensively dressed shoppers and tourists. The reactions were different than they used to be, way more smiles, thumbs up, fist pumps, and even some peope joining in the chant as they went by. I wished I had Rise and Resist flyers to give the more enthusiastic folks, but they were uselessly at home in my work bag, probably under a sleeping cat. At the end of the hour, Jamie gave the standard closing speech thanking people for coming and reminding them that we will have to keep being out in the street a lot more. Normally at this point the crowd breaks up, but there was so much energy that people just went back to chanting and drumming. We let it go for half an hour more, then Jamie asked the drummers to wind down, and the marshals started actively dispersing the crowd. On my way home, half asleep on the long local ride to the end of the R line, two young adults near me were discussing a tea event they are planning. “Chinese tea, then Assam, and Darjeeling, so they can get a sense of the evolution of tea, and then at the end, we’ll make them Masala Chai," said one. "I feel like we can get tea in a lot of forms, like loose." They went on to discuss the logistics of making tea for a group. “I wonder how hot those huge jugs keep it. And I don’t know how much of a kitchen they have, there’s that kind of toaster thing.” I was still pondering how one would make tea in a toaster when they got off.