Editor’s Note: This is an outside submission not written by either of the editors of Avant!. The text has been minorly changed for grammatical reasons, but other than that it is largely unchanged. Enjoy this report back from the front. To bite off the author: Abolish Borders, Abolish Nations, Abolish Work.
When we refer to white collaborators in our present moment, we speak not of whites nor of isolated white liberals. Rather, we speak of the ideology of the entire anti-ICE movement, including its “abolitionist” dress. White collaborationism is simply class collaboration with the bourgeoisie, enveloped in a civil respectability and solidarity politic. It places faith in a national project and legal system that, so far, has only ever granted mere concessions to the white proletariat. We can consider this civic legal nationalism one of the strongest remaining blocks to real white solidarity: Abolition of the race system itself.
This ideology has decapitated a working class struggle and left it to run around aimlessly in the name of human rights. And at this moment it is simply tragic timing: The last few months of Chicago have been incredibly bloody, with September through November marking an intense escalation on the part of federal agents and their allies. The surveilance state has made leaps and bounds in its implementation, armed not only with a fleet of rental cars but helicopters, drones, and facial identification sofware, hunting and searching for life without discrimination. For the majority of this time they have been victorious in a total domination of even white collaborationist aims. In this we find a resistance on multiple fronts: Against the federal State, the State of Illinois’s jurisdiction, and the local City-State itself. Yet on every front and on every issue, we face a churning dilemma of collaboration which leaves neither mark nor scar but jovial cheers.
Questions of what is liberatory are locked with a padlock and kept in high places. Class enemies continue to sink their teeth into the anti-State movement, subverting it, fracturing it and leaving it limp and lifeless. The classes themselves are brimming with contempt for each other. These contradictions propel us forward, but to where and what ends? This is the dilemma of whiteness and of white liberalism which plagues Chicago at this hour. Where are we going?
Recent Developments in Chicago
If we looked at the Anti-ICE mobilizations in Chicago from Trump’s inauguration to August, one could be mistaken for thinking this was not a mass movement at all. Citywide, nonprofits (mainly the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR)) both dominated and restrained the scene in the name of optics and incrementalism. It would mostly be a display of sadistic fanfare; Allusions to humanity and human rights were made, and that would be decisively it. These nonprofits held a flurry of public events and “training” sessions during this time, which served to entrench white allies in a placated white hero’s liberalism. The solution to thee burgeoning issues, ICIRR argued, was cheery solidarity politics. Or rather, a moral politics of the bystander. In this warped view of class expression, to look out for one’s neighbor meant to watch them be mauled by federal agents before being shipped off to a prison camp. The real work was in standing to the side and documenting the kidnapping as it occurred. ICIRR succeeded in pushing this view because of a lack of radical resistance in this sphere of organizing, but also because they employed white politics better than any other. They knew exactly how to facilitate an environment where their own bourgeois identity served as the basis for their supremacy, not class basis, tactical expertise or skillset. They simply had money and were the undocumented rights organization, which allowed them to isolate and dismember communists as outside agitators or federal agents looking for a fight. This tactic would be repeated by the white liberal movement several times, which we will discuss shortly. But it’s important to note by the end of Spring, there were very few raids. If you did show up to one of these few and refused to comply with the State, or worse, engage in community defense, you would be find yourself “documented” (doxxed) by their extensive volunteer network, segregated from the rest of the movement, and even physically fed to the Chicago Police Department.
ICIRR was not the only organization attempting to capitalize on the popular interests of the time, though. Several large Communist Party/Popular Front marches were held downtown, culminating in a mazy PSL demonstration in early June. There, police vehicles were quietly attacked, and the streets of Chicago’s Loop bubbled in enthusiasm. The outside agitators bounced around with glee as CPD were pushed back several times by a wave of demonstrators. After putting up a meek fight, the city’s forces ultimately buckled its knees and allowed marchers to descend on them as they wished. For all of this effort, even a march of this trajectory was self-policing. ICIRR-trained civillians brandishing American flags droned on as blocced anarchists set their sights on property. It seemed half the crowd was there for an uproar, and the remaining group was there to rehabilitate the American Exceptionalism we have so sorely missed. This contradiction would not really boil over, as much as solidify the latter’s rightful place in the movement by the day’s end. And the day would end, with the more radical splinters of the march culminating in a massive police kettle. Small afflictions to property aside, the city kept churning on. After this day many radicals were turned off to these events if they had not been already. Marches drew less and less crowds as July encroached. Likewise, ICE would show themselves sporadically, but with few in strength it was just as possible those dwindling mobilizations were protesting an army of ghosts. In Chicago we felt safe and sound, with our movement leaders reassuring us that there would be no need for rebellion.
After the flashy demos leading in early June, small groups of radicals and liberals alike began targeting ICE’s downtown Loop infrastructure. The only targets where ICE had been consistently present, this included a courthouse ICE camped out of to snatch migrants, as well as the DHS Chicago offices. Daily lookouts formed at these locations, culminating in a blockade of the courthouse’s parking lots which deterred ICE vehicles from rolling up unsuspecting. These insulated actions had varying degrees of success, but ultimately regressed into ICE Watch groups and spectacular protesting. Anarchists and a few radical liberals would muster a few numbers each workday, standing with signs and banners but no real struggle. If ICE were to show up, and they often did, the lack of crowd (especially at the DHS office) would mean there was little to be done anyway. Thus these displays soon died.
Chicago ultimately felt like a passenger to the wider movement and the decisions of the federal government. But as summer drew to a close and the leaves began to turn, so did the disposition of the federal government toward a Chicago-centric invasion. Whereas the working class could have learned from previous lessons around the country (i.e. Minneapolis, Los Angeles), we were wholly unprepared for anything the State were to throw at us. Movement leadership only doubled down on the white nature of our work, splitting the vast majority of the working class into vaguely distinct factions.
On September 8th, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security announced ‘Operation Midway Blitz.’ Staged by Trump as “training grounds for our military”, hundreds of ICE agents bashed their way into the fabric of our city.
Old Tactics, Old Faces
This brutal operation touched every corner of Chicago, with a special emphasis on the Latino majority Southwest Side. It was immediately successful: In the first 13 days of the offensive alone, DHS claimed over 550 people were kidnapped by ICE. As this unfolded, various tactics became favorable among activists still under the ICIRR umbrella. The primary form was to assemble rapid response (RR) groups within each neighborhood or special geographic location, where local activists respond to ICE sightings upon receiving a notice from ICIRR. This infrastructure had been laid months ago by ICIRR in the hopes of providing civil and restrained responses to ICE activity; As stated earlier, ICIRR wanted responders to solely document ICE. Furthermore, all the RR groups report to ICIRR on their activities, enlist their membership to complete ICIRR’s trainings, and provide ICIRR their leadership’s personal identities. ICIRR is also notorious for monitoring these groups personally, through injecting their staff or allies into RR projects they would otherwise have no relation to. In return, RR groups receive information about ICE activity in the city, but ICIRR still maintains a monopoly on what information is allowed to reach the public. If an incident doesn’t receive their rubber stamp, it will go unanswered by any RR groups and sink quietly into the past. This has directly allowed numerous kidnappings to take place, and implicitly altered the fate of countless more.
There were many obvious issues with these tactics, beginning with the liberal nature of whom they answered to, which prompted some nieghborhoods to implement RR groups with their own tactical basis. Instead of preaching ICIRR’s bystander framework, notable groups introduced a diversity of tactics into their community norms. Albeit a long and ongoing struggle, it ultimately proved successful in onboarding sympathetic community members and building a reassuredly critical space. One that was open to questioning capitalism, activist’s authority, and the State. This of course earned the ire of ICIRR-adjacents, who continously sought to infiltrate these spaces and undermine their membership. Ultimately they were opportunistic enough to keep radical elements around, as long as the radicals were outnumbered and uncomfortable.
When ICE presence began to multiply further, ICIRR shifted their primary focus from solely reprimanding activists. Yet after long debacles, doxxing, and community drama, sat the truth that rapid response was not a viable tactic in preventing kidnappings. By the time reports had been made, verified, and rapid responders dispatched, ICE had either located their target or managed to escape the premises. In a chance scenario where networks could muster a handful of responders, they would be reduced to shouting and waving their phones at caravans of armed agents. Thus even with ballooning memberships and public interest in stopping ICE, it became obvious responding was not enough to complete basic community defense, let alone push for a romantic class struggle that the few were pining for.
While thousands across the city continued to pour into the rapid response networks, by September a second tactical frontier had emerged: Broadview. After some spectacular protesting and arrests at the turn of fall, this tiny Immigration Processing Center in a small western suburb of Chicago started to draw headlines. As a processing center and temporary prison for hundreds, it held an ultimate importance in conducting ICE operations across the Midwest. Without it, ICE would not be able to transport its prisoners to nearby airports and out of the country. Likewise, Broadview is an immense accumulation of federal capital and personnel. Should either avenue be frustrated in any serous capacity, should the Processing Center be taken out of the picture, Operation Midway Blitz would have been seriously jeopardized. Outside of the jurisdiction of CPD and with no hegemonic control from controlled opposition, Broadview quickly became the hot new thing on everyone’s minds. Marxist-Leninist cronies flocked there for press conferences as Anarchists were routinely arrested; Catholics prayed the Rosary while Democrat politicians fawned in front of a seas of cameras. It was an ideological Wild West, a circus of performance and spectacle bent by the underlying truth that something historic could really be done here.
What were the outside agitators doing at this time? A new consensus resulted in rapid response being shelved at this time, as scores of activists continued to respond to calls and ultimately failed in stopping ICE. Instead of roaming around after a call had been sent out, the Leftists had its first site to coalesce. And with Broadview it represented a choke point, a definitive location that could be broadcasted to the working class to mobilize.
Initially these calls were restricted to familiar contingents of activists, and the composition of the crowd typically represented as such. While a few loud liberals and clerical opportunists gathered for the photos and press, many anarchists and communists also took Broadview seriously. As the initial clashes commenced, anywhere from a few dozen to 150 activists mobilized every Friday and Saturday outside the facility’s front steps. When cars packed with prisoners entered and exited the building, activists routinely attempted to block them from access. Due to collaboration with the local police departments and general opportunism from hopeful electeds and clergy, these first experiences were relatively muted and tame. Crowds would surge to block a vehicle entering the facility, police and ICE would enter the mix, and dearresting was virtually impossible due to swarms of press restricting activists from each other. As a scare tactic, ICE was able to slap each detainee with federal charges, albeit said charges didn’t always stick. Regardless it proved effective in isolating detained activist from the outside, and ensuring that dearrest opportunities were limited in the future.
In understanding how the white collaborators acted here, we have to understand the planning of Broadview’s protests at this time. The planning forum was “autonomous” in name and completely open to anyone who had attended a protest, thus becoming both unsecure and ideologically eclectic. Two blocs quickly began to form. One group, the nationalists, were mobilized by clergy and hopeful Democratic lawakers. They spouted off for civic nationalism and legal reform. The other group at this time, the anti-nationalists and communists/anarchists, had less vocal members yet slightly more approval from the general crowd. It goes to be said that the vast majority of this planning forum, which typically counted about 75 to 100 people, were relatively unideological in scope. As such, these two groups clashed often for the approval of the remaining majority, and many messes were made along the way.
The most eventful happened to be on the removal of any electeds, social media influencers, reporters, or otherwise public figures from this chat for the sake of transparency and combatting careerism. For example, a Democrat in this forum happened to be a member of the Illinois National Guard, which clearly confounded the ability to operate securely. The liberals of course rejected this on the basis of being exclusionary, and quickly sunk their teeth into radicals for being abrasive. Regardless, a vote was eventually held, and every single radical petition had been won. Yet the very next day when radicals took to the forum and announced the results, several liberals alleged the vote to have been rigged and/or simply a false vote. They swiftly petitioned with clergy and were allowed to stay. It was sheer irony then those who have most faith in democratic process quickly jumped to dissolve this one.
This stage in planning ultimately led to much of the anti-nationalist group bowing out of the tactical debate, and operating completely autonomously again. Yet even still, the next mobilizations responded by drawing on crowds that dwarfed the previous ones. We can say at these later protests, around mid-September, there existed anywhere from 250 to 400 protestors at absolute peak. Messages were muffled, and attempts to rein in on the movement by Democrats and clergy alike were mixed. With a shutdown of the facility-and its subsequent repurposing by the workers-as an absolute goal, protestors began fighting back, utilizing shield wall formations, de-arrest tactics, and responding to heaps of tear gas by either diffusing cannisters or throwing them back. Some prominent liberals at this time took to social media to denounce these actions and joined hands with the State to paint the angry masses as the primary source of violence. The liberals attempted to mute the movement into something they could control and utilize to advertise their own likeness, but with Broadview a new frontier, their strategy was untested. Just as quickly as some politicians entered into the fray at Broadview with glee, they exited (albeit not exactly kicking their feet; Some careers were assuredly made by these antics). Broadview was now consolidated as a mostly autonomous protesting scene.
What was to follow after these splinters and spontaneous actions of resistance soured the mood, however. Following attempts to form another, more comprehensive shield line and push ICE out, they installed a chained fence some 20 or 30 yards from the facility. Heavily militarized with a tank, snipers, and a swath of armed Special Response Team units, any hope of an offensive seemed to have been foiled. This did not stop ICE from continuing to shower activists with less-lethal munitions, including rubber bullets, tear gas, and pepper balls, and eventually a pattern emerged. A docile crowd is angered by the sight of agents or blacked-out buses, begin shouting and pushing toward the fence, ICE opens the fence and all hell breaks lose until the crowd ends up even farther away from the Processing Facility than where they started. This period would last a few weeks, marked by liberal calls for bourgeois peace. Earlier, the liberal peace message had been shattered by terror and brutality; Now with the masses having little alternative, nationalists had a chance to regroup, and reinforce these ideological shackles. It was at this time that many radicals seemed to abandon Broadview as a lost opportunity.
Despite this trough, numbers continued to swell, so much so that Illinois State Police entered the circus by October. Compared with the erratic behavior of ICE and their SRTs, the ISP proved to be a composed and methodical force. Having been trained in crowd control tactics, ISP engaged in more directly physical conduct than ICE’s “shoot from afar” strategy. Wielding batons, ISP battered and brutalized activists with no remorse in their early encounters. They also established a stronger perimeter of the facility, and collaborated with even more local police departments to put the surrounding streets and neighborhood under a microscope. Protestors were also kettled into blocked-off walkways even farther from the facility, not even being able to take the street as they had rountinely done in weeks past. This was a thorough crushing of the movement, something disembodied and hardly resemblant of the clashes that had previously taken place with ICE. This was a genuine occupation by Illinois State forces, and one that they consolidated overnight.
Many were still ready for a long-term fight at this time. This illusion shattered when leading clergy, and several nationalist activists attempted to broker a peace deal with Illinois State Police. Done without the consent of any other individuals within the planning forum nor on the streets, this group attempted to place themselves as leadership of the entire movement. In true spirit of collaboration, they told the same State Police force that had been crushing demonstrators on a weekly basis that: 1.) They needed special protections and safety measures, 2.) The State Police needed to de-escalate, and 3.) If they didn’t like an owner of a pack of dogs this group would sic the scary anarchists once more on the Police. It goes without saying that ISP didn’t take this exchange incredibly seriously, and this ultimately just led to further discontentment in the entire anti-ICE camp.
Having faced severe repression and isolated by collaborators, radicals took note of both the errors of rapid response and Broadview. Rapid response, while feeling critical, had the right idea of community defense but offered no real cover. Broadview offered a tactical site for hundreds to gather at, but felt completely lost after over a month of severe repression. What was theorized next was a combination of community defense and a proper site. To do this, radicals would need to refamiliarize themselves with the working class.
The Workers & the World
Just as quickly as many communists and anarchists bought stock in Broadview, they were to dump all hopes in fomenting revolt. The loss described prior encapsulated the sheer lack of direction felt, hitting a brick wall in the State that simply overpowered the white hesitance of the Broadview protests. Now activists had to search past a damning indictment for something new, and that would show itself in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.
Some 5 weeks prior, ICE and CPD collaborated once more in rounding up migrants and activists alike. The result was the use of lethal munitions against a female driver, as ICE agents shot into her car multiple times before she fired back. The detainments and these actions prompted a wide response from the community, where over 100 locals quickly mobilized. Some threw projectiles at agents. The road was shut down, with ICE eventually having to draw back and escape with the help of a CPD line. While there was no victory today, it reminded activists of the potential of local hotspots. Even with an SRT detachment and the help of local police, ICE was quickly outnumbered by a mass on their own turf.
Fast forward a week and the impetus shifted once more to the workers themselves. As ICE staged outside locations where migrants regularly coalesced, this manifested itself in their picking up day laborers at the Back of the Yards Home Depot on 47th and Western.
There, a community center has been built to decisively combat the raids and ensure as much safety as possible for migrants. To varying extents, this has been somewhat successful in doing so. Several times, agents flocked to the area only to be turned or chased back by the community. In other circumstances, the community was simply able to prepare spaces for migrants to hide. Regardless, the communalizing of the space provides for distinct relationships between activists and locals, and the regularity of both groups mean they can depend on each other beyond community defense. Over food, coffee and agitprop, the most meaningful interactions between the two are shared.
The primary issue is that even if property is repurposed, this does not mean it is communised. That is, it does not mean property is not beholden to capital. In fact, the current practice just mitigates the recirculation of capital. And it is not just activists still have to gome home, thus inserting a repurposed space back into capitalist life; Community defense alone is awfully neoliberal. Every laborer escorted to the back of a pick-up truck is an activist assisting in slavery. And there is no glory in subjugation, no matter how spectacular the shape of resistance has occasionally taken. This itself is its own form of tacit white collaboration.
As many are reflecting on this time period, the true goals of the movement need to be discussed. The anti-nationalists can either show the working class the nature of the antagonism that exists, or collaborate on their own front for community defense. The latter is not without merit: The radical are the few who have taken the most leadership and have been the most beaten, time and time again. But we have concerns with recent assessments of this movement’s success on the grounds that they maintain the capitalist status quo. There is no need for a solidarity politic. ICE is a State enemy, yes, but we are not here just to fight ICE. We are not here just to fight CPD, or ISP, or CBP. Our scope includes all of the former as well as class abolition itself. We exist to put an end to our miserable condition.
Black Disenchantment with White Identity
Editors Note: This section encompasses our questions regarding tenant organizing work being done on Chicago’s Far South Side, and the role of the Black proletariat in relation to a white movement.
Outside of white collaborator bases, this invasion ironically had more support from the far South and West Sides. Trump and ICE touted this as a pretext for both military rule and a matter of public safety. For many Black workers, they believed that their communities would be safer as a result. In this, they took on the white collaborationist views of the other bourgeoisie, who otherwise had but a few scattered ethnic White strongholds in Chicago.
This is symptomatic of a wider issue: The movement’s own white identity with the class base most subjugated in Chicago for over a century. As a foundation it is wrapped in slurred nationalist drawl. It is clear the Right’s political language is appealing for the Black worker, but also there is a notable absence of the ICIRR-adjacent political landscape even making its way to Black neighborhoods. Not that it would do much good. The legalists and nationalists parrot those things which many Black proletarians have come to know are wholly untrue proclamations. The bourgeoisie have been attempting to sell the world a vision of Chicago before ICE, and the petit-bourgeoisie and white liberals could not have been more enthusiastic to buy. Likewise, the Latino sections of the city have seen the most ICE presence, and understandably are participants in this visionary spectacle. The group this vision most dismembers is the Black proletariat, and the liberal foot soldiers have made no use in catering to them. We call these out as much as we must call out our own spaces. For Chicago to ever communise, it would require most sections of the proletariat to come together or simply revolt at the same time, due to similar causes. Our failure to engage with the Black proletariat, then, represents the ongoing failure to alter the content of this movement, if it can even be so.
Just as tenant organizing was pivotal in shifting Los Angeles’ community defense into more offensive content, tenant struggles have been engaged with on Chicago’s Far South Side. The nature of these unions are problematic in the same way that any trade union movement is such. There is a magnificent vehicle being built off the struggles of so many workers and their families, fighting against billionaire slumlords who live across the country. The growth of these tenants as they continue to hold up the struggle and extend it to their neighbors is the kernel of communism that we wish to seek. And after almost a year of struggle, these tenants have been mobilized to fight for a seat at their management’s table. As much as it is impressive, in the heart of a community that has been entirely left to rot by the city, we have to engage in self-criticism when understanding that this union function only breeds a content reformism. This may be enough to keep the workers alive a bit longer, but it does not fundamentally alter anything.
Thus, when tenants are engaged with on the basis of migrant struggles, a behavior is exhibited similar to that of the student being asked to step off university. This union is phenomenally being granted its seat in community administration, and wishing to manage wholeheartedly. We fear how quickly this giddy to manage becomes manifested in a gleeful casting aside of other symptoms of the proletarian condition.
We have to remind ourselves that the Black workers’ opposition to this movement is not on the grounds that it is impossible to engage in both migrant and Black struggle. But rather, that the movement itself has been sanitized and stripped of its class character, thus granting it an opposition from Black workers. The question is of how to rid both communities of the capitalist in one swoop.
Cutting Ties With Ideologues
The collaborators have done an immense job in securing Chicago for ICE. But even radicals are dooming themselves to haggle over the price of their soul. To defeat ICE, we need to defeat the sanctity of the working class. That is, to stop viewing workers as mystical cattle to be herded, but as a contradiction which be only be unclassed through revolutionary struggle. So far, the movement in Chicago has not been reformist, let alone revolutionary. It is simply a scrap of activists and workers fighting to maintain the status quo. We have to break with this decisively,as nearing December the presence of ICE remains.
Abolish Borders, Abolish Nations, Abolish Work.
