You’re not a superhero

You can't protect your community alone

Bad things are happening. You know it, I know it, it’s probably part of why you’re reading this. I have no intention of bombarding you with each and every executive order and rescinded order and every ounce of harm being done right now, but there are events that demand our attention. Today I will tell you about one.

This event is, unfortunately, a signal of what’s to come. An ICE raid was just conducted on a business in Newark, New Jersey. According to the city’s mayor, the immigration agents detained multiple people, including United States citizens. And, according to Mayor Baraka, the agents did not produce a warrant. ICE responded with a statement that denies none of it. This is where things stand. On day 4 of the new regime citizens and non-citizens are being kidnapped without a warrant by the federal government.

If you’re like me, your initial response cries out that you need to do something, you need to stop this, now. But you can’t. I can’t stop ICE agents from terrorizing communities and taking whoever they want into custody. Neither can you. At least, not alone. The first crucial lesson is that alone you can’t do much, I can’t do much. In the face of brutal state power each of us, in isolation, lacks the power to effectively resist. By ourselves individuals can resist in small ways, but you and I can’t turn the tide alone. Neither of us is Superman, unless he’s recently become a reader.

If we remain there, stuck in the healthy and understandable and completely valid desire to stop these atrocities, and simultaneously conceptualizing our response as an individual act, we could find ourselves trapped. We could find ourselves pinned between our desire to take action and our knowledge that alone we are powerless. But that doesn’t need to be the case. Knowing that we can’t stop fascism from marching on alone is, or can be, a thought that frees rather than debilitates us. It’s the first step to knowing that we must work with others.

A lot of us were raised to be superheroes, raised to think that our intellects, will power, and hard work could get us anywhere, get us everything we wanted. And that has its limits in every area of life, but none are so clear as the political. In politics, in working to shift power and affect systems and make real change, the individual accomplishes very little, no matter how hard we work or how smart we are. Groups, organizations, institutions, and mass movements can, on the other hand, accomplish a whole lot.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

So step one is accepting that we’re not the protagonist, we’re one of many, many people out there trying to do good. Step two is to accept that we must, therefore, connect with others, work with others, and operate as part of a greater collective. We can still contribute. In fact, we can ultimately contribute much more if we come together with others and view ourselves as parts of a larger body. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and the parts become greater within the whole.

Defending our communities and our neighbors against ICE, against both legal and illegal kidnappings by authorities of all stripes, is one of those places where these lessons become crystal clear. ICE watches, meaning groups of people who keep a lookout, build out networks that inform people when ICE is in the area, and help keep the authorities at bay as best they can require lots of us. It requires people being plugged in, and each doing their part. Many of these community initiatives were started during the first Trump administration, and have been built and maintained over time by dedicated volunteers who chop wood and carry water and do the unglamorous work that ultimately helps keep their neighbors safer.

This massive attack on migrants, with documentation or not, with citizenship or not, is the loudest call yet — to all of us. It calls us to get organized, to reach out and become a part of the fabric of our communities in ways we may not have done yet. Alone we are powerless, together we have the power and the potential to keep each other safe. Often this means taking small actions, picking up an ICE watch shift, doing outreach, conveying information that might help someone remain in this country with their family and friends. It means plugging into existing organizations and, where necessary, building new ones. It means accepting that doing the right thing might not look heroic, according to the conceptions of heroism we were handed, but rather that it’s really countless helping hands and consistent little actions that can get us where we need to go.

You don’t need to save the world, you can’t save the world, but together we can move in that direction. It takes thousands and millions of us doing what we can, taking the steps in front of us, reaching out to connect with others and to expand the actions we can collectively take and the power we can collectively wield. That is what this moment asks of us. And right now, today, this is our time to answer the call.

Resources for immigrant and community defense:

Great piece that includes an ICE watch explainer and more: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/ice-watch-programs-immigrants-how-to-start

Resources from the Detention Watch Network: https://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/take-action/organize

Resources from the Immigrant Defense Project: https://www.immigrantdefenseproject.org/resources/

Your community might have ICE watch trainings happening right now. Here’s one example of a resource used in training by the Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network: https://jhimmigrantsolidarity.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/HFZ-Cop-ICE-Watch-Training.pdf

The Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network is worth checking out in full: https://jhimmigrantsolidarity.org/

A relevant piece from 2020 on How to Shut Down ICE Detention in Your Community: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/how-to-shut-down-ice-detention-watch-network

And a current piece on How to Support Immigrant Communities During ICE Raids: https://convergencemag.com/articles/how-to-support-immigrant-communities-during-ice-raids/