Marimar Martinez

Person of the Week

The voice who made the strongest impression on me this week was that of the 30 year-old Chicago teacher, used as target practice by DHS goons who shot her and celebrated her intended murder. She then somehow recovered and made them famous. Their reckoning cannot come soon enough. Let her be in our minds as we write, phone, demonstrate. There are some actions below. If we do just one we are heroes.

For Sunday: the best Superbowl ads. For a sign up here.

Robert Hubbell, on his excellent daily Substack, quoted GB Shaw this week. It is a gift to us at this time.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Also here’s this beautiful Shakespeare by Sir Ian McKellen. Must see.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2035701016972119

And the latest from our friend Laura Conwesser:

Hello everyone,

This email is going to be a little different from my regular requests for calls and emails. Although there is certainly some of that, I am going to rant a little more than usual.

The single biggest issue at the moment is what to do about ICE and Custom and Border Patrol. In order to keep the government open, the Democrats were able to get the funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE/CBP, separated from the rest of the government funding. However, to accomplish that, they agreed to a continuing resolution that would fund DHS for two more weeks while they negotiate about ICE/CBP. In other words, as I write this, our tax dollars are still going to Trump’s fascist little army. Of course, this is in addition to the $75 billion Congress gave ICE over four years, approximately $18.7 billion each year, through the Big Ugly Bill that was passed in July. The same funding bill gave CBP almost $65 billion. That is more than what is spent on police by state and local governments in all 50 states and the District of Columbia combined.

We are seeing only a small portion of the horror of what is being done with that money. In addition to the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, we have seen people being attacked in the streets of Minneapolis, children being detained, people afraid to leave their homes to go to work or shop or send their children to school or go to church. Minneapolis has become a scene out a dystopian movie.

A large portion of the allocated money is being spent on building a network of concentration camps, all across the country. In the rare cases where our Representatives are able to visit these detention centers, they are finding conditions that are totally horrific. I have not heard enough about the Democrats demands concerning detention centers, but DHS is in the process of buying huge warehouses to convert into more facilities. There are currently more than 73,000 people being held in ICE detention, including children. That is the highest level ever recorded and an 84% increase over last year at this time. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has long held some people in detention without giving them a chance to ask for release on bond. Earlier this year, Congress passed the Laken Riley, which expanded mandatory detention. As of October 2025, ICE has made major policy changes to expand it even further, and the immigration appeals court at the Department of Justice has signed off. The result: ICE is arresting, detaining, and refusing to release far more people than before, including many vulnerable people who were rarely detained in the past. Most, if not all, ot these concentration camps are owned and operated by CoreCivic (CXW) and Geo (GEO). If you own any mutual funds or are part of a retirement managed account, check to see if you have any holdings with them. If you do, try to get out of them.

How do you negotiate and compromise on conditions that are this egregious? How do you negotiate and compromise with people who lie and break the law constantly? I don’t have the answers, but I do know that Schumer and Jeffries cannot give an inch on any of this. ICE should be abolished altogether. CBP should be monitoring the border. Maybe the negotiations have to start with those as our positions, although neither of those conditions are likely to be met.

Now Schumer and Jeffries are negotiating about DHS funding for FY 2026. They sent a letter to Republican leaders earlier today, outlining their demands. You can read it yourself and decide what works for you and what you think is missing. Clearly, we are not all going to agree on this, but we can probably agree that something dramatic needs to happen and whatever the solution is must have some teeth. Any transgressions from the agreed on policy must have very serious consequences.

Our job is to call and email our Senators every day until this is resolved. Make it clear to them that we will stand for nothing less than what is right and humane. We also needs to call our House members and make sure they support at least what Schumer and Jeffries are demanding. When you are done with your calls, please use this tool from the National Immigration Law Center to write to your Representatives, too. Indivisible has their own. Why not do it all!

A group that I became involved with this past year is called Common Power. They have three main components: education, leadership development and action. The last of these mostly involves sending people around the country to get out the vote in crucial elections. I have had the great pleasure of joining them on three of these outings and plan to do more this year. This past weekend, several of their staff, including their director Charles Douglas, went to Minneapolis to help out on the ground. Ahmed Baba, a journalist and MSNOW contributor, interviewed Charles. (If you are offended by foul language, this might not be for you). You can really get a sense of what it is like in MN right now. Charles talks about the incredible need for support from those of us who can. He recommends looking here to find out how you can help.

There is a general call for us to boycott Hilton Hotels because they are allowing ICE/CBP to stay at their hotels in Minneapolis and elsewhere. Please try not to stay at their hotels. You can also call them at 1-800-445-8667 and say that there is no way to keep their guests or their staff safe if they are renting rooms to ICE.

Although I generally avoid asking you to sign petitions and prefer direct outreach, this one is getting enough signatures to possible make it effective. Please sign here to tell Amazon, Home Depot, Microsoft and Palantir to stop profiting from ICE’s violence.

The ACLU has put together a video and pdfs to inform you of your rights if you go out to protest, particularly if you are planning to video ICE/CBP. It is very important that we do record what is happening. Without visual proof of what happened to Renee Good and Alex Pretti, we would not be able to refute the lies coming out of the Trump administration.

Congress is trying to pass the SAVE Act, a federal bill that would require voters to show a birth certificate or passport to register to vote. The bill would block millions of American citizens from voting. 21 million eligible American citizens don’t have ready access to those documents. Mike Johnson and some of his colleagues in the House are pushing for an even more stringent bill than the one they already passed. The Brennan Center has an excellent explanation of what this terrible legislation will mean for our future elections. They also have an easy tool for writing to your Representatives.

MAGA’s fear of Trans People is beyond my comprehension and totally toxic. There are two new proposed rules that would make it virtually impossible for Trans Youth to get health care. The Human Rights Campaign has put together a guide to help us voice our opposition to those rules.

Just a few weeks ago, we were asked to cancel our Spotify accounts to protest the fact that they were running recruitment ads for ICE. Some of us couldn’t cancel because we never had a Spotify account. The reason for that is that the company seriously underpays the artists whose music makes astronomical amounts of money for Spotify. There is a bill in Congress that could rectify that problem. The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers is asking you to send a direct message to Congress asking them to pass the Living Wage for Musicians Act.

Although Gov. Hochul has proposed some restrictions on local governments in NY State to cooperate with ICE, her ideas do not go far enough. Tomorrow, Friday February 6 at noon, the NYCLU is having a phone zap. If you aren’t able to participate at that time, you can: contact State governmentleadership and call your State Reps.

If you live on or near the UWS of Manhattan, there are several actions for the weekend of February 21-22 being led by Hands Off NYC. You can see what works for you here, here, and here.

I will close out this very long email with a reminder to mark your calendars for the next NO KINGS DAY on March 28. Tell all your friends and family to do the same. And another reminder to email me if you want to be added to a separate Rapid Response email list for actions that come up fairly last minute.

As always, thank you!

Laura