Tear Gas and Protest Music — Fighting ICE on the Ground in Chicago

The first thing I saw when I arrived at a protest site near the Broadview ICE facility was a pile of stuffed animals and a sign encouraging us to throw them at ICE vehicles while heckling the agents inside.

This was not an official function of the protest.

The demonstrations that have been held outside and around the Broadview detention facility — the central processing center for ICE’s ongoing assault on Chicago, which the agency has dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz” — are autonomous in nature, allowing a variety of tactics, messages and imagery to emerge at each demonstration. I approached the intersection of Harvard Street and 25th Avenue in Broadview, a secondary protest site that has recently emerged in the ongoing struggle to disrupt ICE’s comings and goings from the facility. The se