[HN Gopher] I Want You to Understand Chicago
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       I Want You to Understand Chicago
        
       Author : tonyg
       Score  : 326 points
       Date   : 2025-11-08 19:47 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (aphyr.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (aphyr.com)
        
       | don_neufeld wrote:
       | I'm so glad that Kyle wrote this.
       | 
       | I'm so sad that he had to.
       | 
       | Pay attention to what's going on and vote.
        
         | ryandrake wrote:
         | The problem is how many people enthusiastically voted _for_
         | this madness, lawlessness and cruelty, and are still cheering
         | it on.
         | 
         | You can say "vote, vote, vote," and maybe it will work in 2026
         | or 2028, or 2030 or whenever, but the root problem is not going
         | away: you are still surrounded by people all over the country
         | who want this.
        
           | turnsout wrote:
           | I don't know, man. That is definitely true, but they didn't
           | win by a landslide. And a lot of their edge came from the
           | MAGA Latinx vote. This ICE/CPB action is a total self-own.
           | That Latinx vote is going to disappear, and we've already
           | seen the results in the 2025 elections.
           | 
           | I think the right will turn on itself in 2026. We could even
           | end up with three parties, only one of them able to obtain a
           | majority (Democrats). There's a plausible version of the
           | future where the Republican Party goes the way of the Whigs.
        
             | ryandrake wrote:
             | > I think the right will turn on itself in 2026.
             | 
             | If they turn on themselves it will not be over immigration.
             | This is the one issue where they are almost all in wild
             | agreement. A massive, overwhelming majority _of
             | Republicans_ agree with these cruel treatment of
             | immigrants[1].
             | 
             | They might disagree on the economy or tariffs or jobs or
             | whatever, but there's no infighting here. They fully back
             | this cruelty.
             | 
             | 1: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/07/what-
             | amer...
        
               | turnsout wrote:
               | No, you're right--I don't think it will be over
               | immigration. I think they'll lose in 2026 and tear
               | themselves apart infighting about who's to blame.
        
               | techblueberry wrote:
               | The biggest division right now seems to be support
               | Israel. And if we up the attacks in Venezuela, I do think
               | the America first folks will get louder in their
               | divisions.
               | 
               | https://www.thefp.com/p/the-rights-existential-fight-over
        
           | WillEngler wrote:
           | There are some who voted for Trump and do celebrate the
           | cruelty on display in Chicago. But I also think many wanted
           | to deport "the worst of the worst" and that is what they
           | thought they were promised. And per the media many consume,
           | that is what's happening. It's an open question on whether
           | the real extent of the crackdown will break through the echo
           | chamber, but from conversations I've had with people who
           | consume Fox News, I really do think a lot of Trump voters
           | will not be ok with the tactics as they are actually being
           | carried out. For example, I just don't think that earnest
           | religious conservatives I know would defend denying the
           | Eucharist to people in the processing facility
           | (https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/11/02/faith-leaders-
           | again-...) and then banning prayer outside the facility
           | altogether (https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/11/07/feds-
           | tell-faith-lead...). When you lay out this (and the many
           | events in Aphyr's post) to them clearly, they really don't
           | like it.
        
           | toomuchtodo wrote:
           | Margin of victory was ~2M votes, about how many voters 55+
           | die in a year. Hopefully enough voters have aged out or
           | learned their lesson next time around (considering election
           | results we've seen in the last week or so [1]). You're never
           | going to convince unsavory voters to vote with empathy, the
           | subject brain structure does not support it (anterior insular
           | cortex, primarily), you can only hope they're aging out of
           | the electorate at a reasonable pace (and not being replaced).
           | 
           | "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its
           | opponents and making them see the light, but rather because
           | its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up
           | that is familiar with it." (Planck's Principle [2] applied to
           | voting)
           | 
           | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45818505
           | 
           | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle
        
             | saulpw wrote:
             | The replacement voters are currently teenagers. They
             | haven't "learned their lesson", they aren't old enough to
             | have experienced politics at all. They were 6 years old
             | when Trump was elected the first time. This is their
             | reality and we can't expect that the electorate gets more
             | sensible because old people rotate out.
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-
               | tracker
               | 
               | https://www.newsweek.com/trump-support-among-men-
               | eroding-108...
               | 
               | https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-absolutely-
               | craters...
               | 
               | Young women are also most liberal than ever, and who
               | carried recent election wins. I expect this trend to
               | continue.
               | 
               | https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/gallup-analysis-
               | finds-yo...
               | 
               | https://news.gallup.com/poll/609914/women-become-liberal-
               | men...
               | 
               | https://msmagazine.com/2025/11/03/2025-election-results/
        
             | ryandrake wrote:
             | It's comforting that maybe this mentality is correcting
             | itself one funeral at a time.
             | 
             | But what really makes me sad is how this mentality so
             | quickly swept into the country to begin with. 30 years ago,
             | the vast majority of Americans would be horrified at the
             | thought of people being assaulted on the street in broad
             | daylight, black-bagged, kidnapped and disappeared forever
             | by masked, non-identifying thugs. Fast forward 30 years,
             | and (chances are) my neighbors want this and are absolutely
             | giddy at the thought of it happening here!
             | 
             | Regardless of who votes for what, how did my country turn
             | into this?
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | Tribalism, identity politics, low education and lack of
               | respect for education and intellectualism, and late stage
               | capitalism. A cautionary tale, for sure. People are
               | angry, rightfully so, but at the wrong people. Thank
               | Reagan (economics) and Gingrich (politics) for a lot of
               | this we're facing.
               | 
               | Deepfriedchokes is right; we need stronger, more robust
               | systems to protect humans from other humans, because we
               | cannot trust the human (broadly speaking).
        
               | msandford wrote:
               | The Biden admin (no idea if Biden himself was involved)
               | literally sued Texas to stop Texas from enforcing border
               | law. This same admin also essentially redefined "asylum"
               | to be economic asylum rather than "I'm afraid that if I
               | go back to my country I'll be killed" which is how people
               | typically thought of asylum.
               | 
               | You can absolutely think that what's happening now is an
               | overreaction, un-American, gross, illegal, and morally
               | wrong.
               | 
               | But if you're unwilling to try and understand how it's
               | possible that over half the country voted for someone who
               | would enact policies that lead to what we're seeing now,
               | you're simply not paying attention.
               | 
               | If you just want to see the people who voted for this as
               | "the enemy" and "evil" you're basically doing the same
               | tribal "othering" that's lead to these outcomes you don't
               | like.
               | 
               | Is that ugly and uncomfortable? Yes, absolutely. Will
               | things get better by ignoring it? Absolutely not.
        
             | deepfriedchokes wrote:
             | We shouldn't need to count on voters dying to avoid
             | outcomes like this. Our institutions are broken if they
             | can't protect the public from a mentally ill public
             | official on a power trip.
        
               | ryandrake wrote:
               | The point is that we are not talking about protecting the
               | public from a few mentally ill public officials. These
               | officials didn't just appear out of the ether, they were
               | voted for by tens of millions of voters who want this.
               | Even if the officials go away, those voters are not.
        
               | strken wrote:
               | I'm not sure this is the correct perspective on voting.
               | Voters are often passionate about one or two key issues -
               | crime, Israel v Palestine, cost of living, immigration
               | policy, coal towns, Ukraine, military spending, or
               | whatever is most important to them.
               | 
               | If they voted for Trump it doesn't mean they agree with
               | him on immigration and crime. They just have to think
               | it's less important than the positions they do agree
               | with. An effective argument to win over those voters
               | isn't "you're evil and should have better opinions," it's
               | "immigration policy is important too and this one is
               | really bad, plus Trump is doing a bad job on your pet
               | issues."
        
             | queenkjuul wrote:
             | Sadly GenX seems to be getting on board as quickly as the
             | boomers are dying off
        
           | ssl-3 wrote:
           | We must always vote. Our voter turnout for elections in the
           | US is approximately shit.
           | 
           | We must also do other things, too: Voting isn't the end-all,
           | be-all solution to everything. (And that's OK; we can do more
           | than one thing at a time.)
           | 
           | But the absolute necessity of actually-voting is a constant,
           | and I'm equipped with a profound amount of intolerance
           | towards any idea that may suggest otherwise.
        
         | alangibson wrote:
         | Voting is what got us in to this. This is supported by a
         | majority of the US. You do not live in the country you think
         | you do.
        
           | daseiner1 wrote:
           | Yup immigration was arguably _the_ concrete issue of the
           | election and these were the campaign promises. Anyone with
           | two brain cells to rub together knew that this is what mass
           | deportation would look like.
        
             | metabagel wrote:
             | We already had mass deportation under Biden, and it wasn't
             | conducted in this manner.
        
           | HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
           | > This is supported by a majority of the US.
           | 
           | The election was fairly close. The winning candidate got
           | elected by a coalition of people with differing views on an
           | number of individual items within his platform. That does not
           | equate to certain approval by the majority of the American
           | population of any of the things the linked article recounts.
           | 
           | All that said, as an American living abroad who votes left,
           | the use of terms like "kidnapped" and "abducted" to describe
           | immigration-enforcement actions seems really weird to me and
           | my expat peers. There are quite a few democratic, developed
           | countries high on freedom-ranking lists that widely deploy
           | law enforcement to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants
           | and visa overstayers. Sure, deplore lack of due process when
           | actual citizens get caught in the net, but so much use of
           | these loaded terms isn't even about that, it's criticizing
           | actions against non-citizens.
        
             | ryandrake wrote:
             | > The winning candidate got elected by a coalition of
             | people with differing views on an number of individual
             | items within his platform. That does not equate to certain
             | approval by the majority of the American population of any
             | of the things the linked article recounts.
             | 
             | There may be differing views on other topics among the
             | party, but Republicans broadly support this vision of
             | cruelty and these actions against immigrants[1] by huge
             | margins. It's probably the one single vision they are
             | united behind.
             | 
             | 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45859760
        
               | metalcrow wrote:
               | Your citation doesn't support your claim
        
               | ryandrake wrote:
               | - 74% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents
               | say the Trump administration is doing the right amount to
               | deport immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally. Another
               | 12% say it's doing too little and 13% say it's doing too
               | much.
               | 
               | - Nearly nine-in-ten Republicans approve of sending
               | additional U.S. troops to the border (88%) and increasing
               | deportations (86%). More than six-in-ten strongly approve
               | of these actions.
               | 
               | - 80% of Republicans approve of cutting federal funds to
               | cities and states if they do not cooperate with
               | deportations
               | 
               | - 72% of Republicans approve of suspending asylum
               | applications, with 38% saying they strongly approve.
        
               | HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
               | It looks like the difference in the popular vote was
               | 2,284,967 votes towards R. Do all of those 2,284,967
               | voters demonstrably overlap with that 86% of the polled
               | Republicans? If not, then claiming that a majority of
               | Americans support every incident in the linked article
               | based on the last election, lacks basis.
        
               | ryandrake wrote:
               | I'm not saying anything about the majority of the
               | American population. Just that Republicans broadly
               | support these actions. I _hope_ we never get to the point
               | where a majority of the overall public support this.
        
             | metabagel wrote:
             | ICE are wearing masks, refusing to identify themselves,
             | abducting citizens and non-citizens alike. They are
             | accusing citizens of assault and then releasing them
             | without charging - a pretty good indication that they lied.
             | 
             | They are conducting warrantless searches. There is a case
             | where they rammed the car of a U.S. citizen (clearly seen
             | on video), promptly took her into custody, accused her of
             | hitting them, and then released her without charging her.
             | 
             | They are profiling people based on race and ethnicity.
             | 
             | The abductions look like kidnappings. They don't look like
             | law enforcement actions.
        
               | HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
               | In many countries, including some high on freedom
               | rankings as I mentioned, certain police units are masked
               | and may not have to identify themselves during stings,
               | which after all rely on the element of surprise.
               | Immigration-enforcement actions are commonly directed
               | against people based on looks, and due process serves to
               | ensure that if citizens are mistakenly rounded up, they
               | are not further detained. Again, when I see Americans
               | deploring ICE actions based on those things (and not the
               | outright abuses), it's just a very peculiar political
               | position from an international perspective.
        
               | ryandrake wrote:
               | In the USA, we have come to expect a certain level of
               | formality, transparency, and adherence to due process
               | when it comes to how law enforcement operates. Or, at
               | least that's what we tell ourselves the standard is.
               | Granted, we've been backsliding in this department for
               | decades, which really started accelerating during the War
               | On Terror. It's not new with this administration. But, we
               | have strayed a long, long way away from the idealized
               | "uniformed cop visibly walking the beat on the street."
               | 
               | The whole "masked plainclothes men jumping out of an
               | unmarked van, dragging someone off the street into the
               | van, and swooping away" thing is what the villains in the
               | movies did, not the good guys.
        
               | queenkjuul wrote:
               | These aren't stings. They're in body armor and masks
               | patrolling the streets without badges.
        
             | queenkjuul wrote:
             | Many of these people are documented permanent residents or
             | US citizens being grabbed without warrants, without being
             | read rights, without charges, and without an opportunity to
             | present documentation.
             | 
             | That's kidnapping.
        
             | stavros wrote:
             | > The election was fairly close.
             | 
             | Yeah but "the totalitarian Neonazis who wanted to deploy
             | secret police were only a _slight_ majority " is _really_
             | faint praise.
        
               | HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
               | No, my point was that in a close election that depended
               | on a party building coalitions between heterogenous
               | groups of voters, the people in favor of any particular
               | action taken by the elected government may be a
               | _minority_ of the population, not even a slight majority.
        
               | stavros wrote:
               | Sure, but in a healthy society, such extreme opinions
               | should never even be close enough to a minority large
               | enough to be elected into power. Hopefully, anyway.
        
               | HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
               | Blame it on first-past-the-post. It's just one of the
               | many ways the Founding Fathers sowed the seeds of a
               | politically unhealthy society.
        
             | sgentle wrote:
             | Do you not think there might be a relationship between the
             | lack of due process and the choice of terms?
             | 
             | Like, maybe the defining difference between arrest and
             | abduction is whether the action is the output of an
             | accountable system of justice, rather than whether the
             | people doing it are the right kind of people and the people
             | having it done to them are the wrong kind of people.
        
       | Moveable_Type wrote:
       | can't access due to UK online safety act
        
         | pekim wrote:
         | I'm in the UK too. So I read the article courtesy of
         | archive.is.
         | 
         | https://archive.is/X33oQ
        
         | hexbin010 wrote:
         | Well, technically, it's likely because he has decided to block
         | UK IPs (or similar).
         | 
         | A form of protest I assume, assuming he runs no business in the
         | UK and no other reason to think the UK Gov has any interest in
         | policing an .com blog run by someone who doesn't live there nor
         | hosts the website there.
         | 
         | (I'm not against that form of protest per se, but let's be
         | clear about who's doing the blocking)
        
           | davorak wrote:
           | > A form of protest I assume,
           | 
           | Or to avoid the fines and/or to avoid integrating some age
           | verification service.
           | 
           | Maybe symbolic since it unlikely the site would be
           | prosecuted, even if they were in violation in some minor
           | form. It is easy to be in violation to my understanding since
           | it does not need to what is posted by the site owner as part
           | of the blog but could be in the comments.
        
       | blindriver wrote:
       | The thing I don't understand is why didn't people care when 50
       | people were getting shot every weekend for decades at a time?
        
         | alangibson wrote:
         | Citation needed
        
           | blindriver wrote:
           | If you don't understand how critically violent Chicago is,
           | especially in the number of Black people shot and murdered
           | every week, then you have no business being engaged in this
           | topic. Chicago is one of the most violent cities in the US.
        
             | alangibson wrote:
             | Well then you should have no problem proving what you are
             | now only insisting on. This is HN, not Reddit. Where's the
             | citation? Prove what you said or I have no reason to take
             | you seriously.
        
               | blindriver wrote:
               | https://data.cityofchicago.org/Public-Safety/2025-Year-
               | to-Da...
               | 
               | 1646 shooting victims in chicago over 40 weeks = 36
               | shooting victims per week. Although these are cases so
               | there are probably multiple victims in many cases.
               | 
               | If you go back 10 years, there are around 34,000 cases of
               | gunshot victims.
               | 
               | https://abcnews.go.com/US/58-shot-weekend-chicago-
               | governor-r...
               | 
               | https://cwbchicago.com/2025/11/two-killed-21-wounded-in-
               | hall...
        
               | tedivm wrote:
               | So what you're saying is that the rate of violence has
               | been dropping over the last decade? And that we should
               | ignore fed violence (against brown, white, and black
               | people)?
        
               | don_neufeld wrote:
               | And how does this compare to other cities on a population
               | adjusted basis?
               | 
               | "Chicago ranked 8th out of a bigger sample of 24 cities
               | in terms of the homicide rate in both 2023 and 2024."
               | 
               | https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8jl969pg7o.amp
        
               | ozim wrote:
               | I am not from US but watched Married With Children - I
               | guess that's just the things are in Chicago.
        
               | cylinder714 wrote:
               | Go to YouTube and search for "chicago weekend violence".
        
             | alwa wrote:
             | What does that have to do with federal officers conducting
             | immigration raids against schoolteachers and random US-
             | citizen paralegals? Do you suggest that those people are
             | the ones shooting and murdering Black people every week?
        
               | blindriver wrote:
               | People didn't care when it was Black people dying,
               | getting shot, having their lives ruined.
               | 
               | But when it's some other ethnicity being targeted, then
               | all of a sudden they are up in arms, even though the
               | scale is orders of magnitude smaller.
               | 
               | This is racism by ignoring Black people.
        
             | zemo wrote:
             | The problem is that your claim is just untrue in two major
             | ways.
             | 
             | Chicago is ranked 22nd for murder and 92nd in the country
             | in violent crime overall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lis
             | t_of_United_States_cities_b...
             | 
             | The obsession with Chicago's murder rate and not the murder
             | rate of cities like St Louis, Cleveland, Cincinatti,
             | Indianapolis, or Little Rock is a political constructon of
             | a right wing apparatus still hell-bent on punishing Chicago
             | for having produced Obama.
             | 
             | That murder rate is gang related and extremely localized,
             | and to boot, people in Chicago DO care about it; here are
             | the top results for searching for "Chicago groups against
             | gang violence" in duckduckgo:
             | 
             | https://thetriibe.com/2024/07/13-black-led-organizations-
             | tha...
             | 
             | https://www.buildchicago.org/our-programs/intervention-
             | and-c...
             | 
             | https://togetherchicago.com/violence-reduction/
             | 
             | https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/community-
             | safety/home/...
             | 
             | https://www.chicagocred.org/wp-
             | content/uploads/2024/04/2024-...
             | 
             | It is just broadly untrue that nobody cares about it. This
             | point is extremely easy to debunk if you have any desire to
             | debunk it, but you obviously have no interest in that.
             | 
             | And besides, there's an ocean of a difference between
             | interpersonal gang on gang violence and the government
             | sending secret police to put people into concentration
             | camps and deport them to countries where they have no
             | affiliation based on racial profiling.
        
         | numbsafari wrote:
         | What makes you think they didn't? What makes you think this is
         | the solution to that problem?
        
           | jghn wrote:
           | I'd like to know what makes them think this actually happened
           | in the first place
        
             | lurk2 wrote:
             | 50 every weekend is an exaggeration, but more people were
             | murdered in Chicago from 2001 to 2021 than American
             | soldiers died during the Global War on Terror (6,593 died
             | in Iraq and Afghanistan vs. 11,561 in Chicago).
             | 
             | This is something of a red herring though as somewhere
             | around 75% of those murders are black-on-black, with only a
             | minority involving Latinos. Chicago primarily attracts
             | attention not because of its murder rate (#22 in the
             | country vs. Detroit at #5), but instead due to the size of
             | its population and the prevalence of violent music that has
             | come out of the region.
        
               | Gibbon1 wrote:
               | My take the high murder rate among blacks in Chicago is
               | due to Slavery, Jim Crow, followed by decades of racist
               | therefor ineffective policing. That toxic racism is also
               | what's motivating the ICE terrorizing.
        
               | aftbit wrote:
               | Not to dispute your point, but the GWoT was shockingly
               | low casualty for the Americans. Almost 10x as many
               | Americans died in the Vietnam war (58,281 US military
               | KIA), mostly between 1965 and 1971, peaking at 16,899 in
               | '68 alone. There are lots of reasons for this, including
               | the different styles and intensities of fighting, the
               | soldiers used (GWoT was all volunteer after all),
               | improvements in transport and trauma care, and the sheer
               | technological lead that the US held. GWoT was really an
               | example of punching down counterinsurgency, not a real
               | "war" in a lot of ways.
        
           | blindriver wrote:
           | My point is everyone has been silent about Chicago's violence
           | for decades, and only now they seem to care because it's not
           | Black people being targeted. It's straight up racism to not
           | care about Black people's welfare but care only when it's
           | other people being endangered.
        
             | daseiner1 wrote:
             | citizens shooting other citizens is radically different
             | than the federal government lighting legal protections on
             | fire and then pissing on the ashes.
             | 
             | wholly disingenuous to compare the two.
             | 
             | but yours is the standard misdirect on anything "Chicago"
             | so I'm confident being disingenuous was intentional.
        
               | lurk2 wrote:
               | What legal protections are being infringed upon?
        
               | galangalalgol wrote:
               | The 4th amendment it would seem? Wrongful arrest,
               | unlawful search and seizure, aggravated assault with a
               | lethal weapon...
        
             | convolvatron wrote:
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests_in_Chic
             | a...
             | 
             | you're just throwing shit at the wall
        
               | lurk2 wrote:
               | These demonstrations were nominally dedicated to
               | protesting police brutality, not crime, and the policies
               | they advocated for generally had an adverse impact on the
               | crime rate in subsequent years.
        
             | amazingman wrote:
             | You're making a category error with this comparison. I'm
             | wondering why the error isn't obvious to you.
        
             | numbsafari wrote:
             | Have they been silent, or have you been deaf?
        
             | pkkim wrote:
             | When I lived in Chicago, no one was silent about Chicago's
             | violence. It was widely acknowledged as one of the city's
             | biggest problems and there was a ton of effort put into
             | stopping it by the government and nonprofits, including
             | grassroots initiatives.
             | 
             | To steelman what you're saying, it's true we lived with it
             | so long that it came to seem normal in a way if you weren't
             | personally affected. But "everyone has been silent" is just
             | not true.
        
         | ssl-3 wrote:
         | I, for one, would also like to talk about the price of tea in
         | China. I don't understand why nobody cares about this.
        
         | mrkeen wrote:
         | Getting shot? I think you might have stumbled onto the question
         | of gun control. I wonder if that's ever been a topic of
         | discussion.
         | 
         | Or if it's about black-on-black crime, maybe there's something
         | to look into with affirmative action?
         | 
         | Cops against blacks? ACAB or kneeling at football games ringing
         | any bells?
         | 
         | Sarcasm aside, one difference here is that the government is
         | trashing your neighbourhood on your dime. You have to listen to
         | republicans say there's no money for healthcare while they
         | spend money on deploying troops to shoot priests with pepper
         | bullets and trying to deport citizens.
        
       | pizlonator wrote:
       | This is really sad to read!
       | 
       | Can folks who live in Chicago confirm/deny/comment on the extent
       | to which this article gets it right?
       | 
       | (I have no reason to believe that it's an exaggeration, but I
       | sincerely hope that it is.)
        
         | miltonlost wrote:
         | Did you look at the links he posted? Have you seen the news
         | reports he linked to? This is all actually happening right now.
         | Please, read all he linked to an watched the videos of ICE
         | kidnapping people violently.
         | 
         | https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/11/05/daycare-...
        
         | turnsout wrote:
         | It's not an exaggeration. People have been kidnapped by these
         | armed masked idiots within two blocks of my house twice, and
         | those are just the closest cases I know about. Go check out the
         | /r/Illinois subreddit [0] to see what's happening.
         | 
         | [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/illinois/
        
           | turnsout wrote:
           | And of course now the parent post is "flagged." Thank you,
           | Libertarian overlords, from protecting the tech community
           | from this dangerous content.
        
             | SlightlyLeftPad wrote:
             | I gotchu fam, I'm snapping Full page screenshots of all the
             | commentary here.
        
             | vkou wrote:
             | It would not be good to allow malcontents to spread
             | disharmony.
        
               | SlightlyLeftPad wrote:
               | _< our benefactors have entered the chat>_
        
             | tedivm wrote:
             | They unflagged it, but the pause in upvotes means it
             | dropped off the front page and out of people's minds.
        
               | ryandrake wrote:
               | Mission accomplished for the flaggers. I don't know why
               | HN can't/won't fix this obvious abuse mechanism.
        
               | hypeatei wrote:
               | It's a forum run by venture capital if that tells you
               | anything. The "tech right" were one of the reasons Trump
               | won this past election. It describes a voter bloc
               | consisting of Libertarian/Thiel/Musk types who are very
               | motivated by: immigration (H1B), deregulation, increasing
               | their wealth, and gaining more power.
        
         | tedivm wrote:
         | I live in Chicago, and this article doesn't even scratch the
         | surface of how bad it is. My wife went to the beach yesterday
         | for 10 minutes to try and rest from the chaos and a fucking
         | black hawk helicopter buzzed by her. They literally fly over my
         | house daily.
         | 
         | People, US citizens included, are literally being abducted.
         | People have been shot and killed by masked agents. People have
         | had their children abandoned on the side of the road after
         | being kidnapped. Just today they raided Little Village with
         | hundreds of masked troops. I'm in a dozen signal groups to get
         | alerted about where things are.
         | 
         | What scares me the most is how few people seem to actually know
         | what is happening here. I talk to people outside of Chicago,
         | and watch the news, and I don't see or hear about anything
         | that's going on here. I tell them what's happening and they are
         | shocked.
         | 
         | It is impossible to convey what is happening here, how scared
         | we all are for this country, and how much things seem to
         | escalate every single day that this goes on.
         | 
         | Edit: This post has been flagged and hidden, just demonstrating
         | how much this country wants to pretend this isn't happening.
         | It's unflagged now, but the fact that anyone would want to hide
         | what's happening here shows how bad things are for all of us.
        
           | SlightlyLeftPad wrote:
           | The media has an existential threat of having their broadcast
           | licenses revoked so yeah that probably has a lot to do with
           | why there's no coverage.
           | 
           | If the media had balls, they'd broadcast anyway, license or
           | not.
        
             | tedivm wrote:
             | There's a lot of good independent media looking at this.
             | Some good sources:
             | 
             | https://bsky.app/profile/unraveledpress.com
             | 
             | https://bsky.app/profile/djbyrnes1.bsky.social
             | 
             | https://bsky.app/profile/thetriibe.com
             | 
             | https://bsky.app/profile/prisonculture.bsky.social
        
               | SlightlyLeftPad wrote:
               | When the media wasn't really a money printing machine for
               | billionaires, this also wasn't an issue.
        
           | jorts wrote:
           | I see your post and OPs just fine.
        
           | enraged_camel wrote:
           | >> What scares me the most is how few people seem to actually
           | know what is happening here.
           | 
           | Submissions like this getting flagged contributes to that.
           | 
           | I mention that because the previous submission with this
           | article got flagged to death.
        
         | AstroBen wrote:
         | I'm an immigrant in Chicago (fortunately not one of the racial
         | groups they're targeting) and I follow it pretty closely - yeah
         | it's all really happening. I saw kids get taken away in front
         | of where I live and others just a few streets down
         | 
         | The abuse of power there is ridiculous
        
         | queenkjuul wrote:
         | Not at all exaggerated. The agents are lying about anything and
         | everything even when there's evidence. One of them threw tear
         | gas out of the window of their SUV because they were pissed to
         | be stuck in traffic. They'll hit and run parked cars and flee
         | the scene.
        
         | giraffe_lady wrote:
         | Every bit of it is true and there's more that he doesn't
         | mention, probably because it's not as well documented yet.
        
         | kasey_junk wrote:
         | My kids school has started doing drills with the students in
         | what to do when ice shows up. Like they do for tornadoes. They
         | need to because ICE is using schools as raid locations every
         | day.
        
         | tr4ce wrote:
         | It is really bad. A glimmer of hope is a governor with a spine.
         | 
         | https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/...
        
           | tedivm wrote:
           | I live here, and Pritzker says the right things then does the
           | wrong things. He sent the Illinois State Police to help
           | protect ICE from protestors as Broadview, freeing up their
           | resources to attack and kidnap people. In half the videos you
           | see out there his state police as assisting ICE. We have
           | Chicago Aldermen out in the streets and in the hospitals
           | getting arrested and assaulted, we have candidates for
           | congress like Kat Abughazaleh being indicted for protesting,
           | and then Pritzker is giving speeches and going on podcasts
           | while not even stopping his own thugs from helping ICE.
           | 
           | He doesn't have a spine, he has an election strategy.
        
             | selectodude wrote:
             | I think the reality is far scarier - he doesn't have nearly
             | as much power over ISP as he should.
        
       | carterschonwald wrote:
       | This shit is so fucked up. And at a certain level I'm
       | disappointed that we are still trying to fix it peaceably when
       | every day of delay, there is irreparable harm to physical
       | wellness, mental health and rights as citizens or residents. Also
       | science in America is fucked for the next decade.
        
         | galangalalgol wrote:
         | Violent resolution of the situation would almost certainly
         | result in a society with even fewer freedoms. That is the
         | historical lesson. Violent resistance to authoritarian
         | takeovers gives them an air of legitimacy they need. That is
         | the whole point of chicago and the attempt in Portland. They
         | want violent resistance to justify crack downs. Instead they
         | look like storm troopers. I am in awe of the restraint of those
         | living in Chicago. Ice hasn't done half as much in Texas and
         | they are getting ambushed with assault rifles. That doesn't
         | work with their narrative of lawless blue states though. The
         | ability of Chicagoans to resist peacefully, endure, and
         | document these events may well be what gives the US another
         | chance at being a democracy.
        
         | g-b-r wrote:
         | Unfortunately, violent reactions is what Trump would love,
         | because it would allow a much bigger, probably definitive,
         | escalation
         | 
         | I think Americans should first do everything possible to bring
         | to sanity the supporters of Trump
        
         | monero-xmr wrote:
         | I didn't realize how many scientists crossed the border without
         | papers, claimed asylum, and became professors at research
         | universities
        
           | carterschonwald wrote:
           | lol. It's that the immigration policies currently being
           | attempted plus the university grant shenanigans are
           | destroying the stem training / research pipeline
        
             | monero-xmr wrote:
             | Strange, I know a ton of post docs and there is a lack of
             | opportunities for them right now, both in academia and
             | private sector
        
       | thechao wrote:
       | A large part of this lawlessness is rooted in nonnormative
       | behavior. But! there are basic protections we could have right
       | now if we demanded them. First and foremost: the Bivens Act;
       | specifically, the right to bring suit in State court against
       | Federal agents. Presidential pardons can't help these thugs in
       | State persons.
        
         | tedivm wrote:
         | Until the supreme court overturns that.
        
           | tanjtanjtanj wrote:
           | They already did, more or less.
           | 
           | The supreme court ruled that unless your case is virtually a
           | carbon-copy of an existing Bivens case then it doesn't count.
           | The current supreme court does not respect precedent in any
           | meaningful way.
        
       | Marshferm wrote:
       | How can this be flagged? It's documentary.
        
       | queenkjuul wrote:
       | This should not be flagged. This is the truth of what's happening
       | here right now.
        
       | fancyfredbot wrote:
       | https://archive.is/X33oQ for those in the UK.
        
       | paganel wrote:
       | This [1] is civil-war-inducing stuff, that's not "police", that's
       | an army that attacks its own country's citizens. Crazy stuff,
       | didn't think I'd get to see this happening in the States.
       | 
       | [1] https://x.com/LAURA_N_ROD/status/1985412485185188067
        
       | hypeatei wrote:
       | A news station producer was arrested by ICE and the agents peeled
       | away ripping off someone's bumper[0][1] just for her to be
       | released later without charges.
       | 
       | 0: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/14/chicago-
       | ice-...
       | 
       | 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLGI2hMaz5Q
        
       | epgui wrote:
       | Currently as a Canadian there are probably only four or five
       | countries I really do not want to travel to. In no particular
       | order: North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United
       | States.
        
         | don_neufeld wrote:
         | Totally get it.
         | 
         | My parents (Canadian) won't visit, and haven't since Trump's
         | first term.
         | 
         | Keep in mind these are people who were educated in the US
         | (Cornell, RPI, Florida State), and as kids, we used to spend at
         | least a month a year in the US on vacation with their college
         | friends. So not historically haters.
         | 
         | Hell, I just remembered as a kid I spent a whole summer in
         | Chicago. IIRC We stayed in student housing while my dad
         | finished his book (https://archive.org/details/Inside_Commodore
         | _Dos_1984_Datamo...).
         | 
         | Hottest summer of my life and no AC anywhere to be seen.
        
         | bluedino wrote:
         | Why, exactly?
        
           | roxolotl wrote:
           | Did you read the article? Not wanting to visit countries
           | where secret police are rounding people up, regardless of
           | citizenship, seems like a reasonable opinion.
        
             | khannn wrote:
             | I prefer the country with state sponsored "suicide" for
             | undesirables
        
       | segmondy wrote:
       | if you reddit, follow r/chicago it's truly heartbreaking.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-11-08 23:00 UTC)