Defund ICE protest sign

Check out more activists events at the Calendar

An unprecedented amount of our taxpayer dollars gets funneled to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to carry out Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. Congress must act.

These rogue agencies have a long history of abuse, violence, and human rights violations – from separation of families to shutting out asylum seekers to raids in our communities. The events of 2020 have only exacerbated matters. CBP agents have been deployed against Black Lives Matter protesters, and horrific accounts of abuse, inadequate COVID-19 precautions, and deaths are being reported in detention centers nationwide. This must stop: Send a message to Congress to divest from ICE and CBP now.

Comic

This article first appeared on Substack

 

I started working on this cartoon before the events unfolded in Minnesota today. In case you haven't heard yet, ICE has shot a third person today. This is another fatal shooting.

I did not get to dive into the story until after I had completed this cartoon. I had something else occupying my time today as well. When I was finally able to look up, I watched the video.

I saw the video after hearing that the man who was shot had a weapon. At the start of the video, it resembled the Rodney King beating, except Rodney King wasn't shot at the end. It looked like a gang of ICE thugs was holding the man down and beating him. At the end, while still being held down, one of the agents shoots the guy.

Movie poster

See the Columbus Free Press Calendar for more activist events

Saturday, January 24, 5:30pm
WOSU, 1800 North Pearl Street, Columbus, OH 4320

5:30 PM - 6:00 PM - Doors open
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM - Show starts
8:00 PM - 8:30 PM - Q&A with Abby Martin

Join Abby Martin for the Columbus premiere of her feature documentary film on the environmental impact of the US military!

Earth's Greatest Enemy uncovers a shocking blind spot in the climate conversation: the U.S. military.

Exempt from international climate agreements and rarely scrutinized in mainstream reporting, the Pentagon is revealed here as the world’s single largest institutional polluter—spewing carbon, contaminating water, and scarring landscapes across the globe. Combining investigative journalism, striking visuals, and stories from impacted communities, the film challenges audiences to rethink the hidden costs of a global military empire and its planetary consequences. Provocative, urgent, and eye-opening, this is a documentary that will change how you see both the military and environmentalism.

Let’s put ICE and, indeed, war itself –the smugly violent certainty of militarism – into the largest perspective possible. I suggest this as the only way to maintain my sanity: to believe that we, that our children, actually have a future.

This is one planet. Every living being, every pulse of life, every molecule of existence, is intertwined. I’m not in any way suggesting I understand what this means. I simply see it as our starting point, as we acknowledge and embrace the Anthropocene: the current global era, basically as old as I am, in which natural and human forces are intertwined. The fate of one determines the fate of the other.

Details about event

Friday, January 23, 1 – 2pm EST
Ohio Statehouse, 1 Capitol Sq, Columbus, OH 43215

ICE has been inflicting a reign of terror in our communities. They are showing us, in real time, what their power looks like: masked agents, raids in our neighborhoods, our families terrorized, and our allies and leaders targeted for standing with immigrant workers. This is not “enforcement.” It’s intimidation. It’s state violence designed to make people keep their heads down and accept the unacceptable.

Join SEIU District 1199 WV/KY/OH, Common Cause Ohio, Indivisible Central Ohio, Ohioans Against Extremism, Ohio Families Unite for Political Action and Change (OFUPAC), other allies and partners, and community members at the High Street side of the Ohio Statehouse at 1 PM to meet history where it stands. We can mourn publicly and organize relentlessly. We can resist authoritarianism without apology, and we can win.

Let’s make it clear to all that when ICE comes for one of us, they answer to all of us.

Comic

This article first appeared on Substack

I do not know why, but this one makes me laugh.

Trump lived up to his reputation of chickening out after threatening to raise tariffs on a nation. It is the reason for the TACO acronym: Trump Always Chickens Out.

Trump threatened to raise tariffs on eight NATO nations unless they would allow Denmark to sell Greenland to him. Never mind that seven of these nations don't have any say in what Denmark does with Greenland, he's gonna punish them anyway. If you ever figure out Trump logic, let me know.

But yesterday, after giving that horrible speech at Davos and proclaiming time and time again that he would settle for nothing less than absolute and outright ownership of Greenland, Donald Trump caved. He lifted the tariffs on the eight nations, saying there is a framework of a deal involving Greenland.

A colleague, an editor at a widely read outlet that centered Gaza throughout the two-year genocide, recently voiced his frustration that Gaza is no longer a main focus in the news.

He hardly needed to say it. It is evident that Gaza has already been pushed to the margins of coverage — not only by mainstream Western media, long known for its structural bias in Israel’s favor, but also by outlets often described, accurately or not, as ‘pro-Palestine.’

At first glance, this retreat may appear routine. Gaza during the height of the genocide demanded constant attention; Gaza after the genocide, less so.

But this assumption collapses under scrutiny, because the genocide in Gaza has not ended.

What happened to the Epstein scandal? You are gone. Wipe you out of my eyes. Hocuspocus, evaporated with a magic wand move. It seems that the master of illusions, Donald Trump, managed to escape this deadly blow, at least for the moment.

Trump's attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president, Maduro, a former bus driver, got Epstein out of the headlines. Now Trump and his cronies are beating the drums for his aims of world greatness, announced in Davos, Switzerland. This alpine resort, ugly enough — and not strong enough for skiing — was the perfect scene for Trump's show. Davos' annual carnival is the world stage of big egos, swindlers and braggers.

Leading among them was former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a politician with unparalleled bendability and ability to sugarcoat lies and half-truths. Blair has just agreed to join Trump's so-called Peace Board, a bunch of shady politicians. The participation fee is $1 billion, a typical Trump fundraiser.

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