The Muscle Memory of Care
"Every day, we decide who we are in relation to this wickedness. And we recognize that the answer to that question is lived, rather than merely asserted."
Author’s Note: I was scheduled to speak at a neighborhood assembly in Chicago this weekend — an event focused on shared reflection, solidarity with Minneapolis, and renewed pathways into local organizing. I was looking forward to being there. Unfortunately, I’ve fallen ill and can’t risk exposing my neighbors. What follows is the speech I would have delivered in person.
Greetings friends,
Chicago has had a moment to breathe, and I hope you’ve made the most of it. I hope you’ve made space for joy, rest, and rejuvenation. And I hope you’ve held your loved ones a little longer in the mornings than we were able to, when we were rushing out the door to defend our neighbors during Midway Blitz.
But I know that, for many of you, this moment of respite has not been calm or easy. We are all grieving the losses our communities endured during the months-long federal onslaught here. And we are deeply attuned to what our siblings in struggle in Minneapolis have been enduring. While the constant raids we experienced in Chicago felt intolerable, what's happening in Minneapolis has been even more concentrated, overwhelming, and deadly.
I know that some of you have traveled to Minneapolis to offer on-the-ground support, or extended whatever solidarity you could from here. You have done so because, just as our sense of fellowship and belonging intensified here in Chicago under fascist attack, so too has our sense of kinship with people waging these struggles in other cities. When federal agents killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti, we felt those losses as deeply as we would have felt the loss of our own neighbors. They were our people, just as our immigrant neighbors and our local rapid responders are our people.
There are only two sides in this struggle: those who defend life, and the fascists who seek to destroy it.
From Chicago to Minneapolis, Maine, New Orleans, New York, LA, and beyond, I am so proud to be in the struggle with people who are embracing their kinship across time and space, across imagined divides, in spite of the isolation this system would impose upon us. Our enemies never imagined that their actions would bring us together this way — that we would reach for each other, rather than scatter or cower in fear. They fucked around and brought out the best in us, and now we know that this is what resisting fascism looks like. The bonds we’ve built, and our willingness to create as much safety and justice as we can, not by invoking carceral mechanisms, but by turning to each other — this is the groundwork for whatever comes next.
This is where hope resides.
We know the stakes are high. Renée Good, Alex Pretti, Silverio Villegas González, and Keith Porter were all murdered by federal agents. Thirty-two people died in ICE custody last year, and at least eight more have lost their lives because of ICE in the last month alone.
Many more are living in death-making conditions, including little Liam Ramos, who was kidnapped while wearing his blue bunny hat. Five-year-old Liam was snatched in his family's driveway and used as bait to target his father. Now Liam is weak and sick, held in a facility with putrid water, where detainees — many of them children — have recently protested, filling open areas with chants of “Libertad!”
People who’ve seen Liam say he’s been asking for his mother, and for his hat.
Every day, we decide who we are in relation to this wickedness. And we recognize that the answer to that question is lived, rather than merely asserted.
This is why we persisted last year, even after our observers had guns drawn on them. After some of us were brutalized, gassed, and arrested. After Chicagoan Marimar Martinez was shot five times by a federal agent, then hit with a litany of false charges before finally being cleared. Marimar is still waging a court battle to tell the whole truth about what happened to her, and the cover-up that followed.
We have been motivated by the life-and-death stakes of this struggle, rather than cowed by fascist violence. Because we understand that the people who would hunt and gun down our neighbors — who kidnap children and manufacture premature death — must be opposed, because evil must be opposed.
This nightmare won’t end because it’s simply run its course. It will end because people like us put a stop to it. That will involve a lot of hard work. There won’t be any shortcuts. There is a long fight ahead, and we have to be strategic.
We must celebrate our wins — large and small — without mistaking them for safety. Rather than pausing when our enemies stumble, we must press our advantage. We need rest, rituals, and restorative practices that help reset our nervous systems, but we must never accept false endings that mimic a return to the status quo, or reforms that expand the surveillance state and fatten the budgets of those who would destroy us.
Much of what we built last year was built quickly, and things that are created quickly are rarely built to last. That means we need to fortify our formations. We are lucky to have established groups like Protect Rogers Park, whose core organizers continue to share their experience with those of us who are newer to this struggle, and who may now be creating new projects or containers.
This is a time to ramp up our political education — to take lessons from Midway Blitz, from the struggle in Minneapolis, and from community defense efforts around the country. We need to ensure that the foundations of our groups are strong. That means having principled, intentional processes for resolving conflict. It means understanding who we are accountable to, and what participation and solidarity demand of us. And, perhaps most importantly, it means continuing to learn together, and do the work of collective survival together, in spite of our many differences.
We should take heart in the fact that there is so much difference among us. Because no group of people who would consistently find easy agreement with me, or you, or anyone among us, would be large enough to do the work we have done together, or the work we have yet to do. We have transcended our differences for the sake of loving and defending our neighbors, and in so doing, we have created a project for collective survival that must be sustained, because this fellowship, and our shared willingness to move together against fascist violence, is our living, breathing potential.
So how do we continue to rise to meet this moment? We shore up our containers. We hone our best practices. We train, prepare, and rehearse. And above all, we strengthen the relationships that make this work possible. This is the social fabric that held us together in the face of fascist attacks — and now it must be made stronger. We must continue to invite others to join us. And we must remember that no matter how the enemy hedges or deviates, fascism does not stop escalating. It cannot be reasoned with or course-corrected. It can only be defeated. And it will be defeated by the will of a people who are more invested in one another than in the rules or order this system would impose upon us.
I am proud to think and move alongside so many people of conscience who have found their courage together. Amid a constant churn of bleak news, my heart is full, because of you, and what I know we can do together. With your whistles, your phones, your caring hearts, and your ingenuity, you’ve shown me that whatever comes next begins here, with the muscle memory of care and collective refusal. So let’s keep reaching for each other, let’s keep making things together, and let’s defend Chicago and our siblings in struggle everywhere.
Much love,
Kelly
