In Solidarity
Welcome back! Every week for the last year or so, I spend Sunday night to Monday morning writing up this newsletter intro with the help of Indivisible’s other co-executive director (and my spouse) Leah. We aim to do more than inform — we want to help you take meaningful action. We continue those conversations on Bluesky (Leah here, me here), and in our weekly Thursday What’s the Plan live chats (next one here). I’m sorry to say it’s clear to me that 2026 is going to get worse before it gets better — but we’re going to make it better together. So let’s link arms and jump in.
Focusing while in the direct line of a fascist fire hose. This week I can’t help but think of a quote from the criminally-snubbed-at-the-Golden-Globes work of resistance art, Andor: “The pace of oppression outstrips our ability to understand…It’s easier to hide behind forty atrocities than a single incident.”
So bear with me, because while we’re working on all of these issues at Indivisible and have action items for many below, for this intro I’m not going to to focus on Venezuela, or Greenland, or Iran, or the federal reserve, or the Epstein files, or much of the rest of the firehose of fascism coming at us from this regime. Instead I’m going to focus on a single incident: the murder of Renee Good by an ICE officer in Minneapolis last week.
We’re going to need more whistles. If you haven’t read Becca Good’s short statement about her wife, I’d like you to close this email and read it. It’s beautiful, heartwrenching, enraging, and inspiring. You probably already knew that Renee was a Minneapolis mom who had just dropped off her kid at school. But you might not have known that she sparkled — that “Renee was made of sunshine.”
This regime shot Renee and then labeled her a domestic terrorist. They didn’t do it because they’re strong. They did it because they’re weak, and they’re scared. “We had whistles. They had guns,” wrote Becca Good. This regime is terrified of our whistles, of our signal groups, of our know your rights trainings, of our frog and unicorn costumes, of our dance circles and funny signs — of our outrage and our historic, fast-spreading protests. They’re terrified that we’ll realize we’re not alone, and that we’ll show other people they’re not alone either.
That’s why we — together with an incredible coalition of organizations — called for nationwide vigils and actions to remember Renee, all the victims of ICE violence, and call for action. And you answered the call, with nearly 1,200 events across the country. Leah was out in Montgomery County, and I was out in Alexandria, and you all were out everywhere else in force with a clear demand: Rein in this violent, lawless agency.
The strategic logic of protest. If you were out there this weekend, you might sense like I do that we’re at an inflection point with ICE. People who do not consider themselves political or activists or organizers see what this regime is doing, and they’re pissed.
The weekend’s protests serve two purposes:
- We’re preventing the regime’s propaganda from becoming accepted reality. It’s harder for Trump and his goons to label Renee a terrorist when people in every community actively memorialize her for what she was. And there’s reason to believe her horrific murder is shifting public opinion against ICE in America, with most Americans now criticizing ICE for being too forceful, and a record number supporting doing away with ICE altogether. When we show our outrage, other community members understand they should be outraged too.
- We send a message to the political class that they need to act. Republicans are fracturing over this. Meanwhile, we’re in active conversation with Democrats in Congress to escalate the fight against ICE using the January 30 funding deadline. The bill that funds Kristi Noem’s Homeland Security Department is being debated right now. While Schumer and Jeffries will not lead this, they can be pushed to follow our lead. Expressing outrage through our ICE Out for Good protests give our allies on Capitol Hill leverage. The same goes for state-level reforms in blue states, where lawmakers have myriad opportunities to limit harm from ICE.
If you need some fire in your belly, read Becca Good’s statement and watch this tribute. Organizing and expressing outrage is our job now — it’s our electeds’ job to act. But doing our job well requires more than one weekend of outrage. We have to organize the opposition. And we do that best when we do it together, so please read on to the weekly action items below and do some good in Good’s name this week.
In solidarity,
Ezra Levin
Co-Executive Director, Indivisible