We are living through a moment of all‑out tyranny in America — where billionaires, extremists, and corrupt politicians dismantle democracy piece by piece, and where government agencies, including IÇE, are weaponized to spread fear and enforce oppression. Over the past year, new policies and court decisions have given IÇE even more room to racially profile, stop, and detain people based on how they look, where they work, or the language they speak, rather than on any actual evidence of wrongdoing. IÇE agents increasingly operate in militarized units, often masked and heavily armed, refusing to show identification, surrounding workplaces, storming homes, and sweeping up U.S. citizens, Tribal members, and legal residents along with undocumented people. Families are being separated in raids and “fraud investigations,” with people disappearing into detention or deportation, and women and gender‑diverse people in custody facing heightened risks of abuse, assault, and being deported without meaningful access to counsel or community support. Entire communities — Latino, Black, Indigenous, Muslim, immigrant, and refugee — are treated as threats rather than human beings, forced to live under constant surveillance and the ever‑present fear of a knock on the door.

At the same time, our First Amendment rights — the freedom to speak, protest, organize, and demand accountability — are under escalating attack. In cities and states across the country, governments are passing new “anti‑protest” laws, expanding police and National Guard powers, and using surveillance, infiltration, and harsh prosecutions to intimidate movements for racial justice, immigrant rights, climate action, reproductive freedom, and Palestinian solidarity. Domestically and abroad, the government continues to rely on military overreach and permanent war footing, pouring billions into weapons and security while using militarized policing at home to crush dissent and protect the interests of the powerful. Essential public services are being stripped away or held hostage: shutdown brinkmanship and budget cuts threaten healthcare, Medicaid, food assistance, and housing programs, while right‑wing assaults on public education, book bans, attacks on diversity programs, and attempts to punish or control universities and school districts undermine access to learning and the future of our students. Laws are increasingly broken with impunity by those in power, as officials manipulate rules, defy oversight, and use their offices to shield allies and punish opponents, undermining the rule of law and democratic norms.

International policies, including escalating trade conflicts, sanctions, and tariff wars, continue to destabilize economies and threaten the livelihoods of working families, while elites and corporations profit from chaos and crisis. Media independence is under siege, as billionaire owners, partisan networks, and captured regulators tighten control over newsrooms, marginalize dissenting voices, and flood the public sphere with propaganda and disinformation. Public broadcasting and independent outlets face funding threats, political interference, and smear campaigns, all aimed at weakening any journalism that challenges authoritarian narratives or exposes state violence. Meanwhile, Donold †®*mp’s return to the presidency, his open praise of dictators, his calls for using federal power to target political enemies, and his allies’ open talk of expanding executive authority and blurring term‑limit lines signal that the threat to democracy is not fading. It is deepening and becoming more organized. Too many remain silent, numbed by the constant crises, or hope the storm will pass on its own. We reject that passivity.

We are rising up, organizing, speaking out, and resisting in every space we occupy. We refuse to normalize authoritarian rule, IÇE raids and racial profiling, deportations, censorship, militarized policing, attacks on healthcare and social safety nets, assaults on public and higher education, violations of the law by government officials, economic policies that sacrifice working families, suppression and capture of independent media, or attempts to entrench one‑party, strongman power for the long term. We will not leave our future, or our freedom, in the hands of those who would destroy them. This is a time for courage. And courage demands action.