Rahim Kurwa
@rahimk.bsky.social
2.4K followers 2.7K following 550 posts
assoc prof at uic Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for Housing is available at https://www.ucpress.edu/books/indefensible-spaces/paper www.rahimkurwa.com
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rahimk.bsky.social
It's publication day for Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for Housing, available in paper & free .epub! It traces a century of struggle over Los Angeles' periphery, culminating in the use of policing to expel and repress Black tenants. Here's a look at its chapters:
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
meredithshiner.com
It’s impossible to overstate how much “abolish ice” is the normie position now here in chicago — just countless random moms at toddler soccer on a park district field asking me where I bought my anti-ice t-shirt. average people don’t like our neighborhoods being terrorized.
lauraolin.bsky.social
A friend ran the Chicago marathon today and said he couldn’t count the number of FUCK ICE signs along the way.
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
autsciperson.bsky.social
"Non-Binary Passport Designations: Passports issued with “X” or other non-binary markers will be rejected by CBP systems, requiring resubmission with valid documentation showing “M” or “F” designation."

Nonbinary people will not be able to travel internationally 🙃
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
caitlindeangelis.bsky.social
ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...
Everett 13-year-old arrested by ICE and sent to Virginia detention facility
By Marcela Rodrigues Globe Staff,Updated October 12, 2025, 44 minutes ago



31
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Everett after an interaction with members of the Everett Police Department and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia, according to his mother and immigration lawyer Andrew Lattarulo.

The boy’s mother, Josiele Berto, was called to pick her son up from the Everett Police Department on Thursday, the day he was arrested. After waiting for about an hour and a half, she was told her son was taken by ICE, Berto told the Globe in a phone interview.

“My world collapsed,” Berto said in Portuguese.

From the police department, the boy was taken to ICE’s holding facility in Burlington on Thursday evening, where he spent a night before being transferred by car to the Northwestern Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Winchester, Va., on Friday morning, his mother said. The juvenile facility is more than 500 miles away from Everett.

The boy is a 7th-grader at Albert N. Parlin School in Everett, his mother said. The teen and his family, who are Brazilian nationals, have a pending asylum case and are authorized to work legally in the United States, Lattarulo said.
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
rlmartstudio.bsky.social
This week in 1988: 1,000+ ACT UP demonstrators shut down the FDA headquarters, demanding (and eventually winning) action on developing HIV/AIDS treatments. ACT UP's militant and creative actions always included powerful visual artwork, and paved the way for movements in the decades to come.
A photograph from the 1988 ACT UP demonstration outside the FDA. Many people are participating in a die-in on the front steps, holding mock tombstones with messages like "RIP - killed by the FDA" and "Dead from lack of drugs." A line of police officers (some with classic 80s mustaches) wearing riot helmets stands between them and the building; one cop wearing white gloves is walking through the demonstrators. Affixed to the 2nd story windows of the building is a series of posters and a large blank banner reading Silence = Death.
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
alandettlaff.com
Yesterday I was told that the class I’m scheduled to teach this month, Confronting Oppression & Injustice, is no longer part of our curriculum. This is a required class yet there was no discussion, no faculty vote, just an email saying the class no longer exists. This is what it’s like in Texas now.
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
unraveledpress.com
Border Patrol is terrorizing Gage Park this morning (video from Facebook, 55th & California reportedly 9:40am). SWRR reports agents are highly active and were also seen at the Pulaski orange line again: instagram.com/p/DPtwEY7DhTy
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
mulchy.bsky.social
hello from outside the ice detention center in broadview, illinois.

i’m at the corner of 25th and harvard, where a small (for now) crowd is gathering to protest the masked federal agents abducting people throughout chicagoland.

state and local police have already made a handful of arrests today.
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
thomasav.bsky.social
Don’t forget, @dawnmenaorg.bsky.social, founded by Jamal Khashoggi, contacted @americanprogress.bsky.social to demand that they not seat Antony Blinken to their board of directors.

Blinken lied to congress about Israel’s targeting of children in Gaza. He should be shunned forever.
nkalamb.bsky.social
Incredible that this man thinks he can gaslight us into thinking he couldn’t have stopped the genocide, that he wasn’t a collaborator par excellence.
Blinken:

(2/12) First, what changed to make this breakthrough possible? Hamas is finally and fully isolated. Arab states and Turkey have said “enough.” The misery Hamas provoked and would allow to persist has delegitimized it among most Gazans. And Hamas realized that the cavalry (Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis) are not coming to the rescue.

(3/12) Israel has long since achieved its war aims -- destroying Hamas as an organized military force so October 7 can never be repeated and eliminating those responsible for its horrors – but at terrible cost to Palestinian civilians caught in a crossfire they did not start and were powerless to stop. Only the hostages remained. Israelis want them home and the war to end, putting pressure on the Israeli government to take the deal, not move the goalposts.
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
lyndab08.bsky.social
This is a GoFundMe supporting the tamale lady taken by ICE on 21st Place and Damen in Pilsen yesterday.

“Now she’s being forced to start over in Mexico with nothing — no home, no job, and no access to the medical care she desperately needs.”
Donate to Help My Aunt Rebuild Her Life After Being Taken by ICE, organized by marilyn perez
We just found out through social media that my aunt — who sells t… marilyn perez needs your support for Help My Aunt Rebuild Her Life After Being Taken by ICE
www.gofundme.com
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
richraho.bsky.social
Chicago priest Fr. Larry Dowling describes procession to ICE facility: “No one had the courage to speak directly to us. No one from Homeland Security could stand in the presence of the Monstrance holding the Blessed Sacrament. No wonder. Evil is repelled, recoils in the presence of Christ.”
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
thetnholler.bsky.social
“YOU hit HER.”

CHICAGO - Trump’s ICE goons ram into a passing car after snatching someone, then brutally drag the female driver of the car they hit out of her car with guns drawn and arrest her too. (Her brother says she’s a citizen)
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
thebulwark.com
George was just trying to get to work.

ICE pepper-sprayed him, dragged him from his car, locked him in a detention center, and placed him on suicide watch. He even missed his young daughter’s birthday in the process.

This man is a veteran and American citizen. Don't look away.
thebulwark.com
"They put me on suicide watch and they put me in the cell, I'm naked, in like a hospital dress and just a concrete bed with like a mattress, like a thin mattress and, they leave the light on 24/7."

@timmiller.bsky.social talked to a veteran who ICE wrongly detained and brutalized
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
hebagowayed.bsky.social
The normalization of “public expression” causing arrest on a college campus is really something. People are blaming the Trump administration but this is the central building block of the fascist turn and it precedes Trump — the work of institutions maligned as bastions of woke. If only.
miriamposner.com
Found this just incredibly depressing, more than anything.
An easel sign reads, “UCLA
ATTENTION
No events are permitted in this area today. Per Policy 852, this location is NOT designated for public expression activities.
Individuals participating in an event or a public expression activity in this area are subject to discipline and/or arrest.
Scan for policy information.”
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
ashtonpittman.bsky.social
ICE left David, a 17-year-old boy, stranded on the side of Interstate 20 after pulling over his immigrant father, Hector, in Mississippi.

David began running in the scorching sun after the car and watched as it disappeared from sight—soon headed to a Louisiana ICE prison.

Here's their story.
ICE Stranded a 17-Year-Old on I-20 After Arresting His Father. The Mississippi Dad Now Faces Deportation.
A 17-year-old watched as ICE arrested his immigrant father, Hector, on I-20 in June. The family faces mounting legal fees and the risk of deportation.
www.mississippifreepress.org
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
royalpratt.bsky.social
ICE went after rideshare drivers at O’Hare today, according to statement from Illinois Drivers Alliance
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
leniann.bsky.social
This brown skinned landscaper was minding his business on a job in Edgewater when 3 masked ICE thugs took him away. Then on leaving the 3 reportedly got out of their car, turned their guns on a woman and tried to get into her car for apparently driving too close searching for parking near her home
Graphic in black, blue, red and white

COMMUNITY SAFETY ALERT
ALERTA DE SEGURIDAD COMUNITARIA
OCTOBER 10, 2025
This morning at approximately 9:30am ICE detained at least one person near Sheridan and Catalpa. Please be aware. Call 855-435-7693 to report sightings or for support if someone you know is detained. Also report any sightings
to my office 773-784-5277.
Esta mañana, aproximadamente a las 9:30, ICE detuvo a una persona cerca de Sheridan y Catalpa. Por favor, estén atentos. Llamen al 855-435-7693 para informar de observaciones de agentes federales o para pedir ayuda si alguien que conocen ha sido detenido.
También informen de los avistamientos a mi oficina, al 773-784-5277.
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
mjsdc.bsky.social
Washington Supreme Court Justice Mungia has an extraordinary opinion condemning "the underlying racism and prejudices that are woven into the very fabric" of SCOTUS opinions about Native people.

"We must clearly, loudly, and unequivocally state that was wrong.”
www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf...
MUNGIA, J. (concurring)—I concur with the majority’s opinion.1
 And yet I
dissent. Not from the majority’s opinion, but I dissent from the racism embedded in the
federal case law that applies to this dispute.
FEDERAL INDIAN LAW IS A PRODUCT OF THE RACIST BELIEFS ENDEMIC IN OUR SOCIETY
AND OUR LEGAL SYSTEM
While it is certainly necessary to follow federal case law on issues involving
Native American tribes and their members, at the same time it is important to call out that
the very foundations of those opinions were based on racism and white supremacy. By
doing this, readers of our opinions will have no doubt that the current court disavows, and
condemns, those racist sentiments, beliefs, and statements. Since the founding of our country, the federal government has characterized
Native Americans as “savages”: They were “uncivilized.” They had little claim to the
land upon which they lived. At times, the federal government attempted to eradicate
Native Americans through genocidal policies. At other times, the federal government
employed ethnic cleansing by forcibly removing children from their parents’ homes to
strip them from their culture, their language, and their beings.2
Federal Indian case law arises from those racist underpinnings.
The majority correctly cites to Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. (5 Pet.) 1, 8
L. Ed. 25 (1831), which is one of the foundational cases involving tribal sovereignty.
That opinion is rife with racist attitudes toward Native Americans. Chief Justice John
Marshall, writing for the majority, describes a tribe’s relationship to the federal
government as one of “ward to his guardian.” Id. at 17. In effect, the opinion presents
tribal members as children, and the federal government as the adult. That theme would
follow in later opinions by the United States Supreme Court—as would the theme of
white supremacy.
Cherokee Nation began with the premise that Native American tribes, once strong
and powerful, were no match for the white race and so found themselves “gradually
sinking beneath our superior policy, our arts and our arms.” Id. at 15. The white man
was considered the teacher, the Native Americans the pupils: Meanwhile they are in a state of pupilage. Their relation to the United
States resembles that of a ward to his guardian.
Id. at 17.
This characterization of superior to inferior, teacher to student, guardian to ward,
was repeated in later United States Supreme Court opinions.
In Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U.S. 553, 23 S. Ct. 216, 47 L. Ed. 299 (1903),
often characterized as the “American Indian Dred Scott,”
3
the Court used that rationale to
justify ruling that the United States could break its treaties with Native American tribes.
These Indian tribes are the wards of the nation. They are communities
dependent on the United States. Dependent largely for their daily food.
Dependent for their political rights. . . . From their very weakness and
helplessness . . . there arises the duty of protection, and with it the power.
Id. at 567 (quoting United States v. Kagama, 118 U.S. 375, 383-84, 6 S. Ct. 1109, 30 L.
Ed. 228 (1886)).
Our court also carries the shame of denigrating Native Americans by using that
same characterization: “The Indian was a child, and a dangerous child, of nature, to be
both protected and restrained.” State v. Towessnute, 89 Wash. 478, 482, 154 P. 805
(1916), judgment vacated and opinion repudiated by 197 Wn.2d 574, 486 P.3d 111
(2020).
3 See A Returning to Cherokee Nation, Justice William Johnson’s separate opinion was
less tempered in how he considered the various Native American tribes:
I cannot but think that there are strong reasons for doubting the
applicability of the epithet state, to a people so low in the grade of
organized society as our Indian tribes most generally are.
Cherokee Nation, 30 U.S. at 21. Native Americans were not to be treated as “equals to
equals” but, instead, the United States was the conqueror and Native Americans the
conquered. Id. at 23.
In discussing Native Americans, Justice Johnson employed another racist trope
used by judges both before and after him: Native Americans were uncivilized savages.
[W]e have extended to them the means and inducement to become
agricultural and civilized. . . . Independently of the general influence of
humanity, these people were restless, warlike, and signally cruel.
. . . .
But I think it very clear that the constitution neither speaks of them as states
or foreign states, but as just what they were, Indian tribes . . . which the law
of nations would regard as nothing more than wandering hordes, held
together only by ties of blood and habit, and having neither laws or
government, beyond what is required in a savage state.
Id. at 23, 27-28.
This same characterization was used by Justice Stanley Matthews in Ex parte KanGi-Shun-Ca (otherwise known as Crow Dog), 109 U.S. 556, 3 S. Ct. 396, 27 L. Ed. 1030
(1883). Justice Matthews described Native Americans as leading a savage life.
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
blbalthaser.bsky.social
Trump deserves no credit for this ceasefire - even in a backhanded way. He could have stopped the war this entire past year. If you have to thank someone - and there is little to be thankful for given the ruins of Gaza - please thank the global protest movement.
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
Reposted by Rahim Kurwa
heathercherone.bsky.social
Perry: The federal government is "temporarily enjoined from ordering the federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois."

That's it. Thanks again for following.