What Will It Take?
Notes from the occupation and, also, holiday book promo!
I am on assignment to finish an essay about dance and cancer for an upcoming anthology, but it is difficult to write or think about anything other than the ongoing brutality being unleashed on Chicago and its surrounding communities. Despite court orders forbidding the use of chemical weapons, despite commands that federal agents unmask their faces, wear ID, and body cameras, the assault continues. They ram cars on the street and drag the drivers out onto the pavement. They invade a day care and abduct a teacher. They shoot pepper spray at toddlers in their car seats. They strut and preen with their big guns, dressed in body armor and full desert camo, as though they are on patrol outside Fallujah rather than posing for photos at the Bean ffs. They are untrained, dickish, and trigger happy. People have been shot. More people will be shot.
I write these notes wound up by the belief that if I can only provide enough links, use enough clear language and declarative sentences, it will make you care. It will move you to action. I’ve become fascinated by the psychology of proximity — how we respond to the urgency of a threat to our group, our friends, our block, with so much more immediacy than the threat to a vaguely defined “other.”
On Friday Operation Midway Blitz came back to Waukegan with a vengeance. I was meeting with a prospective author in Chicago when the notifications started coming in: ICE buying snacks at Jackson and Belvidere. ICE creating chaos at College of Lake County. ICE on North Avenue. ICE on Poplar. ICE on my block, at Cribb Foods, the little grocery store on the corner where I buy milk and toilet paper and eggs. They abducted several workers from the store. When I got home later the lights were off and it was locked up tight.
That same day Waukegan Alderman Juan Martinez was on his way back to work from lunch when he was stopped by a traffic jam. It was unclear what was happening, so he beeped his horn. Like you do in a normal society.
“I waited two or three minutes, and a man wearing a mask came up to me with his gun drawn,” Martinez told the Lake County News-Sun. “It was a rifle. He said, ‘Put your hands up or I’ll blow your f—–g face off.’ I told him four or five times, ‘I’m the alderman.’” Three more agents quickly surrounded the car, guns drawn.
“My life flashed before my eyes,” he said. “All I could think of was my family was going to be planning my funeral.”
This is happening, every day, in Chicago, Waukegan, Evanston, Skokie, Wilmette, Berwyn, and beyond. If you don’t believe me, listen to J.B. Pritzker, quoted here in the New Yorker.
The way Trump has organized ICE and C.B.P. now, they are like a secret police. They wear masks. They do not carry or show their badges or their names. They are in unmarked cars. They’re grabbing people without telling you who they are and throwing those people into their cars and taking them away. And like I said, later, you find out that that wasn’t somebody who was undocumented and certainly most often was not somebody who has a criminal record or has committed a crime.
This hasn’t happened to you yet, but it could.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, time for one of the disorienting pivots that have come to define being online in our time. How about that Sinéad O’Connor book! This month is, I’ve learned, both “Nonfiction November” and “National Life Writing Month”— according to whoever creates such designations. For those who celebrate, may I suggest a copy of Nothing Compares to You? Look we even made a cute 3-D graphic. The best gift for lovers of Sinéad, of personal essays, and of people standing up for what they believe in, no matter the cost.
We also have a few fun events on the horizon. If you are in Chicago, come out to one of all of the following!
On November 20 I’m joining my friend and University of Illinois Press author Rob Miller to celebrate the publication of his memoir The Hours Are Long but the Pay Is Low. Rob and I have been working on this book together for the past few years and I am so excited to help bring it into the world at last. We’ll talk about music, books, Chicago back in the day, and why now more than ever independent arts, media, and communities of like minded weirdos are the only thing that’s gonna save us. That’s 6:30 pm at the Book Cellar in Lincoln Square, 4736 N. Lincoln. There’s wine!
On November 22 I’ll be talking about all things Sinéad with journalist Alison Cuddy and contributor (and my good friend) Zoe Zolbrod at the Irish American Heritage Center, part of the two-day Irish Books, Art, and Music festival. Alison was one of the first people to cover the book, with a radio piece that ran on Chicago Public Radio in July, and a print story in that same week’s Chicago Sun-Times. I’m so excited to revisit our conversation in the wake of my own trip to Ireland to promote the book, and this is the perfect venue to do just that. There will probably be beer!
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
And last but not least, there will be all sorts of drinks on hand on December 17 at the Hideout for a reprise of our sold-out July launch party at Gman Tavern. So many of you who couldn’t make it to that event asked if we would consider doing it again, and here it is. We’re getting the band back together for ONE NIGHT ONLY. Because honestly what we all need right now is to sing “Last Day of Our Acquaintance” to Greg Bovino at the top of our lungs. I will be in conversation with contributors Gina Frangello, Megan Stielstra, and Zoe Zolbrod, and glorious moderator Chicago Tribune music critic Britt Julious. After that, stick around for a musical tribute to Sinéad by a supergroup of Chicago singers, including Janet Beveridge Bean, Angela James, Jeanine O’Toole, Julie Pomerleau, Marydee Reynolds, Amalea Tshilds, and L Wyatt. Plus! A special surprise in honor of what would have been Sinéad’s 59th birthday on December 8.
This is a ticketed event: $15 in advance, $20 at the door. Proceeds will be donated to the Illinois Commission for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, who are out here doing indispensable work. Books will be available for sale from our friends at Women & Children First.
Stay safe out there, friends. I hope to see you in person soon.
In Cleveland this weekend, at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I saw in the SNL 50! Exhibition the very candles that accompanied Sinéad’s performance, and the very PHOTOGRAPH she tore. And of course the video of the moment. Tears tears tears. Thank you, Zoe and all the authors for your work, and many happy returns of the sold-out launch party.