Evanston demonstration, Nov. 1, 2025. Photo for News & Letters by Franklin Dmitryev.

Evanston, Ill.—People are not waiting for official No Kings Day demonstrations to gather in protest against the inhumanity and brutality of Trump and Kristy Noem’s ICE and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). In a hastily called rally on Nov. 1, over 1,000 people showed up in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago.

The crowd was decidedly nonviolent but deeply concerned by the attacks of the CBP on people doing legal activities in our neighborhoods.

It began with a car accident, caused by a CBP driver slamming on his brakes, which caused the car behind him to run into him. The driver who ran into the CBP’s car was not part of any protest or following the car by design. Reportedly, the agent driver who “had been driving “erratically…through stop signs and red lights” made “a fast right turn…during a red light,” but had to brake to avoid hitting the car in front of him. After the accident, the CBP officers did what thugs do. They yanked the woman out of her car and arrested her—for a traffic accident, caused by them!

Sign at Evanston demonstration, Nov. 1, 2025. Photo for News & Letters by Franklin Dmitryev.

THEY WERE ILLEGAL, WE WERE LEGAL

But it didn’t stop there. People who live in the neighborhood as well as activists using nonviolent means to keep immigrants and others safe—like blowing whistles, filming what was happening and keeping neighbors and immigrants informed about ICE and CBP whereabouts—were shoved, pepper sprayed, beaten, dragged and had a gun pointed at them by the federal agents.

Two more people were arrested. One told Evanston RoundTable that “She didn’t hear the agents give any warnings to step back before one of them ‘turned around and just dropped me,’ hard enough to knock one of her shoes off.

“ ‘When he tackled me to the ground, I lost a shoe, but it was right there when he stood me up. And I said, “Can I just put my shoe on?” And the guy actually picked it up and threw it.’ ” They brutalized another bystander by “punching him repeatedly in the face and dragging his face across the pavement” while he was in handcuffs. Everything these guys did was illegal, brutal and unethical. There’s reason not to wait for official state or nationwide demonstrations to act.

FASCISM NOW A FACT OF LIFE

At the rally, some stood by the street with their signs and I have never heard so many people honking their horns in support for a cause in the many, many demonstrations I’ve been to. The crowd was so large that it was difficult to hear the many speakers. The one I was able to hear talked of how his Jewish mother, who was a child in Germany when the Nazis came to power, remembered her parents talking of how it was not yet time to leave. But they were wrong and ended up dying in Hitler’s genocide. He seemed to be saying that we shouldn’t wait too long, not to leave, but to fight back harder.

Demo against ICE/CBP in Evanston, Nov. 1, 2025, eliciting an unending chorus of horn honking in support. Photo for News & Letters by Franklin Dmitryev.

I couldn’t help but thinking that it may not have been too late for those of us standing in that parking lot but it certainly is too late for the thousands that have already been picked up, disappeared, shipped no one knows where, their lives destroyed, their children scattered. Fascism is here and just as in the movie the slaves stepped forward and all claimed to be Spartacus, now is the time for us all to step forward and actually be antifa.

–Terry Moon