"Last week, as ICE raids ramped up in New York, city residents set about resisting in the ways they had available: confronting agents directly on sidewalks, haranguing them as they processed down blocks, and recording them on phone cameras held aloft. Relentless documentation has proved something of an effective tool against President Donald Trump's empowerment of ; agents have taken to wearing masks in fear of exposure,"
"At the same time, social media has served as a reinvigorated source of transparency in recent weeks, harking back to the days when Twitter became an organizing tool during the Arab Spring, in the early twenty-tens, or when Facebook and Instagram helped fuel the Black Lives Matter marches of 2020. The grassroots optimism of that earlier social-media era is long gone, though, replaced by a sense of posting as a last resort."
City residents confronted ICE agents on sidewalks, harangued them as they processed down blocks, and filmed raids on phone cameras. Persistent documentation led agents to wear masks to avoid exposure and produced widespread imagery of armed police and National Guard troops in calm urban settings. Activist memes emerged on social platforms, including a woman on Canal Street flipping off ICE agents, a man in Washington throwing a Subway sandwich at a federal agent, and protesters in inflatable frog costumes at "No Kings" marches. Digital content functions as a lively defense mechanism and a renewed source of transparency, recalling earlier eras of social-media organizing while reflecting diminished grassroots optimism.
Read at The New Yorker
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