Erin Tobes and Audra Wunder are stay-at-home moms in the suburban Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago. It's a tight-knit community where everyone knows everyone, including the large, diverse population of immigrants and refugees who live there. When President Trump announced that he would send U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to Chicago, Tobes and Wunder met with the principal of their kids' school to find out what they could do to protect students and their families.
Crises rarely start with a press release or a breaking news segment. More often, they emerge quietly on social media-an offhand comment from a customer, a trending hashtag, a viral video-before quickly snowballing into something far bigger. For marketing leaders, the lesson is clear: Reputation can take years to build and seconds to erode. Yet too many crisis management playbooks still rely on slow, traditional escalation paths that leave brands reacting far too late.
The increased number of violent ICE raids and arrests have escalated concerns about the equal protection and due process rights of migrants. Non-citizens won these rights more than a century ago, when two Chinese laundrymen brought their fight against discrimination all the way to the US Supreme Court. Yick Wo vs. Hopkins is just one way early Chinese immigrants helped shape constitutional principles that remain foundational to American democracy. And as KQED's Cecilia Lei reports, that case still resonates today.