The following story is written by Payday's Community Engagement Editor, Amos Wolf. Donate to help us pay him $ 32 an hour.
PITTSBURGH, PA. - On February 17th, with reports of ICE raids increasing in Pittsburgh, nearly 100 community leaders, activists, and concerned community members gathered at the Black Box Theater in North Oakland to discuss how to fight back. The forum, hosted by 1Hood, featured award-winning journalist and NYU Professor Chenjerai Kumanyika in conversation with Congresswoman Summer Lee.
Lee discussed the idea of a general strike and what it would take to get there, including deepening ties between local labor unions and social movements.
“The two most powerful tools we have are organized money and organized labor,” said Lee, before addressing growing calls for a general strike. “To get the general strike, that means that we have to learn how to participate in local solidarity, too. If we can't manage local solidarity, we can’t scale it up.”
Chenjerai Kumanyika, who serves on the National Council of the American Association of University Professors, says that his union, in coalition with the AFT (American Federation of Teachers), is looking for ways to expand the fight.
“I was in a call just recently, they were saying we need to knock down these pillars,” said Kumanyika. “So we were not just talking about strikes, but I’m also talking about these corporate pillars…. We’re about to put pressure on Target, Hilton, all these companies.”
Lee stressed that such movements are crucial to applying pressure to change the Democratic Party to more effectively fight Trump.
“For the people who usually take issue with me when I talk about the Democratic Party, let me tell you why I talk about the Democratic Party, as opposed to the Republican Party,” Representative Lee told the crowd. “I don't need the Republican Party to exist. There's nothing that they can offer me that would be helpful to me or my community. When I critique the Democratic Party it’s because it is the institution that is standing in the way of justice, of liberation, of equity…it is a container for those things. So I need it to be its best version of itself. We need it to be its best version of itself.”
Lee, who successfully prevailed over primary challengers who were supported by $5 million from AIPAC in 2022 and 2024, knows firsthand how hard some Democrats will try to silence progressive voices. “I have watched how even Democrats will just stomp out energy, will stomp out talent, if they don't feel like it fits in the mold. I've watched it. So how am I going to sit here and act like that doesn't actually exist?”
With a hotly-contended midterm season approaching, Lee called for Democrats to center their politics around communities that they traditionally ignore, in order to save the country from an authoritarianism.
“Stop telling those people to shut up,” chastened Lee. “Stop trying to ‘lesser of two evils’ those people. Stop telling those people that they don't know what they're talking about… Please take the time to find out what a non-voter is talking about. Please do it with grace. Please do it with care, because we do need them to participate.”
After questions from the audience, participants broke out into small workshops run by Pittsburgh Women for Democracy, Frontline Dignity, Casa San Jose, and Indivisible Pittsburgh. However, one immigrants’ right group said that they were too afraid to show up to a publicly listed event.
“They wanted to talk about how we need to have immigrant-led, immigrant-held, conversations,” shared Miracle Jones, Director of Advocacy and Policy at 1Hood. “The fact that immigrants right now cannot publicly have conversations because they're not sure they'll be able to make it home is one of the reasons why we need to be organizing in this moment.”
In the Frontline Dignity breakout group, participants questioned whether white volunteers would be ready to confront ICE when the time came.
Frontline Dignity organizer Jamie Martinez said that activists should realize that their white privilege can help open doors that others can't. He shared a story about a white woman volunteer who was able to gain access to a police press conference based on her mannerisms and appearance.
“We ask folks to kind of consider who you are and like, what kind of space you occupy, and lean into it…make an impact in the situation,” Martinez instructed.
“How can I get involved?” asked another participant, noting that, “I can’t ignore that as a black woman I can also end up a target.”
In response, Martinez detailed many behind-the-scenes and nonconfrontational roles that rapid response volunteers can fill, including community monitors, tip line operators, dispatchers, data entry, data security, data analysis, volunteer vetting, and volunteer training.
“There's a lot of different things that folks can be doing that doesn't necessarily mean ‘be there, fight law enforcement,’” affirmed Martinez.
Activists say that in the midst of these raids, their ability to organize is growing. Frontline Dignity is already able to dispatch volunteers to anywhere in the metro area within 15 minutes, and they’re onboarding more volunteers in a rush to cut that time down to 2 to 3 minutes.
“One, we want ICE out of Pittsburgh, period,” said Jasiri X, Founder and CEO of 1Hood. “We believe that if we come together with love, with peace, with justice, that we will make a bright future collectively— but in this moment in time, we have to come together and fight for that future, because they are fighting to create a dystopian future where all of us will become oppressed and slaves.”
As ICE intensifies its raids in Pittsburgh, organizers say that they are seeing more activists than ever getting involved and fighting back.
“There is a lot of interest right now in getting trained,” reported Carlin Christy, Co-Director of PA United, Pittsburgh Chapter. “Hundreds of people have gone to trainings and community defense groups are popping up. I think we have to get more organized and be able to scale up so that every single community can defend their neighborhood, their block, their school.”
