It was a beautiful, warm day in Chicago today. The kind of early October day that you want to be out in because you know the number of them we have left is dwindling. And so today, people were out. There were plenty of people out on the corner of Armitage and Central Park in Chicago, grabbing lunch, doing some shopping, just hanging around the way you do when it's nice in the early fall.

All of that descended into chaos instantaneously, when an ICE agent—or some other masked motherfucker—after being momentarily blocked by a scooter, decides to uncork a can of teargas and casually toss it out of the window of his unmarked SUV. It makes a spiraling decent, and then it hits. Within seconds, everyone—who moments before had been going about their day—is scrambling, coughing, and screaming.

It takes almost no time until the entire street is engulfed in toxic fog.

The whole scene unfolds in a 43 second video posted to Reddit.

ICE incident at Rico Fresh
byu/DREWBICE inLoganSquare

For those familiar with Chicago, there's no real reason you'd remember the corner of Armitage and Central Park, a mostly-residential section of Logan Square. For those unfamiliar, this is a city street not unlike the one you may live on, and certainly like one you've frequented many times in your life. It is unremarkable in every possible way: A check cashing place, a hot dog joint, a vacant storefront or two. The video was shot from the parking lot of Rico Fresh, a big Mexican grocery store that's the main draw for the corner. Just out of frame—and I mean just out of frame, maybe 50 feet away—is Funston Elementary, which was in session at the time. Next to the school, just around the corner, is a playground. There are always kids there.

There are always kids there.

I used to live a mile or two away from here. I'm pretty sure I have been on this very corner, and have certainly been on corners just like it a million times. It is the most ordinary place. Until, suddenly, in a blink, today it wasn't.

This is how we live now: our ordinary places become something else, in an instant, subject to the whims of some bastard out to inflict cruelty or having a bad day or just following orders or a combination of it all.

There have been horrific examples across the entire Chicago area for weeks now, of agents just like these jumping out on workers and families. A family of four were snatched while playing in the fountain at Millennium Park on Sunday. Just a couple days ago, an enormous action that included camouflaged bastards dropping down from helicopters unfolded pre-dawn in a run-down apartment building in South Shore, children carried out by agents, zip-tied, and loaded into the back of a box truck. Hundreds of people have been snatched and disappeared in the weeks since the feds have descended on Chicago. You feel the tension everywhere, every day.

Earlier this week I was sitting after a long day and realized I could hear a helicopter making big looping circles overhead. My initial thought was was it was a school shooter, since there are three schools within a few blocks of me. Then I thought it was a Department of Homeland Security copter, which have taken to buzzing the beach near me. I hate that these are the immediate two thoughts that come to mind, but this is our lives now.

But.

But watch the video from Armitage and Central Park again.

You'll notice something, even as the fog drifts across the screen and the guy shooting the video starts retching: Nobody is cowed by this. Even as the gas thickens, people are screaming obscenities at the agents in the car. The moped directly in front of them, despite having received what must have been a facefull of gas, refuses to move. And then there's the shrill chorus of whistles that begin to ring out near the end, audible evidence of the successful grassroots campaign to distribute ICE warning whistles in neighborhoods across Chicago.

There are, of course, no police to be seen.

And despite the strong words of Governor Pritzker, who just last month told people to "be loud for America," he sent state troopers to hassle protestors at the Broadview detention facility today.

When I first watched this video, I was seething. So angry the way I feel so often now. An unhelpful level of angry. Angry because of the impunity with which these masked bastards operate. But also angry because we've been left to fend for ourselves.

But.

But that's how it's always been, when change has to happen. There's nobody to do it but us.

This is how we live now: it's just us.

And the good news is that even among the fog, even choking back tears and bile, we're strong and we're resilient and there are so many more of us than there are of them.