Call to Action: The Video Americans Were Never Supposed To See

Let’s start this blogpost off with some wins, folks, because we gotta turn up the volume on good news, pronto!

• Thanks to phone calls bombarding the executive offices of Avelo Airlines, the company is no longer deporting detainees for ICE.
• After tremendous public pressure, Spotify is no longer running ICE recruitment ads.
• Everpeak Hospitality, which owns Hampton Inn by Hilton in Minneapolis, canceled reservations made by ICE and BP agents, refusing to support the invasion of Minneapolis and provide housing for federal agents.
• North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis will block all future nominations to the Department of Homeland Security until Secretary Kristi Noem appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which she has been refusing to do.

I wanted to share these victories because much like the start of 2025, these opening weeks of 2026 have otherwise felt like drinking from a firehose of atrocities. Many lives have been taken and bombs have been dropped since CBS News Editor-in-Chief Barry Weiss told 60 Minutes not to air its segment detailing the human rights abuses taking place at CECOT prison in El Salvador, where the US government has been kidnapping and deporting people. The network capitulated, but not before the show aired in Canada. If you haven’t seen it yet, please consider this call to action and watch the video Americans were never supposed to see, here. Want to see an end to these illegal deportations? Here are two petitions you can sign:

• via ACLU
• via National Immigration Law Center

Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Reneé Nicole Good on January 7, 2026, has not been arraigned and, in fact, has gone into hiding with his wife while our federal agents pack up his belongings and protect the knowledge of his whereabouts. Who is paying for all that packing, moving, identity protection, and hiding? I fear we are, with our tax dollars. But the American public deserves answers, Jonathan Ross has the right to a fair hearing, and Reneé Good’s family should be given the peace of mind that the law will be followed in the aftermath of this horrible event. Add your name to this petition showing support for civil servants who are defending the rule of law specific to this case.

But what does all this clicking really do? Does it matter? I tell myself that it must. I tell myself that it costs me very little to click and sign, to call and leave a message, or watch a video from the comfort and safety of my own home and my cisgendered white identity. If you’re asking similar versions of these questions, you’re not alone.

What I can say is – first – look again at the bulleted list of wins I opened this post with. If no one called or clicked, those changes would not have taken place. Second, “a petition is a tool that gives anyone the chance to participate meaningfully in democracy…Trailblazers and activists throughout history have created pivotal change using their right to petition, including Martin Luther King, Jr. and Frederick Douglass.”[1] More recently, in 2021, the police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of the murder of George Floyd, making that petition for justice a success.[2] And if you’d like a longer, wholehearted dose of how and why one small action really does make a difference, especially if you hold a privileged identity right now at this moment in history, explore this podcast episode on The Raid, where John Carlos Frey interviews Jess Craven.

When asked about what she believes is her responsibility as a white person in the US today, Jess Craven answered, “The responsibility is to not check out and to not act like, well this is happening to somebody else so it’s not my problem…[1]n this moment…the state is torturing entire communities and sets of communities[2] and oppressing them but there is a real power…to white people going and standing out in the street and protesting this and standing around ICE agents as they’re doing what they’re doing and amplifying what’s happening.”

[1] Change.org: https://www.change.org/petition-guides/what-is-a-petition.

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