By Mallory Mankin, Staff Writer
Several Wheaton students joined about 100 protesters gathered at Adams Park in Wheaton, Ill., on the afternoon of Feb. 9 to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and its recent actions in the Midwest. A group of Wheaton teenagers — students at local schools and friends of Ben and Sam Luhmann — organized and publicized the event, drawing community members, Wheaton College students, and advocates.
Anna Porter, a senior majoring in history and art history, attended alongside friends. The group carried signs they made earlier in the day with a quote from Leviticus 19:33: “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them.” Other signs included sayings like “They blame immigrants, so we won’t blame billionaires.”
“ I think these are the type of situations that only get worse if people don’t let the government know how we feel,” Porter said. “I wanted to make my opinion known before it’s too late.”
Drivers honked as they passed, and Hispanic music played throughout the assembly and chants. Attendees held Amazon boxes converted into signs that read, among other things, “Salt and light both melt ice.” The teenagers who organized the protest got up and spoke to the crowd, reciting poems and speeches. Chants filled the streets while the protesters marched around the block. Those wearing eagle masks or a Statue of Liberty costume responded to speakers with words of encouragement.
The protest drew international attention, with a French press outlet covering the gathering as well as local news sources. When the teens who organized the protest discovered this, they yelled out to their parents, “Dad, we have reporters!”
Details about the event were shared through an Instagram post from the account @this_is_america_zines, which had 50 likes and three comments before the gathering began. College students in attendance said the post had been shared widely in group chats and student communication channels.
Simon Kutnow, a senior studying urban studies, heard about the protest when a friend shared the post. He said that the information came shortly after he was challenged by his associate professor of geology, Andrew Luhmann, to “do something” about the injustice in the world. Kutnow said attending the protest was his way of doing something that week.
He said a busy college schedule can conflict with current events, contributing to the “Wheaton bubble,” an expression used to convey the secluded socioeconomic demographic of the town. Hearing immigrant stories from personal connections brought the news to a more local level.
“ There is like a live reality of immigrants and violence every day that I don’t see here,” Kutnow said.
Some of those connections came through the high school–age sons of his geology professor. Brothers Ben and Sam Luhmann, residents of West Chicago, have been involved with organizing anti-ICE protests and documenting arrests in the Chicagoland area since this past summer.
At the Adams Park protest, Sam Luhmann shared about the brothers’ three weeks documenting ICE enforcement in Minneapolis, Minn., and compared it to their experiences in Chicago.
“It feels like a war zone, like people think Chicago was crazy, but it was not like that,” he said. “So many people were joining together and working with each other out in Minneapolis, and it feels like when you’re back in the Chicago suburbs, everybody just keeps themselves more.”
Ben Luhmann spoke of documenting ICE activity in Minneapolis, including moments where he himself was in the crossfire. He recalled the “noxious burn of tear gas” and the “sting of pepper balls” they experienced while filming the breaking news events of the past weeks.
“This protest is to show Wheaton and America that we will not stand for this,” Ben Luhmann said. “It is to show that we, the American people, are done with the dehumanization and brutality against our diversity.”
Ben encouraged the crowd to participate more against ICE, citing numbers about immigrants being deported, protesters being killed and the money that immigrants pay to federal taxes. As his speech progressed, people recorded and translated his words into Spanish on the spot so that his words could reach a wider audience. The speech concluded with a request for the audience to consider what it means to be an American.
“We choose to love our neighbors in America,” he said. “We choose to fight for the beauty of our cultural diversity, and we will fight like our lives depend on it, because for millions of people across America, they do.”
Connor Brown ‘18 attends Christ Our Advocate Church with the Luhmann family. He drives out to an apartment building in West Chicago every morning to make sure all the children get to school safely.
“Truthfully, like just seeing the small acts of kindness and showing up and just being there has meant far more to the kids at this one apartment complex than if I were trying to do something really big and grandiose,” Brown said.
Brown’s wife works at the school the children attend, and just before Christmas break, one of the children passed a note to her asking for it to be delivered to Connor. Inside, the note read, “Thank you for keeping us safe.”
“That to me just made it all worth it,” Brown said. “Loving your neighbor doesn’t come cheap, but it requires action and attention, and it requires both of those things steadfastly, resolutely and consistently.”
