In this episode of the Let's Find Common Ground podcast, the Common Ground Committee team looks at the growing movement of bridge builders pushing back against the toxic polarization that separates us.
Marcelina Pedraza at a UAW strike in 2025 (Oscar Sanchez, SETF)
As union electricians, we wire this city. My siblings in the trades pour the concrete, hoist the steel, lay the pipe and keep the lights on. We build Chicago block by block, shift after shift. We go home to the neighborhoods we help create.
I live on the Southeast Side with my family. My great-grandparents immigrated from Mexico and taught me to work hard, be loyal and kind and show up for my neighbors. I’m proud of those roots. I want my child to inherit a home that’s safe, not a ZIP code that shortens their lives, like most Latino communities in Chicago.
That’s why I support the Hazel Johnson Cumulative Impacts Ordinance.
Union folks know this: a contract isn’t just about wages. It covers safety rules, training, PPE, healthcare and a say in how the job gets done. We don’t accept “trust us” from a boss who wants to cut corners. We negotiate standards and enforce them.
Our neighborhoods deserve the same deal.
For too long, the City of Chicago has allowed heavy industry to accumulate in communities of color like mine. Each new facility gets evaluated by city agencies reviewing the application on its own, as if it operates in a vacuum. Meanwhile, Black and brown residents from these communities breathe the combined pollution from trucks, stacks, dust and debris.
One permit for a new industrial facility might look fine on paper. Ten new heavy industrial facilities together in one area of Chicago can be a disaster to our health.
We see the results of these inhaled toxins every day: inhalers on classroom desks and asthma vans outside the schools, neighbors with cancers that don’t run in the family,the “closed windows today” warnings that come with every strong wind and kids not being able to play in their own yards out of fear of exposure to toxic metals.
This is not how you treat the people who built your city.
The Hazel M. Johnson ordinance is simple and long overdue. Before major new industrial facilities move into a neighborhood that’s already carrying a heavy load from the pollution emitted by those facilities, the city has to consider the cumulative health impacts. Not just what one facility emits, but what all the stacks, trucks and sites together will mean for the lungs and lives of the people downwind and next door.
This approach is not radical, it’s common sense. It’s the union way– look at the whole job, set the standard and hold everyone to it.
Critics will say this threatens jobs. I don’t buy it. Workers know a false choice when we hear one. We can build things the right way, in the right places, with rules that protect both paychecks and people. Strong standards create better jobs – skilled, safe, long-term work that doesn’t leave a toxic tab for the neighborhood.
This is about playing by the rules. If you want to profit here, they must meet the same expectations workers face on the job. If a project can’t clear that bar, it’s not a good project for Chicago.
Labor belongs at the front of this fight. Our movements rise and fall together. A safe job site doesn’t mean much if the block you go home to is making your kid(s) sick. Wages matter. Work conditions matter. Living conditions matter. They’re part of the same fight, dignity for working people. We shouldn’t have to choose between a job and our health and safety.
Hazel Johnson – the Mother of Environmental Justice – started that fight right here on the Southeast Side. She organized so her neighbors could breathe. She stood up to power and demanded fairness. This ordinance carries that legacy forward. It says the city must count what counts: our health.
I want fellow union members to see themselves in this. We take pride in the quality of our craft. We don’t slap together junk and call it a day. We fix what’s broken. We plan. We prevent it. We protect our own. Supporting this ordinance follows the same ethic, after the whistle blows and we head home.
Chicago has a chance to lead with a standard that’s basic and just: before piling more industry into one area, measure the full burden and protect the people who live there. Make decisions with all the facts, not just the narrow slice that looks neat on a permitting form.
I’ve been a union electrician for 26 years. I love my city. I’m proud of my ancestors’ sacrifices and the life we’ve built here. I want all of our kids to grow up in a neighborhood where “progress” doesn’t mean more inhalers and less time outside.
Pass the Hazel Johnson Cumulative Impacts Ordinance. Because the people who build Chicago deserve to breathe in it. Nothing about us, without us!
Op-Ed: The People Who Built Chicago Deserve to Breathe was first published on Illinois Latino News, an affiliate of the Latino News Network, and was republished with permission.
Marcelina Pedraza is a fourth-generation union electrician and member of UAW Local 551 at Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant. She is a Southeast Side Chicago community leader focused on labor and environmental justice.
Since the late 15th century, the Americas have been colonized by the Spanish, French, British, Portuguese, and the United States, among others. This begs the question: how do we determine the right to citizenship over land that has been stolen or seized? Should we, as United States citizens today, condone the use of violence and force to remove, deport, and detain Indigenous Peoples from the Americas, including Native American and Indigenous Peoples with origins in Latin America? I argue that Greenland and ICE represent the tipping point for the legitimacy of the U.S. as a weakening world power that is losing credibility at home and abroad.
On January 9th, the BBC reported that President Trump, during a press briefing about his desire to “own” Greenland, stated that, “Countries have to have ownership and you defend ownership, you don't defend leases. And we'll have to defend Greenland," Trump told reporters on Friday, in response to a question from the BBC. The US will do it "the easy way" or "the hard way", he said. During this same press briefing, Trump stated, “The fact that they had a boat land there 500 years ago doesn't mean that they own the land.”
For millions of American Indians, Alaska Natives, and other Indigenous Peoples from the United States, Mexico, Latin America, and Greenland, this comment was not only ironic but registers to us as a form of blindness to U.S. imperialism, genocide, and land theft. It is a troubling reminder of U.S. and other European boats and ships that arrived on these shores to steal Indigenous lands and to then turn around and criminalize the people and Indigenous nations that already lived here. Now Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) by many accounts has been weaponized against U.S. citizens, including citizens of federally recognized American Indian nations, against Indigenous Peoples from Latin Americas as well as against U.S. citizens who are simply exercising their legal rights to protest the use of ICE to abduct, kidnap, and detain people based on of race, color, language and accent.
There have been recent reports that document the abduction of American Indian people from Minneapolis that are sparking outrage across Indian country. I ask readers to consider, if American Indians from the United States are the original peoples of this land, how should we account for Latinos immigrating from Latin America to the United States, who are overwhelmingly Indigenous and who lived in this territory long before the United States existed?
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 led Mexico to cede over 55% of its territory to the United States, including the states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, most of Colorado, and parts of Wyoming. Mexico also gave up title to Texas. Prior to this Treaty, the Louisiana Purchase Treaty in 1803 led to the acquisition of 15 current U.S. States that were previously colonized and controlled by France and Spain. It is crucial to point out that those 15 states, as well as the states ceded by Mexico, were not there to give. Indigenous peoples from present-day Mexico and the United States were never fully consulted on these transactions, and one could argue this was all done by force and has never been addressed. Mexico was created from a colonial government much like the United States. Spain and Britain colonized and illegally occupied the Americas without Indigenous consent. I contend that the people of Mexico of Indigenous descent should, by default, have U.S. citizenship by birthright. A false border was created to disenfranchise them.
Today a similar process of invasion and illegal land seizure or an attempt to purchase Greenland would be yet another example of United States’ brutality and illegal global action. Greenland’s Indigenous people are Inuit. 89% of Greenland’s population is Greenlandic Inuit, who comprise three primary ethnic/tribal groups: the Kalaallit, the Tunumiit, and the Inughuit. Yet here we see history repeating itself. Denmark, like Spain, Mexico, and France, which stole and then ceded Indigenous lands to the United States, is in no position to determine the rights of the Inuit Peoples of Greenland, who have made it clear they don’t want the United States in their country.
According to El País International, 85% of the people of Greenland voted no to U.S. annexation, “In Greenland, the U.S. threat has been strongly opposed by the people. In January 2025, when Trump began talking about his intention to buy or invade the Arctic Island at any cost, a poll was conducted to gauge Greenlanders' sentiment.
Aqqaluk Lynge, the former president of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, critiques Trump’s push for control in the El País article, asking, “If they do this to us, who will be next?”
The threat of an attack on Greenland is causing a global crisis as great as the domestic crisis being caused by ICE as they wage war on the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. Political Scientists argue that if President Trump invades Greenland, it could signal the end of the NATO Alliance and the selling of U.S. bonds that would cripple our economy, leading to devastating economic and social consequences. Selling off $10 trillion in U.S. bonds held by Europe too quickly could permanently destabilize our economy.
My call to action includes the following 7-point plan:
The time is now to organize and fight back before we reach the point of no return, and all our rights are dismantled under an authoritarian dictator leading a White Nationalist, racist, and fascist regime of terror! Protest, boycott, vote, organize, donate…do anything in your power to end this threat to humanity.
Andrew J. Jolivétte, is Professor of Sociology and Indigenous Studies at UC Santa Barbara, Adjunct Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego, and a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project. His latest book, Research Justice: Methodologies for Social Change was published by Policy Press.
The Trump administration recently announced changes within the Department of Education that would reclassify several graduate degrees as non-professional, limiting access to federal loans and institutional support. As a Gen Z student pursuing a Master of Public Health in Healthcare Management, to me, this serves as another reminder of how often the ground shifts beneath our feet.
For many of us in this generation, this is what coming of age has looked like: navigating urgency layered on top of fatigue and responsibility paired with diminishing support. I was in my second year of college in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit — watching the world shut down while still being expected to keep producing, achieving, and adapting. That was my life for the following three years. Now, the pursuit of higher education, including graduate degrees, which are increasingly the baseline for upward mobility, can be destabilized mid-stream. Gen Z is inheriting the compounding effects of accelerated policy decisions and is becoming the “cleanup generation” expected to absorb the fallout while the foundation is still being pulled out from under us.
Trump’s second term has made something very clear. Policies enacted quickly and without regard for long-term consequences leave damage that will take generations to undo. Executive orders, funding shifts, and rollbacks may feel temporary in the moment, but their cultural and systemic effects are long-term. This phenomenon has repeatedly been proven over the course of history. For example, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which included the three-strikes rule, further increased recidivism and mass incarceration in communities of color, which ultimately reshaped Black families and communities for decades. Long after the administration that passed it left office, we still see the effects of this bill today. The lesson is simple but often ignored: policy outlives presidents, and culture outlives policy. What’s being set in motion now will shape the economic, educational, and social realities Gen Z and future generations inherit long after this administration ends.
Ultimately, this is setting up Gen Z to be the “cleanup generation”. Those of us born between the late 90s and the early 2000s inherited a blueprint: get an education, start a career, buy a home, build a family, create generational wealth, contribute to your community, and leave the world better than you found it. And we believed in it and, so far, we’ve shown up. Gen Z has been one of the most progressive, civically engaged generations — leading calls for racial justice and social and political accountability here in the United States and abroad. We’ve planned to be on the right side of history and have dreams and goals of our own while at it. But the generations that have come before us hold the power, and these policies are making it more difficult for us to reach a baseline of stability. We are carrying the responsibility of environmental collapse, generational debt, institutional racism, and a political climate unraveling in real time. Yet the systems that claim to need us keep pulling away the tools required to meet the moment. The blueprint was handed to us, yet the foundation keeps shifting.
We are like the invisible middle child. We are situated between institutional collapse and forced responsibility, too economically unanchored to have stability, and definitely too old to be spared the consequences, yet we are still blamed for our positioning. This isn’t about claiming hardship as a competition, but about naming the conditions under which a generation is coming of age and what those conditions demand of us. For us, instability is normalized, and the rules change mid-game. We are hyper-focused on just reaching a point of stability, which in 2026 is not met with grace but with criticism and being told to work harder and do better.
And so, as a member of Gen Z, I’m not too focused on homeownership, marriage, or building a family, and not because those aspirations don’t matter, but because long-term stability has become the priority for me. My peers share the same sentiments.
And if we are truly concerned about future generations, the work cannot stop with Gen Z. The conditions we normalize now, such as instability, shrinking pathways, and constant recalibration, will become the baseline for those coming after us. Whether the next generation inherits insecurity or stability depends on whether we choose to address these structural failures now, rather than passing them down. We need to prioritize not only promising but sustaining a future in which they can dream big and have stability as a baseline rather than a luxury.
If Gen Z is expected to inherit the consequences of today’s policy decisions, then those decisions must be made with our realities in mind. That means governing with generational awareness, recognizing that stability, education, housing, and career pathways no longer function the way they once did. It also means creating real space for younger voices in the rooms where long-term decisions are made, not as tokens, but as stakeholders in the future being designed. Because you cannot expect a generation to clean up systemic damage while denying its influence over the systems themselves.
Gen Z is one of the most progressive generations by far. We have shown up in the streets and at the polls, we are politically active, socially conscious, and deeply invested in building a future that is more equitable than the one we inherited. But we are also the generation currently being asked to do the most with the least.
Gen Z will show up; we always do. But we need systems that show up for us, too.
Beverley Waithaka is a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project in partnership with the National Black Child Development Institute. She writes about the intersections of public health, beauty, digital culture, and the impacts on early childhood.
Observers film ICE agents as they hold a perimeter after one of their vehicles got a flat tire on Penn Avenue on February 5, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In a time of repeated violent clashes between civilians and federal law enforcement, particularly involving Department of Homeland Security operatives, recording and documenting their activity is crucial to ensuring truth and accountability.
What has been demonstrated over the last month, following the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, is a strong deviation between narratives from the federal government and video and eyewitness accounts of the violence that has taken place. Inaccurate or twisted realities from federal enforcement agencies are not a new trend, but it is an impediment to justice. Bystanders who continue to report on and record the actions of federal agents serve an important place in upholding American democracy and a commitment to the truth. However, documentation comes with risks.
Simply put, surveillance is everywhere in the modern state. There are common examples, like Ring doorbells and CCTV monitoring systems. These tend to be rather visible, the latter often accompanied by a sign that says, “SMILE! You’re on camera.” At the same time, there exists a more sophisticated level of modern surveillance tech that can collate information on individuals more easily than ever before.
Alejandro Ruizsparza is one of the co-directors at Lucy Parsons Labs, based in Chicago. LPL looks into the technologies that perpetuate state and corporate harm, and counters them via investigations, litigation, and education.
Using Chicago as an example, Ruizsparza shed some light on how surveillance is all around us:
“I think the average person, whether they’re aware of it or not…they’re always interacting with some kind of surveillance dragnet in the city. There are license plate readers at almost every major road in Chicago, if not all of them, as well as, I think, every highway in Illinois, if not most of them. You’re driving in your car, and your driving is constantly monitored,” Ruizsparza said. They also mentioned auditory surveillance systems, such as ShotSpotter, and facial recognition tools like Flock. “The surveillance is there. Right. It’s almost become part of, like, the water we swim in.”
License plate readers, facial recognition tracking, surveillance cameras, audio surveillance, and social media tracking are all surveillance technologies that can collect data on people every day. The abundance of surveillance technology is generally justified by crime-prevention and safety claims, so it’s worth noting that the surveillance state does not impact all populations equally.
“Black and brown people will generally be more targeted by these kinds of tools just because that’s where they’re deployed most often,” said Ruiszparza. “When we were dealing with ShotSpotter in Chicago, one of the things that came up quickly and was a really big rallying point for all of us was that the deployment of the auditory devices were only placed in wards that had less than 50% Caucasian people living in the ward. So, there is a very obvious demographic that is being targeted when it comes to the deployment of these devices.”
In addition, many facial recognition software were trained on Caucasian models. As a result, they tend to be less accurate at identifying Black or brown individuals. There are other factors that may make you more or less vulnerable to surveillance, including gender, age, or occupation. For example, if you have attended a protest, consider yourself an activist, or maybe you’re a journalist like me, you might find yourself more vulnerable to surveillance. Or, maybe, you simply have a phone.
Aside from the complicated technology and private surveillance organizations employed by the government, phones, and more specifically the apps that are on them, are hotbeds for gathering data and sending it out to an entity that purchases it. But what, exactly, is the data that’s being collected?
“Any app that you download that is taking data points about you, requests your location, and then stores that somewhere,” said the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Senior Staff Technologist Bill Budington. “By and large, you’ll be aware of it because it asks for permission, and it will. A lot of times your phone will also make it obvious that this has recorded your location for this amount of time. So be aware of that.”
Budington explains that ads on apps also collect data, and can inform those who buy that data more about the individual it’s been farmed from; think interests, hobbies, location, etc.
“A lot of the so-called surveillance capitalism that we're living under is based on the permissions-greedy advertising ecosystem that makes it so that your eyes are more valuable if they have more information about you,” Budington said. “The value per ad served will be more if there's more information that's delivered to an ad exchange about you.”
The data stored tends to be sold by data brokers; however, it can also be divulged to the government via a court order. While the Fourth Amendment generally requires the government to obtain a warrant before searching someone’s private information, a recent ACLU investigation has revealed that the DHS is circumventing the Constitution by purchasing data directly from data brokers.
The DHS also uses other tools to obtain data directly, such as Webloc. According to 404Media, Webloc uses social media monitoring and phone surveillance to create commercial location trails of mobile devices over a city or neighborhood.
“That, to me, is alarming because it circumvents, I would argue, Fourth Amendment due process rights because some of this data that the government used to have a warrant for, now they can just purchase,” says Nicole Bennett, a PhD candidate at Indiana University who researches digital technologies and data systems, and their influence on migration.
In addition to purchased data, information obtained from government databases and FOIA requests suggests that ICE holds contracts with surveillance tech giants beyond Webloc, such as Palantir and FiveCast, to enhance its operations and social media surveillance.
The combination of sophisticated surveillance tools at DHS’s disposal and the illegal purchase of information from data brokers puts any person involved with ICE, be it undocumented immigrant or bystander, at risk. This risk amplifies when a person records ICE activity and then shares it, tying them to a specific time and place through a string of data.
- YouTube youtu.be
“Sousveillance” is the act of recording by any member of the public, in essence, surveilling the surveillance state.
As mentioned previously, documenting the actions of federal agents is essential in upholding democracy and justice. Recording is also a right upheld by the First Amendment, and it must be done at a distance (at least an arm’s length), so as not to interfere or obstruct an officer on duty.
Here’s some practical advice on how to protect yourself if you’re planning on recording federal agents.
Threat modeling is a framework often deployed in the security and privacy space. The goal of threat modeling is to identify any potential threats or vulnerabilities in a software system, including potential attackers. It looks at identifying possible motives for attacks, and methods that might be used to expose vulnerabilities in software. A similar line of thinking can help an individual assess their potential risk when interacting with ICE at any level.
“[Threat modeling], it’s sort of an approach that we use to think about our assets, which are the things we want to keep safe, right. It might be our identity, it might be our location. It could be much more explicit,” LPL’s Alejandro Ruisparza said, “And you pair that against threat. So, what are the risks? What am I at risk of being threatened by and what’s the capability of that threat?”
For example, if an individual is engaging in activities that could lead to their arrest, then they should ask themselves if they are actually willing to be arrested. Ultimately, it is up to each individual to assess their own risk and what they are willing to endure should that risk become a reality.
As a data governance researcher, Bennett is well aware of the personal risks that come with having an online presence.
“There are certain things I don’t post. And I’m aware, but I have a very low risk profile. You know, I’m a U.S. citizen, I live in a smaller town. I, you know, like there’s all these things that make it much less risky for me versus another individual,” she said.
“It’s a question of how much risk can I take on individually, maybe collectively, and how can I make sure that I maintain that risk level? I think those are key questions,” Ruisparza finishes.
For more information on this topic, including the latest on ICE surveillance technology contracts, check out the investigative work being done by the EFF, Fight for the Future, 404 Media, and Lucy Parsons Lab.
Britton Struthers-Lugo is a freelance journalist and a photographer based in Chicago, Illinois.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?