GRASSROOTS ALEXANDRIA

by Jonathan Krall

This week’s flimflam Exhibit A is a poll in the Alexandria Times (scroll down to find the poll). They ask, “Do you think the Sheriff’s Office should cooperate with ICE?” and give us four answers to select from: Yes, Only if judicial warrants are provided, No, and I’m not sure. Because you, Alexandrian reader, are probably smarter than average, you have probably already noticed that the “no” vote will be split between “No” and “Only if judicial warrants are provided.” Thus, the bias of the Alexandria Times is once again revealed. The correct answer is “No.”

Requested action: Please visit https://alextimes.com/, scroll down to find the poll, select “No,” and submit your answer. (Thanks!)

Background: ICE is not a government agency deserving of our respect, support, or cooperation. No one should cooperate with ICE. When life or liberty are at stake, people might obey ICE, but obedience is not cooperation. Advocates are asking that Sheriff Casey only obey ICE when a judge, via a judicial warrant, forces him to do so.

And the flimflam doesn’t stop there! In the past few weeks, while advocates and city council talk about “ICE administrative warrants” and “judicial warrants,” Sheriff Casey invokes “lawful warrants” and “federal warrants.”

All this reminds us of a bit from comedian George Carlin: “Flammable, inflammable, and nonflammable… Why are there three? Don’t you think that two ought to serve the purpose? I mean either the thing flams or it doesn’t!”

Continue reading “Wading through the flimflam”

by Jonathan Krall

In 2016, Trump voters told us that we need significant change. They were correct. We, all of us, see that we are responding to very real problems. To move forward, we must show our political leaders that we are fighting for something other than the pre-Trump status quo. Here in Alexandria, Virginia, where I live, protesters are screaming for fundamental change, with me screaming right along with them. Is anyone listening?

Elites aren’t listening

In pre-Trump America, the growing ranks of the White working poor were utterly dismissed. They were literally called “trash.” In 2016, only Trump promised significant change. He embraced the White working class with open arms and crude language. Because nothing actually changed–elites grew richer and the ranks of the working poor grew larger–that formula worked again in 2024. Elites, still not listening, are doing nothing to reverse wealth inequality.

Only elites can afford houses

While Wall Street thrives, most Americans live on Main Street, where buying a house is beyond the reach of too many young families. For the under-employed, there are no jobs of last resort. We do have housing of last resort–it’s called prison.

Continue reading “Trump Supporters Are Right (about many things)”

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, jails “have become an essential part of implementing President Trump’s mass arrest and deportation agenda.” In fact, PPI data shows that, until May 2025, the majority of people detained by ICE were obtained from a local jail. By now we have all heard the advice given to immigrants: “Officers must have a warrant signed by a judge to enter your home.” You can and should ask: “Do you have a warrant signed by a judge?” Sheriff Casey can ask that very same question. As we understand it, he is not doing so. It is up to all of us to gather in community, ask important questions, and protect Alexandria from ICE.

Here in Alexandria, we have all seen statements from the Alexandria Sheriff’s Office (ASO). While we will address various specific ASO claims below, we are particularly concerned with the false claim that the ASO “is obligated to comply with all lawful arrest warrants issued by law enforcement agencies.” Because a “lawful warrant” can refer to an ICE administrative warrant or a judicial warrant, the ASO is being misleadingly imprecise. Grassroots Alexandria, along with the ICE Out of Alexandria coalition, is asking Sheriff Sean Casey to refuse to transfer anyone to ICE without a judicial warrant.

As we advocate for stronger protections for Alexandrians, we have received questions on social media and from the press. These are some of the questions that have been raised.

Q: Alexandria is a welcoming city. Aren’t we already doing our part to stop ICE?

A: Since Trump’s inauguration, ICE has conducted indiscriminate raids across the DMV area, including Alexandria. Despite the fact that the City Council and Sheriff have issued statements insisting that Alexandria does not collaborate with immigration enforcement, Sheriff Casey is facilitating the detention and deportation of our neighbors by transferring people to ICE.

Volunteers can support immigrant communities in their neighborhoods and at courthouses by joining New Virginia Majority’s volunteer network at bit.ly/NVMsolidarity. To write to the Sheriff and urge him to stop cooperating with ICE, click here.

Q: I wrote to our city council. Our sheriff also sent me an email. Everyone is telling me there is no collaboration with ICE. What is the truth?

Continue reading “FAQ: Is Sheriff Casey doing all he can do to protect us from ICE?”

by Jonathan Krall

I, like so many people I talk with, am looking for reasons to hope. The explosion of rallies, protests, and celebrations of democracy give me hope. Domestic civil rights and international freedom movements give me hope. The energetic Democratic Socialists and the many student activists give me hope. But I want more. I want to see a way forward. In On Freedom, author Timothy Snyder tells us that “We know the way back toward freedom: a reclamation of the future.” He goes on to say that we must do more than vote against our fears, such as when we vote for the lesser of two evils. “Fear is not enough. It will not get us where we need to go.” We must instead “build a scaffolding of hope.” I believe that this hopeful scaffolding can be built by supporting non-profits instead of mainstream parties.

While we must not give up on the power of our vote (that is, not give up on democracy), we must also not give up on the search for something positive to vote for. I, personally, do not see either of the main political parties leading me anywhere I want to go.

In How We Win the Civil War, author Steve Phillips describes the non-profit organizations that have flipped states, including the Commonwealth of Virginia, from red to blue. Hope lies not in the “blue” part, but in the growing multi-cultural coalitions created by these non-profit leaders. These coalitions center working-class concerns, including those expressed by communities of color. They emphasize those basic concerns (minimum wage, housing, affordable transportation options, access to jobs) and let their actions (not their words) speak to those who wish to center antiracism. New Virginia Majority, one of the organizations profiled in Mr. Phillips’s book, is doing this coalition-building work.

Expanding democracy

New Virginia Majority (NVM) political priorities, such as renewable energy and in-state college tuition for undocumented Virginians, are very nuts-and-bolts. To my mind, NVM is far from perfect. For example, their “expanding democracy” agenda would strengthen voting rights and ease of voting, but it could be bolder. Mainly, I’m hopeful that their coalition-building work will give sensible Virginians the political strength to help our working-class friends, neighbors, and selves, to achieve economic stability and mobility, two of the pillars of freedom. At present, it seems, too many people believe that the only way to escape exploitation is to go to college and stop being working class. This is not acceptable. Working class people deserve freedom too.

Continue reading “Another day, another ray of hope”

by Jonathan Krall

These are unusual times. While we continue to focus on local Alexandria politics, new volunteers are coming to us with national concerns that we share ourselves. With students and immigrants being “disappeared” to Louisiana or El Salvador, it is tempting to disconnect, to imagine that these actions are happening “somewhere else.” For residents or Northern Virginia, this week’s Amicus podcast shows us otherwise. Simon Sandoval Moshenberg, who is interviewed, comes from Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC), right here in Northern Virginia (while LAJC is cited in the podcast, Mr. Moshenberg is currently with Murray Osorio PLLC). His client, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, one of the disappeared, is a legal resident of nearby Maryland. This is not happening far away. This is right here, right now.

Act Today: 1. Visit our events page, click “Community Voices Update,” attend a rally, training, or social gathering. 2. Download, print, and distribute our Community Voices Update flyer.

Simon’s client, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an asylum-seeker who was granted a stay from deportation in 2019, was a sheet-metal worker in Maryland. He was picked up by ICE for reasons that are still not clear, apparently as a result of an “administrative error,” and his presence in one of the many notoriously unreliable police “gang databases.” Last month, in defiance of a judge’s explicit order, three planes took people, mostly Venezuelans, to a dangerous prison in El Salvador. Mr. Abrego Garcia was on the third plane. The Amicus podcast raises a simple question: “Will the Trump administration follow a federal judge’s orders and bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home?”

Continue reading “Right here, right now”

We in Grassroots Alexandria are getting a lot of inquiries from prospective volunteers. Here is some info to help you get started.

If you want to rally for democracy

Our Community Voices project raises awareness of events and actions that might help us protect our community from the dismantling of public services and the public square (that is, democracy itself), and the looting of public resources by kleptocrats. The Community Voices Update goes out to our email list and to this Facebook page.
To see the weekly Community Voices Update, see our events page or subscribe to the Grassroots Alexandria email list.

In addition, you can visit to any of these websites, where events are usually posted (this is not a comprehensive list):

https://www.anddemocracy.com/events/
https://www.democracyhelpers.org/calendar/
https://www.fiftyfifty.one
https://freedcproject.org/events
https://indivisible.org
https://linktr.ee/50501DC
https://www.movementinfrastructureproject.org
Virginia Grassroots resistance events list

and find more DC area events by subscribing to these organizations (again not a comprehensive list):

https://www.harrietsdreams.org
https://mdcdsa.org/

When seeking out training on advocacy, democracy, history, self-care, we found (in addition to the above) the following:

https://afsc.org/
https://www.codepink.org/
https://www.comrades.education/
https://www.dcpeaceteam.org/upcoming-training-events
https://labornotes.org/events
https://www.mediaanddemocracyproject.org/specialevents
https://politics-prose.com/events/calendar
https://linktr.ee/Risingorganizers

If you hear about a local rally or relevant national boycott, please let us know at grassrootsalexandria@gmail.com.

If you want to resist mass deportation

Organizations that are leading this effort in Alexandria are Tenants and Workers United and Legal Aid Justice Center:
https://www.tenantsandworkers.org/ 
https://www.justice4all.org/

Continue reading “What can we do?”

by Jonathan Krall

Recently, a friend observed that politicians seem to dig in their heels whenever activists like us pressure them to act. She asked, “does pressuring these people actually work?” I’ve spent plenty of time pressuring politicians. At my worst, I not only hit my head against a brick wall, I also seem to be helping them build the wall (as I persist, they become better at resisting). At my best, I’m delivering a cogent message while giving one of my politician friends an opportunity to do something positive. Be caring. Be heroic. Share a vision. I now refer to this win-win engagement as “positive pressure.”

Do something different

Sometimes, we take our case to a politician and seemingly fail to be heard. Afterwards, we ask ourselves what to do next. The answer is always the same: “something different.” If talking didn’t seem to work, we try a petition. If our petition is ignored, we seek publicity. If they don’t respond to me, I introduce them to a neighbor. It is one thing to think up yet another engagement strategy. It is quite another entirely to be sure that the  strategy du jour is contributing to a positive future instead of simply turning politicians into enemies.

If we directly attack, they will want to resist. This is human nature. If we insult them, especially if the insult is not accurate, refusing us becomes an act of justice, even heroism. For this reason, positive engagement and indirect pressure are likely to work better.

If we truly expect a decision-maker to act on our request, our first option is positive, win-win engagement. This is especially true when delivering a difficult or discomfiting request for action. On its surface, this “win-win” approach seems to contradict Frederick Douglass’s observation that “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Frederick Douglass was correct. However, because a demand is simply a request backed up with power and because any demonstration of power contains an implied threat, decision-makers tend to react by heroically (in their mind) digging in their heels. The challenge, therefore, is to make effective demands in ways that minimize the tendency of decision-makers to tell themselves heroic stories of resistance.

Continue reading “Positive pressure for politicians”

by Jonathan Krall

When writing on this website, we have adopted the convention, similar to that of the Washington Post, of capitalizing Black and White whenever we refer to these significant cultural groups. I am occasionally asked why we do this. Today, the idea of capitalizing Black is not as controversial as when W. E. B. Du Bois advocated for Negro instead of negro in the 1920s. In a nation where anti-Black racism is visible daily, the capital B is an elevation. Because Whiteness needs no further elevating, many hesitate to apply the capital W. In his excellent book, How We Win The Civil War, author Steve Phillips says “I am no longer capitalizing ‘white’ because white nationalism has become so powerful…” However, in the Atlantic, Kwame Anthony Appiah quotes two (Black) staffers from the Center for the Study of Social Policy: “To not name ‘White’ as a race … frames Whiteness as both neutral and the standard.” Here, in Virginia, where “white” became a term of law as early as 1705, we can move beyond the “white” default. We can embrace multiculturalism. We can envision a world where race is known only as the archaic social construct that produced those elements of White culture and Black culture that we continue to enjoy.

Embracing knowledge

In November, 2019, I attended an Undoing Racism workshop hosted by OAR and conducted by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. I was taught that it is racist to assume that White is a neutral default, such as in a story where only non-White characters are described in racial terms. Arguing for the capital W and against the idea that white is somehow a neutral default, Appiah states that, “Perhaps a stronger argument would be that white people don’t deserve a lowercase w and shouldn’t be allowed to claim it.”

Continue reading “Multiculturalism in Black and White”

by Jonathan Krall and Mo Seifeldein

Today, in 2024, the decades-long war between Israel and Palestine is a national issue. The post-October-7 “plausible genocide” in Gaza has broken the relative silence surrounding US complicity in this lopsided conflict between a national military and an occupied people. As with Vietnam in 1968 and Apartheid in 1986, students are acting. Students in Virginia universities and activists in Virginia city halls and county boardrooms are doing their best to make Palestine a Virginia issue. Are they correct? We say yes because we uniquely use our Virginia tax dollars to connect Israeli and Virginia tech firms, because Northern Virginia is host to so much of that military technology, and because (plausible) genocide touches so many Alexandria families.

(Plausible) Genocide impacts Alexandria

Let’s begin with one of the most fundamental questions raised by Gaza: how should we respond to a horrific event that is either “a war” or “a genocide”, depending on who you ask?  We note that the International Court of Justice calls the events in Gaza a “plausible genocide,” only because their litigation is ongoing. Weirdly, because genocide is so serious, some institutions and some individuals hesitate to recognize their reality.  Because modern genocides rarely match the stunning planning, mechanization, and scale of the Holocaust, some believe the oft-repeated phrase “never again” does not apply. They lie to themselves and to us.

Our point is not that these are genocides (even though they are; the legal definition is included below). Our point is that the mental gymnastics that seemingly allow our political leaders to tune out the humanitarian crisis in Gaza are letting them ignore other, equally significant humanitarian crises. With the Holocaust as a yardstick, every modern genocide is, seemingly, just another war. These “just another wars” impact Alexandria communities. They have been too-long ignored.

Here in Alexandria, where many speak the Amharic language of Ethiopia or the Arabic language of the Middle East and North Africa, many families were and are touched by genocides in Tigray, Darfur, and Gaza. The politically-convenient blind spots that enable politicians to ignore genocide are making some of these Alexandria families feel ignored and marginalized. We can do better.

Virginia is uniquely entangled with Israel

In Virginia, politics and the military uniquely intersect. The taxpayer-funded Virginia Israel Advisory Board (VIAB) partners Virginia and Israeli businesses to obtain American grant dollars. To our knowledge, only one other state funds a similar entity. Unlike other advisory boards, such as the Virginia LGBTQ+ Advisory Board, VIAB will not advise the Governor to support human rights and will receive taxpayer funding ($244,000 in FY 2024). Other such Virginia boards are unfunded. Citizens in Virginia are questioning this relationship and demanding that it be ended.

Continue reading “What does Palestine have to do with Virginia?”

by Jonathan Krall

On March 12, 2024, after nearly two years of steady effort by a coalition of Alexandrians, the Alexandria City Council passed a resolution in support of Medicare For All, adding to the national map of Medicare For All support. The coalition consisted of Grassroots Alexandria, the Northern Virginia Branch of the Democratic Socialists of America, Our Revolution Northern Virginia, and Tenants and Workers United. This is how we did it.

We were doing so well. We had the votes lined up. Then…

This is part 4 of a 4-part story. Part 1.  Part 2. Part 3.

The process, part 4: we become City Council whisperers

We met with one member in July, emailed back and forth through the summer and fall, and received a draft resolution from him in November. Then nothing.

Continue reading “How We Succeed, part 4: coalition politics”