Can It Happen Here?
By Rod Granger
In October 1936, a time fraught with political and societal apprehension, the Federal Theatre Project presented “It Can’t Happen Here,” a play based on Sinclair Lewis’s novel about a fascist government taking over the United States. The production premiered simultaneously in 21 theaters across 18 cities, including New York City, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Now, in an alarming example of life imitating art, echoes of the story are reverberating across the country in real time.
As ICE activity continues to escalate in immigrant communities across the country, New Yorkers need to consider what lessons we can learn from the surge of encroachment taking place in other so-called “Democrat” cities. In other words, can it happen here?
“We have to assume that it can,” says Bipasha Ray, a Riverside board member and strategy consultant working with social impact, human rights, and justice clients in the United States and globally. “It’s almost a surprise that it hasn’t yet.” While Gov. Hochul recently said President Trump told her he had no plans for an ICE surge into New York unless she asked, we’ve learned the hard way that an assurance made is not an assurance kept. In that light, sustained connections and preparedness, which have taken many forms among a variety of constituencies in such cities as Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Chicago, are essential.
For example, a multitude of people are reluctant to leave their homes across virtually all ICE surge activities throughout the U.S. Ray points to the implementation of remote tactics adopted during COVID-19 as possibilities to help alleviate these hardships, including “remote learning, delivery of groceries, delivery of medications, and telehealth. Networks are flourishing again.”
A guiding theme, per advice provided by Minnesota’s Adult Education Providers during the state’s Operation Metro Surge, is to “advocate upward early.” Extending that guidance to a broader New York coalition, this means individuals as well as their group networks literally communicating to people and organizations in positions of power and influence to help coordinate possible strategies and solutions. Remain alert, know your rights, evaluate risks, help build and sustain mutual aid systems; these and other forms of readiness are now and will become increasingly important.
Websites with practical information and resources include:
And what ties all of this together? We live in a city whose government is committed to ensuring that our city remains a sanctuary for all, so that what we fear most can’t happen here. Speaking earlier this month at an interfaith breakfast, Mayor Mamdani shone a spotlight on our core strengths and beliefs. “Each of us has been a stranger at one point in our lives. As ICE fosters a culture of suspicion and fear…let us offer a new path, one of defiance through compassion.”