{"id":39730,"date":"2025-06-18T12:45:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T12:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=39730"},"modified":"2025-06-19T04:15:48","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T04:15:48","slug":"smartphones-are-once-again-setting-the-agenda-for-justice-as-the-latino-community-documents-ice-actions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/smartphones-are-once-again-setting-the-agenda-for-justice-as-the-latino-community-documents-ice-actions\/","title":{"rendered":"Smartphones are once again setting the agenda for justice as the Latino community documents ICE actions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Allissa V. Richardson<\/a>, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been five years since May 25, 2020, when George Floyd gasped for air beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer<\/a> at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue. Five years since 17-year-old Darnella Frazier stood outside Cup Foods, raised her phone and bore witness<\/a> to nine minutes and 29 seconds that would galvanize a global movement against racial injustice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frazier\u2019s video didn\u2019t just show what happened. It insisted the world stop and see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, that legacy continues in the hands of a different community, facing different threats but wielding the same tools. Across the United States, Latino organizers are raising their phones, not to go viral but to go on record. They livestream Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, film family separations and document protests outside detention centers. Their footage is not merely content. It is evidence, warning \u2013 and resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here in Los Angeles where I teach journalism<\/a>, for example, several images have seared themselves into public memory. One viral video shows a shackled father<\/a> stepping into a white, unmarked van as his daughter sobs behind the camera, pleading with him not to sign any official documents. He turns, gestures for her to calm down, and blows her a kiss. In another video, filmed across town, Los Angeles Police Department officers on horseback<\/a> charge into crowds of peaceful protesters, swinging wooden batons with chilling precision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Spokane, Washington, residents form a spontaneous human chain<\/a> around their neighbors mid-raid, their bodies and cameras erecting a barricade of defiance. In San Diego, a video shows white allies yelling \u201cShame<\/a>!\u201d as they chase a car full of National Guard troops from their neighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The impact of smartphone witnessing has been immediate and unmistakable \u2013 visceral at street level<\/a>, seismic in statehouses<\/a>. On the ground, the videos helped inspire a \u201cNo Kings\u201d movement<\/a>, which organized protests in all 50 states on June 14, 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lawmakers are intensifying their focus<\/a> on immigration policy as well. As the Trump administration escalates enforcement, Democratic-led states are expanding laws that limit cooperation<\/a> with federal agents. On June 12, the House Oversight Committee questioned Democratic governors about these measures, with Republican lawmakers citing public safety concerns. The hearing underscored deep divisions between federal and state approaches to immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The legacy of Black witnessing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s unfolding now is not new \u2013 it is newly visible. As my research shows, Latino organizers are drawing from a playbook that was sharpened in 2020 and rooted in a much older lineage of Black media survival strategies that were forged under extreme oppression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my 2020 book \u201cBearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest Journalism<\/a>,\u201d I document how Black Americans have used media \u2013 slave narratives, pamphlets, newspapers, radio and now smartphones \u2013 to fight for justice. From Frederick Douglass to Ida B. Wells to Darnella Frazier, Black witnesses have long used journalism as a tool for survival and transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latino mobile journalists are building on that blueprint in 2025, filming state power in moments of overreach, archiving injustice in real time, and expanding the impact of this radical tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their work also echoes the spatial tactics of Black resistance. Just as enslaved Black people once mapped escape routes during slavery and Jim Crow, Latino communities today are engaging in digital cartography to chart ICE-free zones, mutual aid hubs and sanctuary spaces. The People Over Papers map<\/a> channels the logic of the Black maroons<\/a> \u2013 communities of self-liberated Africans who escaped plantations to track patrols, share intelligence and build networks of survival. Now, the hideouts are digital. The maps are crowdsourced. The danger remains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Likewise, the Stop ICE Raids Alerts Network<\/a> revives a civil rights-era tactic. In the 1960s, organizers used wide area telephone service lines<\/a> and radio to circulate safety updates. Black DJs cloaked dispatches in traffic and weather reports \u2013 \u201ccongestion on the south side\u201d signaled police blockades; \u201cstorm warnings\u201d meant violence ahead. Today, the medium is WhatsApp. The signal is encrypted. But the message \u2013 protect each other \u2013 has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Layered across both systems is the DNA of the \u201cNegro Motorist Green Book<\/a>,\u201d the guide that once helped Black travelers navigate Jim Crow America by identifying safe towns, gas stations and lodging. People Over Papers and Stop ICE Raids are digital descendants of that legacy. Where the Green Book used printed pages, today\u2019s tools use digital pins. But the mission remains: survival through shared knowledge, protection through mapped resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
The People Over Papers map is a crowdsourced collection of reports of ICE activity across the U.S. Screenshot by The Conversation U.S.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Dangerous necessity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Five years after George Floyd\u2019s death, the power of visual evidence remains undeniable. Black witnessing laid the groundwork. In 2025, that tradition continues through the lens of Latino mobile journalists, who draw clear parallels between their own community\u2019s experiences and those of Black Americans. Their footage exposes powerful echoes: ICE raids and overpolicing, border cages and city jails, a door kicked in at dawn and a knee on a neck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Black Americans before them, Latino communities are using smartphones to protect, to document and to respond. In cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and El Paso, whispers of \u201cICE is in the neighborhood\u201d now flash across Telegram, WhatsApp and Instagram. For undocumented families, pressing record can mean risking retaliation or arrest. But many keep filming \u2013 because what goes unrecorded can be erased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What they capture are not isolated incidents. They are part of a broader, shared struggle against state violence. And as long as the cameras keep rolling, the stories keep surfacing \u2013 illuminated by the glow of smartphone screens that refuse to look away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allissa V. Richardson<\/a>, Associate Professor of Journalism, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Allissa V. Richardson, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism It has been five years since May 25, 2020, when George Floyd gasped for air beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue. Five years since 17-year-old Darnella Frazier stood outside Cup Foods, raised her phone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":39731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[55,291,46,295,10,296,36,28,4,38,8],"tags":[16542,16307,10653,2677,885,891,886,860,487,255,1586,16543],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39730"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39732,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39730\/revisions\/39732"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}