Dads, grads, and boot-licking creeps

How to talk to ICE

Greetings from Norwalk!

Yesterday I drove up to LA to catch the Dodgers game with my sister-in-law and her husband, who have season tickets and invited me to the game while their daughter is taking her first trip abroad. That’s two Dodgers games in two weeks—one in San Diego and one in LA—and they’re 2-0 in both of those games.

Sports will always let you down, but right now I’m more disappointed in the team for what they aren’t doing: speaking out against ICE in LA.

But ICE isn’t just an LA problem. Trump is targeting sanctuary cities and if his bullshit budget passes an obscene amount of taxpayer money will be going directly to ICE—more than all the other federal law enforcement agencies combined.

It’s just atrocity after atrocity. Although I’m convinced that every last bit of it is to distract us from the enormous corruption at the heart of Trump’s regime, the trauma is overwhelming. On Saturday my sister-in-law witnessed three ICE vans pull out of a parking lot at high speed after conducting a raid in Artesia and she couldn’t stop thinking about the families left behind wondering what happened to the loved ones who’d been disappeared. She said she hadn’t felt so sad since her father passed away.

Last weekend I was at my daughter’s graduation ceremony from UC Davis, which was held at the arena where the Sacramento Kings play. I loved listening to the speeches. Being a working writer and a recovering alcoholic, I have a tendency to make words of wisdom, inspiration, or advice all about me, but when I saw my daughter walk across the stage, I felt all the feelings.

I didn’t attend any of the No Kings protests last weekend but it was gratifying to see so many of my friends in San Diego and around the country hit the streets. In that spirit, here’s a helpful guide for things you can say to ICE agents when they come to your neighborhood.

“How does Stephen Miller’s taint taste, you boot-licking creep?”

Too harsh? If name-calling isn’t your thing, he’s a more existential take:

“I hope you’re making lots of money because you’re gonna need a ton of therapy to stop you from eating a bullet once you sit with all the trauma you’ve caused.”

Too dark? Too long? This gets to the heart of the matter a little bit quicker:

“I’m sorry your father didn’t love you.”

If you get a wise-ass ICE agent who cracks back at you with, “My dad is dead,” hit them with this:

“Did you kill him?”

If they insist he’s still alive, remind them of your first point, which is:

“He still doesn’t love you.”

This next one comes from John Leary (Hi John!) and it gets to the fear these cowards carry in their tiny little hearts.

“I hope you get the day you deserve.”

A lot of these goons think they’re in Call of Duty on some super-important mission whose scope has been kept a secret from the public. Every one of these chuds craves the validation that’s missing from their lives. We must deny them this:

“No one will thank you for your service.”

I think one of the things that makes these raids by ICE agents so un-American isn’t just the lack of due process, but how they conceal their identities. Consciously or unconsciously they know what they’re doing is wrong and are deeply afraid of the consequences of accountability. This speaks to that:

“Your offspring will be so ashamed of you.”

I’m heading to Las Vegas tomorrow to join Keith Morris at the Punk Rock Museum this weekend. He’ll be hosting tours, I’ll be selling books, and on Saturday we’re going to have a conversation and book singing in the bar from 7pm to 8pm. (The poster below says 9pm but there’s a wedding we have to work around.) It’s free and open to the public. Tell your friends and if you’re in Las Vegas come say hello!

Thanks for reading! I promise I’ll have plenty of punk rock content for you next week after spending several the weekend with Uncle Keith. If you liked this newsletter you might also like my latest novel about healthcare vigilantes Make It Stop, or the paperback edition of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records, or my book with Bad Religion, or my book with Keith Morris. I have more books and zines for sale here. And if you’ve read all of those, consider checking out my latest collaboration The Witch’s Door and the anthology Eight Very Bad Nights.

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