As Baptist pastor Michael Woolf marched on All Saints’ Day in an anti-ICE protest in the Chicago area, he suddenly felt a sting in his leg as a pepper ball round struck him. Although intended for long distance, videos show an Illinois State Police officer standing less than 10 feet away fired at Woolf and other peaceful protesters slowly walking down the street on Nov. 1.
“I’m there in my clerical collar. I’m asking them to be on the right side of history. I’m showing up in public witness. And they really don’t care,” Woolf told me, noting his leg was still swollen two days later as we talked. “I preached at them a little bit. I wanted to ask them to seriously consider if Jesus came back right now, would he be excited about what he saw?”
The senior minister at Lake Street Church of Evanston, Woolf is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA and the Alliance of Baptists. He also serves as one of the associate regional ministers for the American Baptist Churches of Metro Chicago. He emphasized the importance of clergy showing up for the protests, marches, and vigils at the Broadview ICE facility, although he acknowledged it no longer seems to be as much of a deterrent to violence from officers as it used to be.
As they marched down the street, Woolf was one of several people right behind a large banner declaring, “Free Our Neighbors.” The sign was later violently taken by police officers who ripped it away while beating people with sticks. Many in the crowd wore inflatable costumes or other outfits that have become symbols of resistance to ICE. And after police blocked the path, Woolf joined the crowd in dancing. While police officers shot pepper balls, some in the crowd responded by placing flowers on the ground in front of the police.
“It’s really important that when folks get kidnapped in that way, that they know we don’t forget them, that we continue to go where they’re held,” Woolf said as he noted the group on Saturday got close enough for people being detained to hear the protest.
“I’ve been down there before. They’re generally pretty violent,” he added. “The only demand that we have is to close that Broadview ICE processing center, that base from which all these sorts of evil things in Chicagoland are happening with teargassing neighbors, kidnapping them, just basically causing car crashes, shootouts. They’re basically inflicting terror in our communities. For me, that’s like the heart of where the evil is generated. That’s where it’s emanating out from. So it’s really important to be there.”
Woolf said it was particularly necessary on Saturday to show up because of ICE actions in Evanston — the Chicago community where his church is — on Halloween. Federal agents pepper-sprayed people and arrested three U.S. citizens, leading the city’s mayor to announce an investigation after agents caused a car accident and were caught on video assaulting someone. So the next day before the march, Catholic clergy led a Mass outside the Broadview facility and sought to also serve communion inside but were denied access. The gathering that day recognized both All Saints’ Day and Día de Los Muertos (“Day of the Dead”) as people remembered those who have gone before — including Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, a local man who was shot and killed by immigration agents in September after he dropped his children off before heading to work.
“I pastor a church where people have been pretty committed to fighting fascism over a long period of time,” Woolf reflected afterward. “I like to imagine that those honored dead, that cloud of witnesses that we have, they’re never really gone. They’re always sort of informing what we do. And they’re with us when we take those stands. “
In addition to imagining those who’ve gone before watching, he also considers what future generations will think of how he and the church stand up today.
“Like so much of what we do in the present time, we don’t have the benefit of history. We don’t know how people will see it. I’m very confident over the next 20 or 30 years, people will come to see what’s happening at that facility. … It’s pure torture. What’s happening there, it’s unconscionable. It’s in our backyard,” he said. “They will be broadly condemned in the future. I think about like the people who have gone before who struggled for stuff like civil rights — deeply unpopular during its time, called ‘agitators.’ The people who tried to stop the Vietnam War and protested and were beaten up for that. I think about all these sorts of things that it’s unclear in the moment how people should think about it, but later on we come to a historical understanding of what was going on there. And I think that’s unfolding right before us.”
A Pattern of Violence
Saturday’s pepper-balling of Woolf and others is not an isolated incident. He was previously assaulted outside the Broadview facility on Oct. 3 by an “overzealous” ICE agent who “grabbed my neck” and “he grabbed my nipple and twisted as hard as he could.” Woolf added, “I had bruises all over my chest from that incident.”
Several other clergy have been shot by pepper balls, teargassed, and violently arrested during peaceful protests outside the Broadview and other ICE facilities. The incidents include:
Rev. David Black, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) minister, was shot in the head with a pepper ball while praying outside the Broadview facility on Sept. 19.
Rev. Hannah Kardon, a United Methodist pastor, was violently arrested during a vigil outside the Broadview facility on Oct. 17. She had previously been stung with pepper bullets and teargas.
Rev. Jorge Bautista, a United Church of Christ minister, was shot in the face with a pepper round outside an Oakland, California, facility on Oct. 23.
After being shot in September, Black joined a lawsuit challenging such violent tactics against protesters. Three other ministers later joined the suit: a Catholic priest who has been praying at the facility for 19 years without incident until September, a Unitarian Universalist minister who was teargassed and shot with pepper balls and rubber bullets, and a United Methodist pastor who was shot at while preaching outside the facility. The judge issued a preliminary ruling barring the use of “riot control weapons” on clergy, journalists, and other peaceful protesters when there is not “an immediate and serious threat of physical harm.”
But the attacks continued, like Saturday’s incident when Woolf was shot. During a livestream of the march, Black at one point assists Woolf, who was washing his eyes out after being stung by a chemical weapon. At another point, Black is recorded reading the Beatitudes, preaching to the police officers, and leading the crowd in saying the Lord’s Prayer and singing “Amazing Grace.” Woolf can also be heard preaching at one point.
When Speaker Mike Johnson, who often cites the Bible to justify his politics, was asked recently about the shooting of Black and other clergy, he dismissed concerns that religious liberty rights were being violated. Johnson also falsely suggested the clergy were those who “get in the face of an ICE officer and assault them.”
While ICE is under an injunction in the Chicago area from using pepper balls and other such force against clergy, journalists, and protesters, the Illinois State Police officers are not bound by that. And that’s who shot Woolf and others on Saturday. Saying he’s found them to be “rougher,” Woolf contrasted such behavior with Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s rhetoric criticizing ICE actions and claiming the state won’t assist ICE.
“These people who shot me with the pepper ball would tell me they are protecting me. Now, wrap your head around that. They said that they’re protecting me from ICE. So they’re going to do the brutalizing, not ICE. How does that help?” Woolf said. “We are allowed to peaceably assemble for a redress of grievances. That’s what the Constitution says, and that’s what we’re doing. We’re demanding a redress of grievances.”
Beyond seeing his constitutional rights violated, Woolf also worries about people misusing Christianity to justify the actions of ICE and state police. The Department of Homeland Security has even created propaganda videos featuring Bible verses superimposed on top of images of militarized agents hunting immigrants. And Woolf said he’s “really mad” to learn ICE is trying to recruit “the young men in my youth group” with ads promising large signing bonuses of $50,000 or more to join. In response, Woolf mentioned an exchange he had on Oct. 3 with the ICE officer who assaulted him.
“After he got through sort of messing me up, he told me Jesus said to follow the law,” Woolf recalled. “I think that’s a really interesting statement of Christology. And I think that’s really dangerous because it’s clearly not what Jesus said. But the reduction of Jesus as someone who would be absolutely okay and would endorse this kind of dehumanizing sort of stuff, someone who would be completely fine with a boot stepping on the throat of people forever and ever, and would only say weak stuff like ‘Hey, I love everybody. God loves everybody. It’s all good.’ It’s pure blasphemy.”
“We just have to speak out against that in the strongest terms. And the best way to do that is to actually articulate what Jesus was for, that he was crucified by the state, that he stood with the people,” Woolf added. “He denounced dehumanization wherever he found it in his context. He was unafraid of speaking truth to power. And he certainly would not be for any of these people kidnapping folks and putting them in a concentration camp, which is basically what happens there at Broadview.”
As a public witness,
Brian Kaylor