We Don't Always Do What We're Told

(00:01)
George W. Bush, the former president of the United States, waged a war on terror against the attackers of 9-11. But it ended up being a war on Muslims, a war that was used to advance anti-Muslim hatred and rhetoric. It also led to the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act,

and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which expanded national security to include immigration enforcement and created a fugitive as ICE.

and determined that anyone who is in the United States who is removable is a fugitive and could be captured, arrested, detained, deported.

And the more fugitives they catch or caught, the more money they got to catch more fugitives.

And though it isn't their policy and it's not necessarily constitutional to do so, they were only supposed to be removing criminals, but they ended up removing non-criminals too.

They don't stop to consider if the person is a criminal. don't stop to consider if the person is removable. don't stop to consider if the person is a U.S. citizen. In fact, they just take people and sort it out later. Or you find someone that ice has discarded on the side of the road in the freezing cold in

They don't stop to consider whether the person they are pursuing should, in fact, be pursued.

And it's not hard to find supporters of this behavior, especially when leadership tells the American people that if we remove aliens, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, any kind of immigrants, if we stop immigration, if we close the border, if we don't let anybody in, then everything will be cheaper. You'll have cheaper eggs, you'll have cheaper gas, you'll have cheaper clothes and cheaper food and cheaper this and cheaper that, cheaper houses.

And even though none of that is true, people believe it. They believe that the reason why crime is so high is because of immigrants. They believe that immigrants are the reason why there's fraud in government.

They believe that the reason why there's so much fraud in government and spending is because of immigrants. Because this is what they're told.

And when you're told something, well, if you're told that enough, it becomes a belief.

This is what they're told.

We're operating within a country that feeds a prison industrial complex that works within a punitive justice system that rewards the capturing of human beings, that rewards the imprisonment of human beings. And in 2026, we are finding the courage to fight that system,

I've got some explaining to do. Let's get into it.

Hey everybody, everybody, hey everybody. yeah, I'm a singer too. No, I'm kidding. I totally, no, no, not at all. Not at all. Hey everyone, welcome back for another episode of Ayana Explains It All, the podcast bridging the gap between current events and human behavior. It is the first episode of season five in the year 2026. Welcome. Ladies and gentlemen.

Thems and theys Welcome, welcome, welcome. I can't believe this is my fifth year of doing this. Why? Why? I don't think I've had a hobby last this long. You know, the ADHD neurodivergent community. We love a hobby, honey. We love a hobby. I've got a few of them ongoing right now.

Hey, I'm coming to you from Northeast Ohio

On January 20th, 2026, it is a Monday night because that's how I roll, right? I do this whenever, however, whenever the mood strikes me. But basically whenever I finish writing the script and it takes me forever nowadays, but here I am. Here I am. Here is the podcast, Ayana Explains It All. Ayana Explains It All is available to you, to the people on multiple streaming platforms, including the flagship of Spotify, Apple Podcasts,

Amazon Music, Good Pods, iHeartRadio, a host of others, so many, I can't even remember the names, Pandora, Sounds Familiar. If you go to the show's website, www.ayanaexplainsitall.com, that is www.ayanaexplainsitall.com, you will find all the information on the show, including every single episode. Every episode is available.

at the show's website. You can play it through the show's website or you can find the podcast on your favorite music player. Like I said, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, wherever. We are there. Everything is there.

I have a blog that accompanies some of the episodes. have show notes, transcripts. There's also information on how to collaborate with me if you want to collaborate. If you want to share with me, darling, share with me. If you want to come on the show, be a guest on the show, be a host, guest host. I've had guests on my show, although not as frequently as I would like. So sign up. You can also support the podcast.

There are ways to support the podcast. can find out through the website again, www.ayanaexplainsitall.com I'm not gonna say it again. I'm kidding. I will say it again. www.ayanaexplainsitall.com. Let's get started. There's something really crazy going on in the United States right now. The last episode of season four.

the season finale, I talked about 2025 being the year of courage. And boy, did some of you take that seriously. You thought, you know what? Yeah. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. And I'm seeing it. I'm seeing it in the streets of ⁓ Minnesota, Minneapolis specifically. I'm seeing it all over the country, Columbus, Ohio and Portland.

in California, in Philadelphia, I'm seeing people ⁓ strike back against ICE all over the country. Now, as an attorney, will advise you, be a hero, yes. Don't be a dummy. Be a hero. Don't be a dummy.

Why?

Time has come for us to stop complying.

Not complaining, not posting, not voting and hoping for the best, but plain old noncompliance. Resistance is what I mean. Resistance.

We are at that point right now.

When you tell people to fight back, what does that actually mean? And who gets to decide? Because history shows us two things at the same time.

Obedience to injustice causes real harm. Uncontrolled retaliation destroys legitimacy just as fast.

So today we're not talking about rage, we're talking about thresholds. When resistance becomes necessary, when restraint still matters, And what we need to do to ensure that we stay on the right track in our resistance.

Now let me start with some uncomfortable truths.

A lot of harm in this country is perfectly legal,

And it's not accidental, it's not a loophole, it's not a mistake, it's legal. And yet most people can feel it in their bones when something is wrong, even if the law says it's fine. Even if prosecutors decline to investigate, decline to indict.

Most people can feel it in their bones when something is wrong.

And even when these so-called legal and legitimate systems exist.

There comes a time when we must resist and resistance is okay.

History tells us that laws are not neutral truths handed down from the sky. They are written by people with power under specific incentives at specific moments in history. And in the United States, many foundational laws were written by landowners, by slaveholders, by white men who explicitly distrusted mass democracy.

That doesn't mean that every law is bad. I'm a lawyer. If I thought that I wouldn't be a lawyer. It does mean that legality, legality is a weak moral standard. It is a weak excuse for why people act the way that they act. It is a weak justification for why ICE agents are murdering innocent civilians. Why ICE agents are leaving people.

stranded on the side of the road because they determined that this person could not be detained mid-ride, mid-ride to the detention center. It's not a justification for why they are conducting warrantless searches. It's not a justification for why they are putting people in detention centers with no running water, no working toilets, inadequate food.

no medication for their chronic illnesses.

Yet we're constantly told, if it's legal, what's the problem? The government allows it. What's the big deal? That question alone tells you how low the bar has fallen when it comes to this particular topic.

We are legitimizing something. We're justifying it and legitimizing it.

But does this reflect the consent of the governed? Does this serve the public interest?

Does this process deserve obedience, not just compliance?

These legal things can be true and still lose legitimacy. A policy can be constitutional and still be unjust. An institution can function exactly as designed and still be corrupt.

political theorists tend to agree on this core point. Authority that relies only on force or procedure eventually collapses.

but it requires the trust of the people.

and trust is earned.

Right now, the United States is losing the trust of its people.

and change is needed.

It's required in this moment to bring us out of this crisis.

In her book, freedom is a constant struggle.

Angela Davis responded to a question about whether one person can change an entire system. She said, every change that has happened has come as a result of mass movements.

from the era of slavery, the Civil War.

and the involvement of black people in the Civil War, which really determined the outcome. Many people are under the impression that it was Abraham Lincoln who played a major role, and he did, as a matter of fact, help to accelerate the movement toward abolition, but it was the decision on the part of the slaves to emancipate themselves and to join the Union Army, both men and women, that was primarily responsible for the victory over slavery.

It was the slaves themselves and of course the abolitionist movement that led to the dismantling of slavery. When one looks at the civil rights era, it was those mass movements anchored by women incidentally that pushed the government to bring about change. I don't see why things would be so different today. Angela Davis in the book Freedom is a Constant Struggle.

So does that mean we're just supposed to, I don't know, break the law? I mean, I'm a lawyer. I would not advise you to do that. No, absolutely not. And that question, in fact, makes people nervous. And it should.

But here's the real issue. Every major expansion of rights in this country involved people breaking laws that were considered legitimate at the time. Not recklessly, not randomly, but deliberately through resistance.

So I'm asking, when is it okay to resist?

When resistance is often framed as the opposite of order, as we're seeing in today's news, we feel hesitant to resist. People are scared to be disobedient. People are scared to push back. People are scared to not comply with police, with law enforcement, with ICE. People are afraid and they're walking around with their, quote, papers, their passports.

their birth certificates. People are scared of not complying.

Resistance doesn't start because people are angry or scared. It starts because institutions stop responding to calls for protection of civil liberties.

And historically, resistance becomes legitimate when laws no longer protect basic rights, or when courts refuse meaningful remedies, or elections fail to correct abuses, or participation is punished rather than respected.

This is not about disagreement. You're not disagreeing. It's about systemic refusal of the institutions to respond to your calls for help.

and equality.

and protection.

Every major resistance movement from abolition to labor to civil rights came after years or decades of legal efforts failing.

They did not see resistance as a shortcut, however.

They went about the normal routes to achieve change, but resistance was necessary because the normal routes were blocked.

And again, Angela Davis in her book, Freedom is a Constant Struggle, cites the protests of Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 after the police killing of Michael Brown

She said to protesters in Ferguson, you made Ferguson a worldwide symbol of resistance. At a time when we are urged to settle for fast solutions, easy answers, formulaic resolutions, Ferguson protesters said no. You were determined to continue to make issues of violence against black communities visible. You refused to believe that there were any simplistic answers and you demonstrated that you would not allow these

you would not allow this issue to be buried in the graveyard that has not only claimed black lives, but also so many struggles to defend those lives.

Again, resistance doesn't begin because, simply because people are angry. Yes, anger may be present. How could it not be? But anger is not what turns a community towards resistance. Resistance begins when institutions stop responding, when the systems that are supposed to protect people instead expose them to harm, when the channels that are supposed to offer remedies instead offer delay, dismissal, or punishment.

That is the threshold Minnesota communities crossed in their protest against ICE.

And again, historically, resistance becomes legitimate when the basic architecture of accountability breaks down, when laws no longer protect basic rights, leaving, for instance, immigrant families vulnerable to detention, separation, and surveillance, when courts refuse meaningful remedies, offering procedural delays instead of protection.

When elections fail to correct abuses, cycling through leadership without altering the lived reality of targeted communities. And when participation is punished rather than respected as people who speak out face retaliation from the government, intimidation or increased scrutiny. Right now some journalists are facing this because they reported on the protests.

But this is not about disagreement. Disagreement is part of democratic life. What's happening in Minnesota and across the country is something deeper. This is systemic refusal. A refusal by institutions to hear, to correct, to protect, to respond. A refusal that leaves communities with only one remaining avenue where their voice still carries weight.

Collective disruption.

And here's where we have to be precise.

Fight back does not mean violence. And historically, movements that equated the two often lost public legitimacy, even when their grievances were real. Power depends on consent and cooperation. So in order to weaken it, you must withdraw cooperation. And to that end, resistance takes many forms. Refusal.

withdrawal of labor or cooperation, mass noncompliance, economic pressure, parallel institutions, sustained disruption of unjust systems.

This is about direction, not intensity of the fight. In order to legitimize the resistance, you need direction.

Pressure the right groups. Direct your fight at the right groups. Focus on who truly needs to benefit from the fight. If resistance punches down, sideways, or randomly, it stops being resistance and becomes destruction. Violent or nonviolent resistance are distinguishable in their methods, but their goal is the same.

to weaken the powerful force that is punching down on a group of people.

you have to choose your resistance carefully. Resistance is directional. It's not just any act of defiance or disruption. It's a strategic push upward against a force that is actively causing harm. When resistance loses that orientation,

or when it becomes indiscriminate, it stops being resistance and becomes something else entirely. Destruction, despair, or domination in a new form.

Like I said, violent and nonviolent resistance, different tactics, but not purpose. They are rooted in the same fundamental goals, to interrupt harm, to redistribute power, or to weaken the structures or actors punching down on a community.

and the methods may shift based on context, capacity, or philosophy,

But the moral geometry stays the same. Resistance must flow upwards toward the source of oppression. It cannot be turned to harm the community it is meant to protect. And it cannot punch down on another community. We are seeing violent and nonviolent resistance across the United States. And yes, it is causing some of this resistance

to lose legitimacy in the eyes of the wider public.

but that loss of legitimacy can be turned around. It can be.

When people conflate resistance with any form of anger, chaos, or retaliation, they erase the discipline and intentionality that real movements require. They also create false equivalencies, treating oppressed people's pushback as equal to the violence of the systems harming them.

But again, this resistance against ICE is not random. It's not cruelty disguised as liberation. It is not a free for all.

It is a moral and strategic act aimed at a power system.

So in that case, it is legitimate and it is legal. Does it cross the line sometimes into unlawful?

The Department of Justice seems to think so. The President of the United States seems to think so. And they will tell anybody who will listen.

but from what I've seen.

These people have been acting within moral and strategic bounds. They're not the ones pulling the guns and shooting people in the face.

They're not the ones pulling people from their cars and gassing babies in the face with tear gas. They're not the ones ripping people from their homes in the Minnesota cold. They're not the ones leaving people on the side of the road in the Minnesota cold. They're not the ones.

barging their way into people's homes and businesses, snatching people from their beds.

Resistance becomes necessary when basic rights are being systemically denied. Not hypothetically, not rhetorically, but materially. For instance, voting rights, bodily autonomy, freedom of association, equal protection under the law, and now the right to protest, freedom of assembly, even immigrating.

is being threatened. When rights exist only on paper,

Well, that bond of legitimacy is already broken. then it isn't a question of whether resistance is the right answer. Resistance becomes legitimate. Resistance becomes necessary

when the legitimacy of the law is broken.

when the legitimacy of the law disappears. When rights exist only on paper, legitimacy is already broken.

If I tell you you have the right to vote, but I make it difficult for you to do so, legitimacy is broken. When I tell you you have bodily autonomy, but then I restrict your right to do with your body as you want, legitimacy is broken. When I tell you you have the right to protest, but then I tell you that you can't protest because it inconveniences me, because it looks bad.

because I disagree with it, then legitimacy is broken. Rights should not exist only on paper.

Resistance is necessary when peaceful legal avenues are actively suppressed. If we look at what's happening with the Department of Homeland Security...

due process rights being violated by the Department of Homeland Security. This is well documented. This is not me saying something. This is well documented by the ACLU, by La Raza, by ⁓ immigration lawyers, by non-immigration lawyers.

People are being denied their right to speak to an attorney. American citizens are being detained and held.

Warrantless searches are being conducted.

Courts are ordering deportations without hearings. And these aren't even the expedited removals. People are just being removed to another state, another country.

whistleblowers are being punished, elections are being threatened with suspension, and at this point, mean, compliance no longer equals stability. It equals consent to harm. Right now, if you're complying with this, you're consenting to harm.

And harm is ongoing. It's not speculative. Resistance is morally different when people are being harmed now, and they are. They're experiencing a loss of livelihood. They're witnessing or being victims of state-sanctioned violence and systematic exclusion. No more waiting for the right moment.

Waiting for the right moment often means asking victims to endure indefinitely the harm.

that they are trying to escape.

But the resistance must be aimed at the systems, not civilians. And this line matters. Because it is the power structure that is causing the harm.

People are simply obeying the power structure. They're simply obeying the people in power.

without that power structure, well, perhaps it would be a different world.

but legitimate resistance knows where to aim.

Legitimate resistance directs its force toward the structures that produce the harm, not the people who are already vulnerable to it. In Minnesota, protests against ICE make this distinction clear. The target is not the civilians. The target is the system, the laws, the institution, the economic incentives and decision makers that enable family separation, detention, and fear. It is not the American people.

It is not the people living in the neighborhoods where ICE finds itself. It is not the businesses, it is not the business owners whose lives are being disrupted by these raids. It is the system, the laws, the institutions, the economic incentives, the decision makers, those who make the decisions about family separations, detentions, and fear.

Legitimate resistance targets laws that criminalize presence instead of protecting dignity. Legitimate resistance targets institutions that enforce harm without accountability. Legitimate resistance targets economic structures that profit from detention and deportation. Legitimate resistance targets decision makers who choose cruelty over community. These ICE protests are a form of legitimate resistance.

levers of power, the engines of harm, the places where pressure creates change as where we will find legitimate resistance.

If civilians become the target, then the legitimacy collapses, no matter how righteous the cause claims to be.

The story shifts away from the injustice being resisted and toward the harm being caused. And this is what the government is trying to do. They're trying to shift the story.

They're trying to show that the resistance is illegitimate in order to collapse the movement.

by saying, look, these people are invading churches. Look, these people are disrupting traffic. Look, these people are the reason why Renee Goode is dead. Look, look, look, look, look.

Power uses that shift to justify repression, to delegitimize the movement, to turn public sympathy into suspicion. And I've seen this all over social media.

And perhaps the protesters in Minnesota understand this.

They are certainly more disciplined and restrained in their movement than I have seen in other movements.

They are refusing to replicate the very dynamics that they are fighting. Their resistance is aimed upward at ISIS policies, at the contracts that fund detention centers, at the elected officials who allow harm to continue. They are withholding cooperation from the machinery of enforcement, not from their neighbors.

That's what makes this so powerful. They are going after the power systems. And when a movement's aim stays fixed on the systems causing harm, impossible to dismiss. It becomes impossible to ignore. It becomes a force that clarifies rather than confuses, a force that exposes injustice instead of obscuring it.

In this case, the goal is protection and expansion of rights. Human rights, civil rights, whatever the case may be. It is not revenge. It is not humiliation. It is not dominance.

We are fighting for a world that includes more people than the world it's fighting against.

clearest sign of a legitimate resistance is this. The world it's fighting for includes more people than the world it's fighting against.

Resistance in this case is not a catch-all for any act of disruption.

It has direction. It has purpose. It is aimed directly at the source of harm.

It is a strategy, a moral stance, a collective decision to refuse domination. It is a force that clarifies rather than confuses. It is exposing the harm rather than obscuring it.

It is disruption in service of liberation, not destruction for its own sake. It is disruption in service of liberation.

And every government, every administration we've seen after a resistance movement has been successful praises the resistance in hindsight. But in real time, they condemn it.

And that hypocrisy is not by accident. It's a strategy. Power always frames resistance as too disruptive, too extreme, bad optics, and the wrong time. Power protects itself by criminalizing the very actions it will later romanticize. It punishes the people who disrupt the present, then sanctifies them once they can no longer disrupt the future.

This is how institutions maintain control over the narrative by deciding when resistance is dangerous and when it is safe. They try to delegitimize the movements. They infiltrate the movements in some cases.

They use their power to decide when resistance must be crushed and when it can be celebrated.

Order is often defended not because it is just, but because it is familiar. In real time, resistance is treated as a threat to order because it is one. It is. It's a threat to comfort, to hierarchy, to the illusion that those in charge are acting with legitimacy. Governments call it disorder.

extremism, chaos, disruption. They call resistors paid actors because that shifts attention away from the harm being resisted. They frame the resistors as the problem so they don't have to confront the problem itself. But once the dust settles, once the resistors are either jailed or dead or once their demands have been absorbed into the mainstream,

those same governments rewrite the story. They turn yesterday's dangerous radicals or paid actors or leftist liberals into some kind of symbol of courage, discipline, or patriotism.

They turn movements into myths. They turn struggles into folklore. They turn resistance into something ornamental, something that can be admired without being imitated, something that you put in a history book and go, look, this happened.

This is a tactic of power. By praising resistance only in retrospect, governments strip resistance movements of their teeth. They make it inspirational instead of instructional. They turn it into a museum exhibit instead of a manual.

But real resistance is never comfortable. It's not supposed to. It's never convenient. It's not supposed to be. It's never universally applauded in the moment. It's not supposed to be. There has to be someone against it. Otherwise, what are the resistors fighting for? It is disruptive by design. And the louder the condemnation in real time,

the clearer the signal that the resistance is aimed in the right direction. And these critiques rarely disappear when resistance becomes more polite. They disappear only when power is forced to concede.

And then there are those who are endlessly complying, who are pushing compliance, endlessly complying. The people who are told to wait forever and do, the people who believe that things will be better after the next election, after the next court case, or after the next crisis. The timeline keeps moving, but the suffering stays exactly where it is.

This is what we're facing in the United States. Delays are becoming a form of control.

And power structures actually prefer predictable dissent. They prefer people to believe that voting every few years will change things and then things will be better. They prefer people to think that writing letters and strongly worded emails will make a difference. They prefer people to engage in peaceful protests that inconvenience no one and therefore really don't change anything.

Resistance disrupts the story that the system is functioning and that is why they don't like it. That is why it's criminalized early and punished harshly.

This is one of the quietest, most effective strategies of power. Convincing people that if they are only patient, then the harm will pass. That patience is the only respectable response to harm. That waiting is maturity. That endurance is virtue.

That responsibility means absorbing pain indefinitely, while the system causing that pain remains untouched.

That message is simple and devastating. Your suffering is the cost of being a good citizen.

But endless waiting drains more than time. It drains energy, it drains hope and participation. It teaches people to shrink their expectations, to lower their demands, to accept harm as inevitable. It turns urgency into embarrassment. It turns righteous anger into something to be managed rather than mobilized. It convinces communities that the problem is not the injustice itself.

but your impatience with it. And the longer people wait, the easier it becomes for those in power to claim that change is complicated. Or that it's in progress. Or that it's not really feasible right now. Delay becomes their shield. It protects the status quo without ever having to defend it. It reframes inaction as prudence.

It reframes urgency as recklessness. It reframes harm as something unfortunate, but really unavoidable.

But resistance movements know the truth. Delay is not some neutral thing that will at the end of it carry success.

and glory.

Delay is a decision. Delay is a strategy. Delay is a way of exhausting people until they stop asking for what they deserve. And the moment people stop believing that change is possible, power wins without ever having to say no.

This drains energy, hope, and participation. It teaches people that suffering is the price of being responsible.

But let's be honest about our own society, America.

American history actually does not work without resistance. We are not here in this United States in 2026 about to celebrate 250 years of a nation without resistance.

The abolitionist movement involved breaking the law. You had to harbor enslaved people, which violated federal law. The Underground Railroad was illegal. Abolitionists were branded extremists. But without this resistance, without this movement, then slavery would have lasted longer. The labor rights movements. Yeah, think about it.

Strikes were against the law and people walked out anyway. Union leaders were jailed, beaten, killed.

But this led to drastic change anyway. The eight-hour workday, you can thank labor rights movements for the eight-hour workday. Yeah, the eight-hour workday came from illegal action. Illegal strikes

And think about the civil rights movement. That involved marching in the streets and on the sidewalks and on public lands and on private lands without permits. It involved sitting at legally segregated lunch counters.

and it involved crossing state lines to do so. It involved sitting at the front of the bus that was legally, racially segregated. All of these things were illegal, but all necessary. Without the civil rights movement, segregation lasts longer. We might even still be segregated today.

In fact, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said that the US Supreme Court had no right reading desegregation into the Constitution, that we should have just let the law, let society take its course. Eventually desegregation would have come.

those laws were never going lead to justice. Justice is what dragged the law forward, Mr. Thomas.

And there comes a point when obedience is no longer a virtue, but a vector of harm. When following the rules does more damage than breaking them. When the system demands compliance without offering accountability. When silence stops being neutrality and becomes participation. That is the moment resistance shifts from an option to an obligation.

not because people are reckless, but because the cost of obedience has grown too high to justify.

The moment fighting back becomes the only path left with integrity is the moment we must resist. And that moment arrives when refusal is the last remaining leverage, when solidarity dissolves the isolation that power depends on, when people recognize that their collective voice, their collective withdrawal

And their collective disruption is the only way to make injustice impossible to ignore. Fighting back is not about mirroring the harm you're resisting. It's about refusing to fuel it, refusing to fuel the harm that is punching down on you. It is about withholding cooperation from systems that rely on your participation to function.

kind of resistance that we're seeing across the United States.

It's not chaos. It's clarity. I'll shout to anyone who wants to hear it about DHS and ICE and how their behavior has been going on for years, unchecked, unchecked, allowed.

and how I'm glad that somebody, somebody is finally shining a light on this. This is clarity.

We have finally decided to stop enabling what is hurting us. We are recognizing that harm persisted not only because of the power of the oppressor, but because of the obedience of the oppressed.

Once people stop cooperating with their own diminishment, the machinery

of injustice begins to grind and stutter.

Fighting back in its deepest sense is not about becoming what you oppose. It's about becoming unavailable to the forces that depend on your compliance. So when someone calls a resistor violent, when someone says that resisting is harmful, you tell them.

that you are resisting because you refuse to cooperate.

and enable what is hurting you.

Resistance is the disciplined act of saying no, not out of rage, but out of principle, not to destroy, but to disrupt, not to replicate harm, but to remove your labor, your silence, your consent from the systems that require them.

For the protesters in Minnesota and across the United States, the moment to resist arrived when they realized that cooperation with ICE meant cooperating with harm.

And fighting back is not resistors becoming what they oppose. They are simply withholding their consent, their silence, their complicity in the system that is harming them.

Resisters are showing up for their neighbors and refusing to let fear dictate the boundaries of their humanity.

And this is the architecture of resistance, not chaos.

This is the architecture of resistance. Not chaos, but clarity. Not destruction, but disruption. Not mirroring harm, but interrupting it.

In Minnesota, the protests against ICE are not just demonstrations. They are a collective decision to stop enabling what is hurting their communities, what is hurting our communities.

These are not spontaneous eruptions of emotion. We are not being emotional when we respond to institutions with our voices.

We are responding to the institution's silence.

Resistors are refusing to cooperate with harm.

They are declaring that obedience has become more dangerous than disruption. When families are afraid to take their children to school, when neighbors disappear overnight, when the law becomes a threat instead of a shield, then resistance becomes not only understandable, but necessary.

and protesters, resistors against ICE, understand the difference between chaos and clarity. Their resistance is clearly targeted to the harm.

the laws, the institutions, the economic incentives, and the decision makers that are enabling the actions that are harming them and their communities.

They are aiming upward in the right direction. They are protecting civilians instead of endangering them.

Their movement, their resistance is legitimate.

People are becoming unavailable to the forces that depend on their silence to survive.

The people are shining a light on injustice to make it impossible to ignore.

Do not ask if this resistance is legal. It is justified.

It is targeted and aimed at expanding democracy. If the institutions refuse to reform themselves, well then, the pressure for them to reform won't come from politeness, it? It will only come from resistance.

History doesn't ask whether resistance is comfortable. It asks whether it was necessary. History doesn't ask whether resistance was comfortable. It asks whether it was necessary. It doesn't ask whether people followed the rules. It asks who the rules were protecting. And it doesn't ask whether resistance looked polite. It asks whether it expanded the circle of justice.

The hardest part isn't knowing when to resist. It's accepting that waiting for permission has never been how justice arrives.

Ultimately, what people are resisting in these protests against ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, what they are resisting is a power structure that denies justice to even the most vulnerable of us.

And these systems can say whatever they want. But the true measure of justice isn't what a system claims about itself. It's what people experience. And the stories coming out about these detention centers and about these DHS hearings and about these experiences people are having with ICE are compelling.

Justice is not the language written into statutes or the promises made at podiums. It is the lived reality of whether people feel safe, heard, and free. In the protests against ICE, resistors have exposed that gap with painful clarity.

People are not safe. Communities are not heard.

Freedom is not unconditional.

and institutions that are supposed to protect people instead are producing fear.

Remember, justice is measured by outcomes, not intentions. If rights exist only on paper, but not in practice, then justice is absent. Justice is measured by access, not aspiration. If only some people can reach the protections that the law claims to offer, then justice is selective. Justice is measured by accountability, not apology.

If institutions can harm without consequence, then justice is performative and resistance becomes necessary. Justice is measured by whose humanity is protected when it's inconvenient. It's easy to defend rights when they cost nothing. The test is whether those rights hold when power is pressured. Justice is measured by whether the most vulnerable are shielded, not sacrificed.

If a system works only for the comfortable, it isn't justice. It's stability for the few. And resistance becomes necessary. And this is why resistance has emerged in Minnesota and across the United States. Not because people are angry, but because institutions have stopped responding to calls for justice. Because the mechanisms of accountability have failed.

because the law, the USA PATRIOT Act, has become a threat instead of a shield, because participation has punished instead of respected. When justice collapses at the institutional level, people will seek it at the collective level. The protests against ICE are a demand for justice that we can feel.

A justice that will protect families instead of fracturing them. A justice that treats dignity as non-negotiable. A justice that refuses to wait for the next election, the next court case, the next crisis. Justice is not the absence of conflict. Justice is the presence of dignity.

when dignity is denied, resistance becomes the only remaining path toward a justice that is real, lived, and shared.

And this has been Ayana Explains It All, brought to you by Facts, Figures, and Enlightenment. Take care.