ICE raids across SE Michigan, and the launch of “Bad and Nasty” …on this weekend’s episode of the Saturday Six Pack

This weekend’s episode of the Saturday Six Pack, which I believe will be our third under the Trump administration, will be told in two parts.

First, we’ll be talking about recent raids in our community by U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) officials, which have resulted in the arrest of
four undocumented immigrants in Ypsilanti. We’ll be talking about the changing legal landscape in Washington, the impact this new enforcement regime is having on local families, the specifics of the individual cases, and the opportunities in front of us, should we choose to push back.

Joining us for this hour-long panel discussion, will be: U-M Law Professor Margo Schlanger, who served as Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under President Obama; Washtenaw County Sheriff Jerry Clayton, who will have just returned from D.C., where he’s been involved in a series of meetings and briefings with members of Congress and their staffers about the immigration issue in preparation for an upcoming Senate Homeland Security Committee meeting; civil rights attorney Angie Martell, who serves on the ACLU Washtenaw County Lawyers’ Committee; U-M School of Social Work postdoc William Lopez, who has ben studying the health outcomes of local Latina/o communities in periods of aggressive enforcement; and Manny Lagunes, a youth organizer for the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights (WICIR) and host of the AM 1700 radio program WICKIDZ Radio.

If you’d like to join the conversation, we should be starting right at 6:00 PM< and you 'll find out how to listen on line, and how to call into the studio, below. And, during our second segment, we'll be talking with internationally acclaimed performance artists Holly Hughes, about the role of the arts in the fight against Trump. Hughes, who was recently referred to as a “timeless agent for political dissent,” will be joining us primary to discuss Bad and Nasty [“Bad Hombres and Nasty Women”], the “loose knit coalition of artists, activists, media makers, theater folk, web geeks, designers, performers, writers, concerned citizens, and (others)” that she recently co-founded with NY/London-based artist Lois Weaver and media professional Mary Jo Watts.

While I hope to talk with Hughes extensively about Bad and Nasty, the international events they hosted on “Not My President’s Day,” and what they’ve got coming up, I suspect we’ll likely also go back to her roots in activist theater as a member of WOW Cafe (Women’s One World), her experience with controversy as one of the NEA Four, and what she thinks of Trump’s promise to slash the National Endowment for the Arts budget.

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE NEVER TUNED IN TO THE SIX PACK BEFORE, HERE ARE THE DETAILS ON HOW TO LISTEN:

Unless you live inside the AM 1700 studio, chances are you won’t be able to pick the show up on your radio. As that’s the case, I’d recommend streaming the show online, which you can do either on the AM1700 website or by way of TuneIn.com.

And for those of you who aren’t yet familiar with the show, and need to get caught up, you can listen to the entire archive on iTunes.

And do call us if you have a chance. We love phone calls. So please copy down this number and slide it into your sock – 734.217.8624 – and call us this Saturday evening. The show is nothing without you.

One last thing… If you’d like to tell your friends and neighbors about the program, feel free to share the Facebook event listing.

And, here, thanks to AM 1700 senior graphic designer Kate de Fuccio, is this week’s poster, in case any of you want to print copies and leave them at one of your favorite highway rest areas.