Oct. 18th Working Meeting Sept 29th

Alex Pretti, a 37 year old nurse known by neighbors as an amiable man in his neighborhood was murdered by federal ICE agents today in Minneapolis.

Alex was not the target of any investigation. He was using his iphone to film the violent threats of ICE agents in the street, and he was talking to another woman filming the scene. ICE agents approached him and the woman, wrestled him to the ground, and after he had been subdued one agent took out a gun and fired up to ten shots killing him. His last words, to the woman who was pinned to the ground near him as they were pepper sprayed, were “all you alright?”

We are at war. No sense mincing words. Until we tear the present DHS agency down to the ground and start with a new structure, no one in America is safe.

The Burlington Town Meeting voted nearly unanimously to condemn violations of local zoning laws and the inhuman conditions of detention at the ICE district facility in Burlington. The resolution called for ICE to cease overnight and extended detentions at the Burlington facility and to comply fully with the conditions they agreed to when they first…

A few days after the No Kings rally in Lexington, Lexington Alarm held a debrief session to gather reactions. There were several successes and a few things to change before our next event.

At a post-event debrief on Zoom, organizers, marshals, volunteers, and participants went through the rally piece by piece. The consensus: it was a success. Nearly 2,000 people attended, more signs were sold than at the 6,000-person October rally, and close to 100 new contacts signed up at the tables. The mood among volunteers was described repeatedly as “uplifting.” The table setup was the best yet — positioned closer to the crowd than in October, generating real conversations, sign sales, and genuine engagement with organizational literature.

The weekly Bearing Witness protests at ICE headquarters on District Avenue have become a regional center of peaceful resistance, drawing 700–900 participants each week. Organized by a broad interfaith coalition, the demonstrations elevate the voices of those harmed by ICE while reaffirming a commitment to nonviolence. That very commitment has triggered escalating efforts to suppress the protests: parking bans, intimidation, and towing by powerful real estate interests and complicit local authorities. As businesses and police “bend the knee” to protect ICE, Bearing Witness remains resolute. Peaceful assembly is not a threat—it is a constitutional right, and it will continue to grow. See our Letter to National Development

At Lexington Alarm we have a theory of resistance. When people have courage to take small actions they generate a response. No action is too small or insignificant not to count. Sometimes the responses strengthen the resistance in surprising ways. This creates a snowball effect, and the resistance to abuses and attacks on our constitutional rights grows stronger.

We have two really important examples from the past two weeks.