To Stop Trump, We Need to Wake Up the Masses

"It becomes truly daunting and can really take your breath away at the amount of pain and suffering being inflicted," our JT Cestkowksi says on his reporting in Chicago. PLEASE READ FULL EMAIL.

***Status Coup has been reporting on the front lines of Trump’s fascist invasion of Chicago for nearly two months. This takes A LOT OF RESOURCES—and no other outlets are doing this kind of reporting. YOU SHOULD ALSO KNOW WE HAVE RECENTLY TURNED DOWN SEVERAL SPONSORSHIP/ADVERTISING OPPORTUNITIES that would have helped us financially but whose products and values were not aligned with our values. We need more viewers to support us as paying members so that we can continue funding this important ON THE GROUND reporting. Support our INDEPENDENT reporting for as low as $5 bucks a month***

Hey folks, it’s Jordan.

We have now been ON THE GROUND reporting in Chicago and exposing the violent—and illegal—Trump invasion for A MONTH AND A HALF.

Thus far, this reporting has cost us over $12,000 between flights, hotel, rent-a-car, gas, food, safety equipment for our reporter JT and cameraman Jon, and paying additional freelancers when we’ve had to send our cameraman home to his family. If you unaware, we are INDEPENDENTLY funded without corporate sponsors or million dollar investors. ON THE GROUND in Chicago, we’ve exposed:

• Trump’s border patrol recklessly aiming guns at screaming children.

• Democrat Governor JB Pritzker’s police force aiding ICE, assaulting protesters.

• Trump’s border patrol violently dragging women out of a car as gunshots ring out nearby.

• Protesters chasing Trump’s border patrol chief Greg Bovino down the streets of Chicago.

• ICE creating a war zone outside the Broadview Detention Center, tear gassing and attacking protesters & journalists (including our cameraman Jon Farina).

• ICE performing illegal chokeholds on random immigrants who are grocery shopping.

• ICE using a male protester as target practice, leaving his back riddled with bullet holes.

• ICE attacking—and then arresting—a U.S. combat veterans.

• ICE invading a Hispanic neighborhood, tossing tear gas into homes as residents screamed.

• ICE BREAKING INTO a home as part of a raid of construction workers (leaving one bloodied).

• ICE smashing a car window in order to abduct two people (for no apparent reason).

This is just SOME of our ON THE GROUND reporting. WATCH highlights below:

Last night, after covering a press conference in Chicago held by residents furious at Chicago Police Department’s complicity with Trump’s ICE and Border Patrol, our reporter JT Cestkowski reflected on all of our aforementioned reporting. He got a bit emotional about the cruelty and evil he’s been observing ON THE GROUND in Chicago—and also noted his own newborn daughter.

“You have heard from person after person the pain inflicted on individual families by these ICE and border patrol operations and the way that they just total up on this community, and this country, when you consider what is happening here in Chicago at scale, of what is happening across the country right now, when you consider that scale, it becomes truly daunting and can really take your breath away at the amount of pain and suffering being inflicted—it’s certainly enough to give me pause. I’m a new father, my thoughts go back to my daughter who is waiting at home tonight. My daughter is going to be home tonight; I’m going to be home tonight, I’m going to get to hold her. There are kids who aren’t going to get to be with their parents tonight because their parents are sitting in the Broadview Illinois ICE detention facility, or have been shipped to God knows where, because they’ve been disappeared into this opaque immigration system for doing nothing other than having brown skin, for doing nothing but being the easiest person for the Department of Homeland Security to grab, for doing nothing other than attempting to live the American dream.”

WATCH JT’s emotional commentary:

As humbly as we can put it, we are THE ONLY NATIONAL OR LOCAL OUTLET—corporate or independent—consistently doing this in the trenches reporting. This ON-THE-GROUND reporting costs a lot—and is on top of paying for:

• Me

• Reporter JT Cestkowski

• Producer Michelle Dao

• Producer/Editor Colin Tooley

• Video journalist Jon Farina

• Support freelancers: administrative and bookkeeping

• Additional freelance cameraman, YouTube hosts, etc.

• Fixed monthly costs (including our LIVEU broadcasting device which costs nearly $600 a month).

So, THE CHOICE IS YOURS. If you believe that this type of ON THE GROUND reporting is important, and necessary, please support this important reporting. I believe we as a people are at a tipping point—with an increasingly authoritarian president and the sycophants that surround him—openly embracing fascism. If we don’t have truly independent journalists out there exposing it, the masses will continue to live in the dark.

Help us wake up more of the masses!

Jordan