iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Alejandra Oliva

Christian Century @christiancentury.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

“It became a Monday morning tradition—each week, as I logged in to compile all of the weekend’s awful headlines, I would have in my ears the words of whoever preached at Memorial Church the previous day.” – @olivalejandra.bsky.social www.christiancentury.org/voices/sermo...

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Commonweal @commonwealmagazine.org · 08/03/2026

"I did not want to undergo the mortifying ordeal of being known in order to be loved, did not want to be changed by this love I have so carefully avoided." @olivalejandra.bsky.social pens a reflection for the third Sunday of Lent:

commonwealmagazine.org

Do I Take the Living Water?

Up until now, the bargain of Christianity has not always felt worth it to me. My work as an immigration legal-service provider has changed that.

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Alejandra Oliva @olivalejandra.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

I feel very tender and vulnerable about this being out in the world, but i'm also quite proud of it?

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Christian Century @christiancentury.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

“A favorable immigration ruling in Chicago was overturned. The growth of our bond fund was not.” – @olivalejandra.bsky.social www.christiancentury.org/voices/irrev...

christiancentury.org

Irrevocable harm and irrevocable good

A favorable immigration ruling in Chicago was overturned. The growth of our bond fund was...

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Christian Century @christiancentury.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

“We were getting tens of thousands of dollars each day—a tidal wave of people opening their wallets because there was a chance it would help undo the harms that had been done to Chicago over the course of a brutal occupation by federal agents.” – @olivalejandra.bsky.social

christiancentury.org

Irrevocable harm and irrevocable good

A favorable immigration ruling in Chicago was overturned. The growth of our bond fund was...

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A L O N Z O @alonzo.zip · 28/01/2026

Extremely back on my "wake up babe, new @olivalejandra.bsky.social just dropped"!! David Foster Wallace talks about the "this is water" of living a life made up of days. This really spoke to me about the process of making those days and ideals meet in reality. open.substack.com/pub/ojosdesa...

open.substack.com

On Human Touch

Seven hours at the Chicago ICE Field Office

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Christian Century @christiancentury.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

“I want to live already in the future of all my beautiful things—the yarn in the crates transformed into the sweater I have planned for them, . . . books with my name on them ranged up on the shelf, my city calm and quiet.” – @olivalejandra.bsky.social www.christiancentury.org/voices/pract...

christiancentury.org

Practicing patience in difficult times

I want to be able to take my days and transform them into beauty. This fall in Chicago, it has felt like time is running...

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MisterJayEm @misterjayem.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

The Midwest Immigration Bond Fund:

mibfc.org

Midwest Immigration Bond Fund

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Dr. Lucian Walkowicz @notnotrocketscience.com · 13/11/2025

You may have seen that 600+ detainees are eligible for release, which is amazing! BUT: you may not know that immigration detainees still have to pay for their freedom-- $1500 bond per person! The Midwest Immigration Bond Fund is raising money to help people get free, please donate: www.mibfc.org

mibfc.org

Midwest Immigration Bond Fund

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USDA Crit Beef Inspector @youterus.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

I am personally matching donations up to $500 made to the Midwest Immigration Bond Fund by Friday at 5pm. Send me a screenshot & I'll post my match by EOD Friday. They've got a larger $20k match on the table. Courts are finally stepping in some so let's get these folks home. www.mibfc.org

mibfc.org

Midwest Immigration Bond Fund

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Mike Fragassi @refrag.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

I'll second this call. ICIRR, the main organization doing work to help the abducted immigrants in Chicago, is endorsing this organization & this link as the primary way to help pay the bonds to release those still held by ICE. Help them get home for Thanksgiving. www.instagram.com/mw_bondfund/...

Image (from the Instagram link):
Midway To Freedom
Hundreds Unlawfully Arrested
Help Us Bond Them Out
Donate, Share: tinyurl.com/MidwayToFreedom
[Logos for OCAD (Organized Communities Against Deportations), National Immigrant Justice Center, Midwest Immigration Bond Fund, and ICIRR, Illinois Coalition For Immigrant & Refugee Rights]

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Alex V. Hernandez @avhndz.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

The Midwest Immigration Bond Fund launched in 2020 to provide bond assistance to people navigating the complex immigration legal system. That mission has become more difficult under the second Trump administration, the group said. blockclubchicago.org/2025/11/17/b... via @blockclubchi.bsky.social

blockclubchicago.org

A Midwest Bond Fund Is Helping Detained Chicago Immigrants Return To Their Families

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Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

615 of the estimated 3,000+ detained immigrants who were kidnapped in Chicagoland during Midway Blitz are expected to be eligible for bond this week. The Midwest Immigration Bond Fund shows up for people in detention who need bond, but it costs, at minimum, $1,500 per person. Pls help them.

blockclubchicago.org

A Midwest Bond Fund Is Helping Detained Chicago Immigrants Return To Their Families

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Reposted by Alejandra Oliva

Christian Century @christiancentury.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

“The work I do in front of the stove, the daily care I take with meals—this isn’t just about sustenance or being healthy. It is an expression of my morals and concerns, reminding me that the smallest of my actions is performed in a web of mutuality and care.” – @olivalejandra.bsky.social

christiancentury.org

Cooking when the world is on fire

These days, daily tasks can feel like a...

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Alejandra Oliva @olivalejandra.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

new newsletter on the 100th anniversary of mrs. dalloway and reading it from a less-than-generous lens born of my own frustrations open.substack.com/pub/ojosdesa...

open.substack.com

Getting the Flowers Yourself

On a Wednesday in Mid-June

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🎃 Halloween Keeps Frightening 🎃 @historykeeper.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Appropriate, because one of the worker survivors of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire was then deported as part of the first Red Scare.

trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu

Cornell University - ILR School - The Triangle Factory Fire

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Commonweal @commonwealmagazine.org · 05/04/2025

"It has become clear to me in the past few months that the immigration legal system has dropped even the slightest pretense of its orientation toward justice." @olivalejandra.bsky.social: 'A Way in the Wilderness' www.commonwealmagazine.org/lent-reflect...

commonwealmagazine.org

A Way in the Wilderness

Lent is a season of reflection—but also a season to prepare for the work ahead, to sweep aside everything that has not worked and find new ways through the desert.

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Terrence Peterson @tgpeterson.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

This is an endemic problem, by the way. Geo Group and CoreCivic regularly deny folks in detention their meds. I witnessed this practiced systematically at Krome for the 5 years I used to visit and communicate with guys there

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Jessica Goudeau @jessicagoudeau.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

For the Injustice Report today, my colleague @olivalejandra.bsky.social wrote a jaw-dropping, must-read post: "Yes, the El Salvador 'Deportations' Are Really Bad' open.substack.com/pub/injustic...

open.substack.com

Yes, the El Salvador “Deportations” are Really Bad

and not just for the innocent people who got deported

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Juan Martinez @fulmerford.com · 18/03/2025

This post has gotten so much traction & I’d just urge everyone to check out Pitzer’s history of concentration camps: we want these things to shout out their evil, to glow red w malign intent, but they begin as seemingly pragmatic, almost ordinary answers to mass containment & transport/transfer.

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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

if you find yourself reluctant to support the guy at Columbia because you find some of the politics he espoused distasteful or even abhorrent, you should know that this is exactly the reaction that they hoped for in choosing him as a target for unlawful detention based on political speech.

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David Forbes @davidforbes.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

Since Obama administration, at least, leftists/radicals repeatedly warned that Dems pouring cash into ICE and militarized police was not just evil in its own right, but laying the groundwork for open fascism. We were dismissed, with various degrees of vitriol, for pointing this obvious fact out.

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 10/03/2025

I think the more horrifying thing to sit with is this: the every-day operations of the jail, prison, and immigration detention systems are and have been dehumanizing, and we built them, and they lend themselves seamlessly to the fascist business of stealing and caging even more people

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Silky Shah @silkys13.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

This is why we must fight for everyone. Whether they’ve been incarcerated or have had contact with the criminal legal system or are merely undocumented. When you accept that some people are deserving of detention and deportation the scope of who is eligible is always under threat of expanding.

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Alejandra Oliva @olivalejandra.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

every time i sit down to write a letter to a new pen pal in ICE detention, im struck mute. what could i possibly say to someone in such a place? here’s a reminder to myself, and an invitation to you. open.substack.com/pub/ojosdesa...

open.substack.com

Nature writing for ICE Detainees

Figuring out what to say to a pen pal

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Christian Century @christiancentury.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

“The biodiversity of the prairie, its changing face across the seasons: this ecosystem is a community, living and breathing and renewing itself, older than the houses and the trees around it.” – @olivalejandra.bsky.social www.christiancentury.org/article/call...

christiancentury.org

The call of a remnant prairie

I’ve seen artists enchanted and haunted by the prairie, their work changed by spending time in the...

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Alejandra Oliva @olivalejandra.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

I wrote about the ways that the Trump admin has been purposely fucking with the visibility of ICE enforcement/the increased invisibility of undocumented people in daily life/feeling called into visibility as a neighbor www.commonwealmagazine.org/ICE-immigrat...

commonwealmagazine.org

Visibly Invisible

The Trump administration hopes not only to deport migrants, but also to make them feel so unsafe they no longer participate actively in our communities.

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Felipe De La Hoz @felipedlh.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

I think most people are intuitively aware of this but something like the official White House account posting an “ASMR” video of shackled immigrants is not just cruel for its own sake, it’s intentional envelope-pushing to ramp up to desensitization over inhumane detention, camps, and deaths

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H.E.D. Houseman @hedhouseman.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

I spent most of the past three years not writing and doing a lot of sewing and somehow becoming a public mender and sewing teacher—I wrote about how it changed my sense of community today in my newsletter. hedhouseman.substack.com/p/taking-you...

hedhouseman.substack.com

Taking Your Time is the Point

And it turns out, so are other people.

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rachel ida @r-ida.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

“We have a choice, these days, to be reborn into these times, to consent to change with them not in resignation to the fascist values …but in resignation to our truer, wilder selves, to shake off the mores of our time and to walk into the prairie.” wow, @olivalejandra.bsky.social

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Alejandra Oliva @olivalejandra.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

i wrote about dying and being reborn ungovernable also perfume and prairies and jackson pollock open.substack.com/pub/ojosdesa...

open.substack.com

Something Rich and Strange

A sea change, a perfume, and Virginia Woolf's Orlando

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Alejandra Oliva @olivalejandra.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

every single time jason sits down to read the dog will drag his toy over and stare at him unceasingly until he puts the book away and gets on the floor to wrassle

a man sitting on a couch trying to finish the last goddamn 30 pages of moby dick but a little blonde dog is staring at him insistently and expectantly.

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Kat Howard @katwithsword.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

Alejandra's writing is so gorgeous and smart.

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Alejandra Oliva @olivalejandra.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

i am literally out here making collages for my newsletter about Orlando (novel), Jackson Pollock, perfume, gender, Shakespeare and decay, pls subscribe ojosdesantalucia.substack.com

a collage featuring tilda swinton in orlando (1992), a bottle of fathom v by BeauFort London, old masters flowers, a memento moth skull, all on a backdrop of jackson pollocks painting full fathom five

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Alejandra Oliva @olivalejandra.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

fully and absolutely bizarre to realize that Wabansia Ave, to Simone de Beauvoir, was one of the most romantic places on earth

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Alejandra Oliva @olivalejandra.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

re reading Orlando for newsletter research, and i think i love it so much in part because it just…works beautifully as a novel but it’s also packed full of what feel like inside jokes and asides that you sort of grasp but u know are meant for Vita Sackville-West’s eyes only

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Jessica Goudeau @jessicagoudeau.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

This piece is SO GOOD

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Alejandra Oliva @olivalejandra.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

I’m really excited to get to work with @jessicagoudeau.bsky.social on Injustice Report—my first post went up today, on Chicago, ICE enforcement actions, the sensitive locations memo and knowing your rights open.substack.com/pub/injustic...

open.substack.com

The ICE Raid that Wasn't

Or: why the Sensitive Locations Memo Mattered

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Jessica Goudeau @jessicagoudeau.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

I’m relaunching my newsletter as a shared space with @olivalejandra.bsky.social and Lauren Pinkston called The Injustice Report: Reporting that bends the arc of justice. injusticereport.substack.com/p/the-injust... We’ll report on community stories of how unjust policies affect real people.

injusticereport.substack.com

The Injustice Report

Reporting that bends the arc of justice.

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Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 28/01/2025

I don't trust any leader who isn't standing up for immigrants and trans people right now.

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Lynda Lopez @lyndab08.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

This is probably the most helpful resource I’ve seen so far in terms of keeping up with verifiable news on what’s happening around immigration raids in Chicago. No paywall too.

chicago.suntimes.com

Feds start making immigration arrests across Chicago area: Live updates

Trump border czar Tom Homan and TV personality Dr. Phil are in the city to observe the operations, according to reports.

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Alejandra Oliva @olivalejandra.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

talking to @johndownesangus.bsky.social’s class was one of the highlights of last year—incredibly jealous of this reading list

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pseudonym jones @pseudonymjones.bsky.social · 12/03/2024

even a worm will turn

illustration of lowly worm dressed in black bloc and preparing to throw a molotov with his foot

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

I reskeeted this earlier but there is now an extremely important correction: Secret Service says it was their agents that went to the school in Chicago, not ICE.

Paris Shutz, a Fox32 local reporter in Chicago, posts two X posts: (1) “A US Secret Service Spokesman confirms ABC7 report that a USSS Agent visisted CPS school, NOT ICE. The spokesperson says they were investigating a threat against a protectee related to the TikTok ban. They first investigated a nearby home before being turned away at school.” (2) “I should add the Secret Service Spokesman tells me the agent left their business card with school officials. Not sure how wires got crossed where CPS officials all the way up to the CEO reported that the incident involved ICE agents.”

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