Live the Constitution: Take Concrete Collective Action

On Labor Day, I had the honor of leading part of the Santa Fe Rally for Collective Action, planned and designed by Indivisible Santa Fe. We succeeded in turning out hundreds – by some estimates, a couple of thousand. People had the chance to hear from speakers from labor, civil rights, and immigrant rights groups. Speakers from ISF primed the crowd to move from only showing up to rallies and marches to using these gatherings to kick off concrete, ongoing collective action.

We ended the Labor Day rally by distributing signs and informational brochures for businesses faced with ICE raids. The sign asserts the business’s constitutional right to exclude ICE from private areas in the absence of a valid judicial search warrant. The brochures explain how businesses can define and demarcate private areas, what distinguishes private and public areas, how to prepare employees for an ICE raid, and more.

My job was to explain the materials to the crowd and ask each of them to take a packet to a business and ask the owner or manager to display the sign. As I told the Rally attendees, we were asking them to live the Constitution and to invite Santa Fe businesses to do likewise.

We had 500 sets of material. We urged people to take one apiece. Within ten minutes after I finished speaking, all were taken. In fact, there was so much excess demand that I went straight to my computer and prepared PDF files for people to have printed themselves.

Since Labor Day, I have been contacted by Indivisible groups across New Mexico interested in distributing the signs and brochures in their areas. Along with some other key folks from ISF, I will try to support these groups’ efforts however I can. I look forward to meeting and learning from my fellow New Mexicans throughout our state.

Statewide collaboration will be crucial not only to fighting ICE’s terroristic raids and sweeps, but to keeping New Mexico blue. We currently have an all Democratic Congressional delegation, a blue trifecta in our state government, a Democratic state attorney general, and a Democratic state secretary of state. We know that the right is gunning to disrupt this in 2026. By learning how to collaborate at the grassroots level statewide now, we can forge a coalition to keep our state firmly on the side of constitutional democracy.

Even if you live outside of New Mexico, you can still use the downloadable sign and brochures to help businesses stand up to lawless ICE raids. Go here to get them. If you have a local Indivisible group that would like to hear more about the materials and how to use them, get in touch!