By Chris Hedges, transcribed by Irfan Khawaja, posted with Hedges’ permission
Thank you Mr Mayor and Council members, for allowing us to speak. I know it’s probably been a bit uncomfortable, but listen: everybody in this room is alive, vital, committed, impassioned, honest, and courageous. It’s what makes Princeton a great community, and before I begin, I just want to say how much I admire the integrity and the courage and the commitment of my neighbors to stand up for their neighbors which, as a former seminarian, is of course the fundamental Biblical injunction: we are enjoined to love our neighbor, not our tribe.

As I said last time, I was a foreign correspondent for The New York Times for twenty years. I covered despotic regimes. I mentioned this last time: I’ve seen this play out before, whether it was in Argentina during the junta or Pinochet’s Chile. I covered the breakdown of Yugoslavia. I worked in Hafez al Assad’s Syria, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. I know how this works.

Chris Hedges, speaking at Princeton Municipal Building, July 2025

There was a line at the end of your communique that read: “For the safety of all, we remind the public that interfering with federal operations is not only a crime subject to federal prosecution, but could escalate tensions further and endanger the lives of everyone.” And I want to tell you from long experience that that is the worst piece of advice you can give to this community [loud applause] because our government no longer respects the rule of law. We have undergone a corporate coup d’etat, and we are rapidly seeing the consolidation of an authoritarian state, of a demagogue and grifter, just like I saw in Yugoslavia. And we, in this community, we can’t save the country—I know how it works—but we have to begin to build mechanisms by which we prevent ICE from operating.

The first thing we’re going to have to do is make sure that you sit down with Resistencia. And if you don’t like them, or if you feel uncomfortable with them, or you don’t trust them, that’s too bad. [applause] Because Princeton is blessed with an organization that is willing to fight back, and as long as you hold them—or the longer you hold them—at arm’s length, the more they are going to fight against you. And as a close friend of Asma* and Resistencia, you don’t want to become their enemy. Thank you.

*A reference to Asma Elhuni, an activist with Resistencia en Accion well known for her tenacity and ferocity. 

Chris Hedges is an award-winner writer and activist, and author most recently of A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine (2025). He blogs at the Chris Hedges Report.