[AndyKelley]

The very same day I sat at home writing this devlog like a coward, less than five miles away, armed forces who are in my city against the will of our elected officials shot tear gas, unprovoked, at peaceful protestors, including my wife.

https://www.kptv.com/2026/01/31/live-labor-unions-rally-marc...

This isn't some hypothetical political agenda I'm using my platform to push. There's a nonzero chance I go out there next weekend to peacefully protest, and get shot like Alex Pretti.

Needless to say, if I get shot by ICE, it's not good for the Zig project. And they've brought the battle to my doorstep, almost literally.

Abolish ICE.

[lvl155]

Andy stay safe. We gotta all come to realization that none of this is possible if we let our democracy slip away. Millions before us died to preserve it. We owe it to them to put up a good fight.

[xrd]

My 85 year old mom lives in Portland and she attends rallies frequently. If you know of any way to support you or other local people doing this work, I'm very interested. My email is on my profile page.

I have a friend who is in Minneapolis. He's involved in caravans which are tracking ICE. He wasn't the driver in the last one. But, the ICE vehicle they tailed suddenly started going in a very direct path, instead of randomly driving. The driver figured it out first. They drove to the driver's house and then stood outside of their car for ten minutes staring at his house. Cars in Minnesota have their license plates on both the front and the back.

Is there any justification for that kind of intimidation? Did any of the Trump supporters vote for that? I hear about paid agitators on the left but not that kind of compensated actors. Is his name in a database now once they did the lookup?

[AndyKelley]

The Department of Homeland Security was created in 2003. We didn't need it then and we don't need it now.

Why waste tax dollars on ineffective, privacy-violating security theater when we could spend it on education and health?

[xrd]

Are you ok with the size of the budget these agencies control? Are you ok with it being headed by a guy who never has denied he took a $50k bribe from the FBI and wasn't even the initial target of an investigation?

I would bet you $1000 that not one of the immigrants being rounded up were even accused of that kind of corruption and crimes.

How is this not bald corruption and an insane way to spend tax dollars when people are really struggling in this country?

And I know plenty of restaurant owners in Portland that are closing because of down tourism. Why can Trump sue the IRS for $10B but Portland can't sue him for disparaging the city because he can't figure out that videos of riots are five years old?

[thrance]

No. Both.

[AndyKelley]

When people like you finally realize what is happening in this country, I'm ready to quickly forgive and move on so that we can work together to preserve what freedoms we have left.

but please hurry... we really need you to pay attention and understand the reality that is upon us.

[pixelpoet]

These few-minutes-old accounts swooping in on hot button issues to try persuade people are such a goddamn scourge, I wish there were something that could be done about it.

In the end I probably just need to leave HN for a while because it's really doing a number on what's left of my ability to trust what I read online.

[self_awareness]

Just go home. Work on Zig. Don't do anything stupid.

[baggy_trough]

> against the will of our elected officials

Did you mean your local officials?

[kstrauser]

In the Federal model of US government, state authority overrides centralized government except in the explicit cases enumerated by the Constitution.

So yes, of course they mean their local officials, because in this case there isn’t an explicit line in the Constitution explaining why the feds are allowed to invade Minnesota.

[ghthor]

Don’t do it, your project here on zig is a much larger net positive for civilization than you spending your time at those protests.

<3 zig and want io interface in everything!

[oneoffprobably]

Please stay safe.

I can't hold it so had to create an account to share, I'm sorry. I'm one of the minor zig contributors, and I'm reading ziglang blog for the purpose of engagement in software engineering craft. I don't want to see these ICE stuff or whatever else political opinion you or somebody else have. I'm not from US and I barely know what ICE is but you're hating on people (I'm sure you think it's deserved, as with any hate) and I assume you may hate me at some point because I do something you don't share or like (like this comment for example). Thinking that creator of Zig may hate me, takes a lot of fun from using the language let alone contributing to it or areas surrounding it. What if tomorrow people with tattoos at particular spot will be hated in media and you'll be posting "Abolish people with tattoo". Not the best comparison, but I hope you got why I feel scared of engaging with community now.

I think you have big responsibility for maintaining community of people with different political opinions and you are definitely free to share it on your personal blog. But you chose to do it in the community driven project as a lead of that project. And it's not first time. It's a bit different. For me at least.

Also the fear is what made me create this new account, I'm not a bot or something like that. I'm just afraid due to many (political) reasons and I want to find peace in playing with computers and one of these safe places was just taken from me, which you probably have the right to do but you could've avoided it. You're not the only one. There are many projects like this who mention Gaza, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, all these stuff. It's getting less and less projects to engage with (again, for me, I think it works well for those projects as they attract people they like).

I'm sorry you have to suffer and see people deaths. Me too. I understand it's difficult to hold these stuff inside. As you can see I couldn't ether. But I hoped you're stronger than me.

[dwb]

Get some empathy and awareness. I’m not from the US either but I am against fascist thugs occupying cities. It’s not difficult.

[k_g_b_]

The world demonstrates in many instances, that you do not have to have empathy with people suffering from oppression, rape, murder, etc in order to "succeed" in terms of wealth and power.

Meaning: if you can't accept that someone publishing words/code/etc on the web at the same time also offers their own strong opinions (that you directly claim to be hate) about their own such issues, there's plenty of "communities" in which this kind of unempathetic approach to other people and their lives is celebrated and normalized.

If you barely know what ICE is, how can you claim his opinions to be "hate"? How can you claim that Andrew may hate you without thinking you identify with what you understand about ICE?

What ICE does is unmistakenly fascistic and authoritarian, far beyond the powers they have been granted by law and democratic processes. It's utterly disgusting to try and compare protesting and fighting against that with "abolish people with tattoos". ICE is an institution, a government agency among a dozen+ law enforcement agencies in the US. You compare advocating for abolishing it through democratic process (what Andrew expressed) with calling for the murder of many millions of people with a private hobby.

And while Andrew may have some responsibility towards the community he founded; if he has the responsibility to include different political opinions, he most certainly has the responsibility to exclude fascism. Fascism is the destruction of different opinions, it is not a political opinion that can stand among others and be compared on the same basis: that of human rights at the minimum.

Ask yourself and reflect: why does this very simple and inoffensive call by Andrew make you scared, especially if you don't know what ICE is and does? Could you have been influenced into this feeling? It is certainly not a rational reaction to a few characters of text viewed on a screen.

[mapcars]

I like how you call peaceful protests when people throw huge rocks, break city infrastructure and damage property and take 0 accountability for it. And most likely don't pay taxes to fix it up later.

How convenient it must be to blame officers instead of bad actors just because you agree with their side.

This is purely pushing political agenda, you just covering it up.

[Defletter]

Since you're so eager to construe his support for peaceful protest as support for civil unrest, I therefore think it's fair if I construe your defence of ICE to mean support for their extrajudicial executions and the people who dress up as ICE (ie: masked men dragging people at gunpoint into unmarked vans) to kidnap and rape people.