I am Antifa. I have been writing these commentaries for at least a decade and in that time I have consistently put forward the “Liberal Agenda.” We want a single payer plan for healthcare. We want everyone to have a good education and employment opportunities. We want clean water and clean air. The minimum wage should be a living wage. All of these things go against Project 2025.

Why do conservatives oppose these things? They claim we are trying to take from the rich to give to the undeserving poor. If we adopt a single-payer health plan, health insurance companies will still exist but they wouldn’t be pulling in the $71.3 billion they made in 2024. They make profits by denying care. A Medicare for all system would save thousands of lives because now there are people dying for lack of medical care. Our population would be healthier. Small businesses would have a great burden lifted off their shoulders.

The insurance companies have lobbyists and they have pretty much bribed politicians into serving them, not us. We can take it back as long as we have elections this fall. President Donald Trump has said “There is no need for elections this fall.” He claims to be joking. Personally I don’t think it’s funny.

We are at a dangerous point in our democracy. Trump has been implementing Project 2025 as fast as he can. The Heritage Foundation put the whole thing out in a book before the election. I recommend everyone get a copy and read it. They lay out a plan to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few people who are supposedly smarter than everyone and therefore deserve to run things.

Trump said he “knew nothing about Project 2025” during the campaign. The media didn’t push him. They let us down by not challenging him. They let us down by not pointing out his lies. Can a democracy survive without a free press? We are finding out.

People are communicating directly with each other. Can we get good enough at it fast enough to stay ahead? The shooting of Renee Nicole Good is a great example. We have the shooter’s own phone camera as well as camera’s being held by onlookers. That is a wealth of data, each phone recording its exact location along with video evidence. It would be very difficult to fake the 30 or so individual data points from onlookers.

According to Kristy Noem, on Jan. 7, ICE agents were attempting to free a government vehicle stuck in the snow around 10:30 a.m. in south Minneapolis when a group began shouting and surrounding them. Noem described the crowd as a “mob of agitators.”

The cell phone of the killer shows a plowed road. No stuck vehicle.

Their own evidence shows they are lying. They continue to push the lie not because they themselves believe it but because they need us to not be able to tell what is real and what isn’t.

Project 2025 is not popular. To get us to accept it they need us to doubt our own eyes. We know that most of the people they are picking up and sending to concentration camps have no criminal record

People do not like having their neighbors rounded up and sent to a concentration camp. They have formed patrols to watch for ICE activity in their own neighborhoods. They are using whistles and cell phones to harass ICE to get in their way and slow them down. ICE is not going after the fictitious murderers and rapists. They are going after our neighbors, the people who work in our schools and day cares. They are going after carpenters and farm workers.

First they came for the ‘Illegals.”

And I am saying something because I know how this poem ends.

ICE has built huge concentration camps. They don’t want our representatives to tour these places. What do they have to hide?

People who have been released from the concentration camps report a lack of food and clean water. They were also regularly beaten and tortured by the guards.

We must ask ourselves “Do we still live in the land of the Free?”

Something should not have to happen to you to matter to you. We are all vulnerable.

Once they have picked up the illegals they will move on to the next group. They are working hard to make being Trans a punishable offence. They’d also like to outlaw being gay or using birth control.

Project 2025 seems unreal. I can only say read it for yourself.

Call Our Man in Washington, U.S. Rep. Nick Langworthy at 716-547-6844. Tell him you are concerned about ICE tactics and lies. The funding for that agency will be decided by Friday.

Marie Tomlinson is a Fredonia resident.