Here & Gone is a crowd-sourced archival project co-founded by a group of public historians at the University of Minnesota.
Project Leader:
Andre Kobayashi Deckrow, Assistant Professor, Department of History.
Project contributors include:
Pearl McClintock
Nicole Bekesz
Conor Cusack
To get in touch, please email us at hereandgoneMN@proton.me
Purpose and Goals
The goal of this project is to collect images of artwork and signage that mark where people have been taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). We are motivated by questions about how communities are beginning to remember these incidents and how understandings of place are changed by the presence of commemorative creations. What do these abductions mean for communities? How are detained and deported neighbors being remembered?
Preservation and Use
Photos will be processed to remove personal information, stored in a secure database for long term preservation, and uploaded to a public collection of images. Images in the collection will exist in the public domain which means anyone is free to use and repurpose them. We will also map the locations of the photos which will be publicly available.
Scope and Focus
We are specifically looking for materials that mark sites of ICE abductions. We are not accepting photos or videos of active detainments or community rapid responses to ICE activity. While there are lots of protest art and other memorialization efforts worth documenting (i.e. the Alex Pretti and Renée Good memorials), other projects are doing that work. We are focused on documenting how people are commemorating the abductions of those targeted by ICE in the places where they occurred.
We see Operation Metro Surge and the contents of this archive as connected to a longer, global history of migration and community response to immigration enforcement. While this project remains focused on building an open-use archive and map for local communities, we are also thinking about Metro Surge in a broader context of US immigration policy. Read more about the histories and sources grounding our work.
Guiding Principles
We recognize that the current moment is a future past – a period that will be known and studied for its historic significance. While we cannot yet view the present in hindsight, we recognize that there are ephemeral objects on the street now that will add rich texture to the historical record and public memory. We hope that this collection of images illustrates the process and politics of public memory work. Connecting abductions to the physical space they occurred and how they were commemorated in the moment is an important intervention for sustaining an embodied public memory amid the rise of official, state-led histories.
Detainments, abductions, surveillance, and repression are ongoing. We recognize that collecting information about abductions, especially locations, is sensitive. Neighbors remain vulnerable to immigration enforcement, and these are sites of serious trauma. This project prioritizes the safety of vulnerable people and will not disclose information that could jeopardize the safety of those already impacted or those who continue to be targeted by immigration enforcement. Archival material can be removed from the public collection upon request. Project leads may also make changes to how the images are mapped according to concerns of surveillance and privacy (such as mapping approximate location). We will be responsive to to changing conditions of surveillance, harm, and retaliation, and take necessary steps to protect people from further harm.
This project will follow the desires of those most immediately impacted by ICE. In many cases, the victims of abduction remain anonymous to the general public. However, any and all documentation is inherently sensitive material. When possible we will let family members or victims themselves dictate how commemorations involving them are to be treated.
Much like the rapid response and mutual aid networks that have responded to Operation Metro Surge, this project relies on crowdsourced photos, information, and feedback. By building an archive of community responses to abductions, we hope to inspire continued commemoration and neighborhood conversations about memorialization and belonging.
Terminology and Language Choice
We acknowledge the evolving nature of language and description of sensitive events. Some of the terminology used may seem technical rather than descriptive or become archaic over time. We will be responsive to changing language used to describe events and incidents with ICE while balancing accuracy and historical precision.