Walk With Us: Community, Courage, and Tools for Collective Safety
- Ishqa Hillman
- Jul 13
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 14
The 4th of July was hard for me this year. When most people were preparing for barbecues and fireworks, I couldn’t bring myself to celebrate in the traditional sense. It didn’t feel right—not when so many people in this country are losing their freedoms every day. Not when families are being torn apart, when rights are being stripped, when people are being disappeared.
I started Walk With Us to create space for people like me—people who are grieving, angry, awake, and unsure where to put those feelings. People who want to gather in community, ground themselves in nature, and find strength in movement and presence. The walk itself is one I’ve done for a few years, ever since I went through something traumatic and didn’t know what else to do with the anger and fear that was living in my body. Moving helped. Nature helped. And now, sharing it helps.
These walks are not protests. They’re not parties. They’re a time to move our bodies, speak our truths, share tools, and stay rooted in what matters.
Our First Walk: Rights, Resistance, and Real Talk with Civil Rights Attorney Sarah Lee
Our very first walk set the tone in a powerful way. I wasn't sure who would show up or how many. I was pleasantly surprised when by the end of the walk we were a very diverse dozen.
One of my newer friends joined, civil rights attorney Sarah Lee, who shared life-saving information that’s too often kept from the public—what to do if you witness someone being forcibly taken by ICE or an unmarked agency. It’s a hard reality, but one we can't ignore. People in our communities are being disappeared. It’s happening, and knowing our rights matters more than ever. Here’s what Sarah shared:
What To Do If You Witness Someone Being Taken
1. Document Everything—Safely. Film from a distance if you can. Never interfere physically unless you’re confident in what you're doing and ready for the legal risks. Your footage may be the only record that person exists.
2. Don’t Assume It's Legitimate. Not all agents wear visible identification. Some operations violate basic rights. Ask loudly and clearly: “Who are you detaining? Under what authority? Are you identifying yourself as a federal or state agency?”
3. You Have the Right to Remain and Observe. You do not have to leave the scene if you are on public property and not interfering. Filming in public is protected by the First Amendment.
4. You Have the Right to Perform a Citizen’s Arrest—But Only If You Are Willing and Informed. This is a serious step. Sarah clarified that, legally, citizens in California do have the right to detain someone committing a felony in their presence. However, it’s risky and should only be done if you fully understand the legal consequences.
“If you’re going to do it, do it with witnesses and be crystal clear about what you’re doing and why,” she told us. But more often than not, being a strong, informed witness is the best support you can offer.
Check out this video of Sarah's tips.
Tools You Can Use Right Now
Here are a couple tech tools I have implemented to help protect myself and others during an ICE encounter or suspicious detainment:
iPhone Shortcut: "Hey Siri, ICE is Here" – On iPhones, you can set up a Shortcut that, when triggered by voice automatically:
Starts recording
Sends your location to trusted contacts
Sends a text alert
Saves the video to the cloud
ICEBlock – ICEBlock is an innovative, completely anonymous crowdsourced platform that allows users to report Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity with just two taps on their phone. Modeled after Waze but for ICE sightings, the app ensures user privacy by storing no personal data, making it impossible to trace reports back to individual users. Available exclusively for iOS devices, ICEBlock empowers communities to stay informed about ICE presence within a 5-mile radius while maintaining their anonymity through real-time updates and automatic deletion of sightings after four hours.
Do you have a tool that should be added to the list?
Why We Walk
There’s something healing about walking beside others who care. We may come with different struggles, different reasons—but we all come to reconnect with our bodies, our breath, and our collective strength.
Walk With Us is a response to the chaos, to the silence, to the disconnection. It’s not a protest. It’s not a party. It’s community —and you’re invited.
Walk With Us
We walk every:
First Saturday morning
Third Friday evening
You can RSVP for one date or all of them:
Bring your heart. Bring your questions. Bring your walking shoes. Let’s move forward—together.
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