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Following viral resignation letter, former Skadden affiliate is now speaking about ICE on TikTok
By Debra Cassens Weiss
September 9, 2025, 1:41 pm CDT
Former BigLaw affiliate Rachel Cohen has a knack for viral content material. She demonstrated her on-line prowess in March when she posted her conditional resignation letter pledging to depart Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. She in the end left the agency. Now, she is taking her activism to TikTok and Instagram in a sequence of viral posts. (Photograph courtesy of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom)
Former BigLaw affiliate Rachel Cohen has a knack for viral content material. She demonstrated her on-line prowess in March when she posted her conditional resignation letter pledging to depart Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom absent an enough response to punitive govt orders concentrating on regulation companies. She in the end left the agency.
Now, she is taking her activism to TikTok and Instagram in a sequence of viral posts.
Her content material consists of movies specializing in grassroots efforts in Chicago to protest deportations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“My finest good friend and I had been curious about demystifying tips on how to get entangled in neighborhood organizing by creating conventional ‘influencer’ content material, like when folks publish make-up tutorials or restaurant suggestions, however centered on mutual help and volunteering,” she informed the ABA Journal in an e-mail.
“I’m humbled to report that they’re having an affect; a lot of folks have reached out on-line or in individual to inform me they’re taking part in mutual help actions or attending anti-ICE occasions due to the movies.”
Cohen has greater than 275,000 followers on TikTok and greater than 46,000 followers on Instagram.
Block Membership Chicago had a narrative on Cohen’s movies, that are getting tens of hundreds of views. The story highlights one video through which Cohen requested watchers to return together with her to get arrested exterior an ICE detention facility. Different movies name for assist with an ICE courtroom watch mission.
Cohen additionally posts written content material on Substack, which is on the market at no cost or by way of paid subscription. “This Labor Day weekend, I bought arrested exterior of an ICE processing facility in Broadview, Illinois,” she writes in a single publish. “I used to be sitting on the street in entrance of the power, blocking a van filled with my detained neighbors certain for deportation.” She went on to ask her readers to affix her and “sacrifice as a lot as we fairly can to cease the federal government from disappearing folks.”
Cohen left Skadden in March over its failure to supply a “passable response” to President Donald Trump’s punitive govt orders towards regulation companies. Skadden later reached a professional bono cope with Trump to keep away from turning into a goal.
After leaving Skadden, Cohen started working half time as a strategic affairs coordinator for a small regulation agency created by former Winston & Strawn litigator Abbe Lowell to deal with circumstances towards the Trump administration. Her bio notes she is a former public college trainer, a Harvard regulation graduate and a former volunteer for progressive candidates and causes in Rhode Island.
Cohen says she is working half time “to make sure there was clear separation between the agency and my very own private organizing and advocacy, together with issues like this TikTok sequence.”
A former finance affiliate, Cohen can generate income for movies which can be longer than a minute. However she would want many extra followers to make her revenue similar to her paycheck at Skadden, she says.
“Most individuals who assist themselves off social media achieve this via manufacturers paying them to publish content material versus streams,” she wrote. “Imagine it or not, there’s not an enormous marketplace for anti-fascism branded content material. (Although should you’re in it, be happy to achieve out, my loans are nonetheless substantial!)”
@cohen.489 URGENT CALL TO ACTION IN #CHICAGO ♬ authentic sound – Rachel Cohen
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