"Your support for the anti-ICE protest movement will destroy us."
“Dear Beloved Elder Relative,This is a letter to urge you to rethink what you are doing in supporting the protests against ICE’s law enforcement activities, and to ask you please, actually, to stop.
You and your friends at times lend your support to the anti-ICE protests in your adorable little town. And you know I support First Amendment protected expression, whenever citizens wish to express themselves.
But there are larger implications here, Beloved Elder.
I love you. I respect you.
I appreciate very much that you let me think about your responses to news events, and even let me describe them publicly at times, when I need a model of what a thoughtful liberal person, who lives in a deep blue state and watches CNN and listens to NPR, believes.
I appreciate that you, unlike most of the folks in your “tribe”, are always open to the evidence I share, even when it is contrary to these narratives. I appreciate that you consider my evidence open-mindedly, even when we do not agree at first, and even when we continue to disagree.
At times, you join your friends at the local anti-ICE protests, which take place in the city hall area of your tiny, comfortable town in your beautiful Western state. You and your friends are showing up, as you see it, for your “neighbors”; and you are “putting your bodies on the line”, which sensibility carries a pleasing echo of the advance guard of the Civil Rights movement of the early 1960s, which happened in your living memory.
This interpretation of what you are doing, no doubt feels good, as there are indeed too few roles for our elders to play, in our society, that tap their latent heroism and sense of devotedness to others.
You all also feel, I gather, that you are “engaging in radical compassion” – a phrase I have just started hearing from multiple sources, and one that worries me, for its neo-Marxist and implicitly extremist implications — and you are sure that you are all aligning with one another on the right side of history. You also, reasonably in some ways, are concerned that ICE agents have no badges and cover their faces.
I know that you and your protesting friends — who are of your generation, or of a generation younger; wearing North Face or REI jackets, and Ecuadoran-inspired, or actually indigenous-made, mittens, and headbands against the cold — greeting one another with happy smiles in the forbidding weather, uplifted by the energy of altruism — mean very well.
I know you see this as a simple David and Goliath conflict, with you all in the role of David.
But I think that interpretation of events is deceptive.
I also must note that your fellow anti-ICE protesters — like anti-ICE protesters across the country — are overwhelmingly white. You and your protesting friends are overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, upper middle class, or even wealthy.
ICE agents are often barely middle class — the starting salary for an ICE agent is as low as $33,400 – and that they average $32 an hour. I must also note that 49.3% of them are not white; the second most represented ethnic groups of ICE agents is Hispanic, and then African-American. More than fifteen per cent of ICE agents are disabled.
Nonetheless, you and your friends truly do believe that ICE is a lawless militia sent by someone whom you also truly believe is a quasi-Dictator.
Your news outlets and social media feeds communicate to you that ICE is attacking people who are here having committed an “administrative offense”, who are “our neighbors” who “just want to work” in our country. I understand that you feel sure that in “standing up” against ICE operating in your community, you are standing up against incipient or actual Fascism.
I applaud your civic energy, even as I think it sorely misguided in this situation.
You and your friends also believe that the protesters in Minnesota are simply peacefully using their First Amendment protected rights to have their say, and that the deaths of the late anti-ICE activists, poet Renee Good and VA nurse Alex Pretti, who both were shot to death in conflicts with ICE agents in Minnesota, are examples of the mayhem being wreaked by a lawless violence of a band of thugs.
When Alex Pretti was killed, you and I spoke about it by phone.
Our disagreement was too painful, so we stopped our phone conversation and signed off. You felt that Alex Pretti was murdered in cold blood.
I texted you, “Alex Pretti had a weapon with a loaded magazine.” Then I sent you this: a CNN article and video appearing to show that a Federal officer took a gun from Pretti just before the shooting that killed Pretti.
I texted: “If you don’t plan to use a weapon you don’t load it. Very dangerous situation.”
You reply via text:
“It was holstered. He was shot. The NRA spoke out against this.”
I texted back: “I don’t doubt it. But [Beloved Elder], bringing a loaded weapon to a protest is a very dangerous thing to do. Anyone aware of a loaded gun, holstered or not, will assume it’s a shooter situation.” (I should have texted “may assume.”)
Frustrated by the fact that the media to which you listen, often mis-represent original quotes, I tracked down what the NRA had actually said. I texted you then, `“In a separate social-media post, the NRA said, “As there is with any officer-involved shooting, there will be a robust and comprehensive investigation that takes place to determine if the use of force is justified….As we await these facts and gain a clearer understanding, we urge the political voices to lower the temperature to ensure their constituents and law enforcement officers stay safe.” The NRA is saying that there should be a full investiogation and that everyone should lower the temperature. That is not the same as condemning the shooting […]”‘
“[Beloved Elder],” I texted further, “I wish you and your friends would consider what it is like to live in a society without the rule of law. It’s a catastrophe, but especially for women, children and the elderly.
You have to see how difficult and dangerous it’s being made, for ICE to do their jobs enforcing US law. Which agai if you don’t like the law, change it.
But for now the law says that people here illegally must be detained and deported.
As is the case in almost all other countries.”
You replied by text:
“He had a license; he didn’t do anything to be shot 10 times and murdered.”
You also texted,
“He was murdered trying to protect a woman. They fired ten shots into him and murdered him. He did not deserve that.”
I see from your point of view, how black-and-white you see this situation to be.
But please consider that you may be wrong.
I have rarely brought up an issue as serious and impactful in regards to our shared future in this country, as the one I am broaching.
Beloved relative, I want you to understand that ICE is not a lawless militia. This is a really important point for you and your friends, and half the nation, to take on board.
ICE agents are not making up their own rules as they go along, or flouting the laws of our nation. I have written about lawless militias, and their dangers, since my book The End of America was published in 2007.
I know a lot about thugs and lawless state-sanctioned violence, about its nuances and its history.
Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini took over Italy, at that time a fragile democracy, by sending groups of Blackshirts, thugs, who obeyed no laws — who were acting externally to the existing laws of Italy. The Blackshirts surrounded voting booths and intimidated voters, often using violence. They strategically attacked key leaders of Italian civil society — newspaper editors, national political opposition leaders, local mayors; they beat them severely; they killed, tortured and threatened numberless members of Italian civil society. Their goal was to intimidate those — the judiciary, Parliamentarians, even the local police – who might otherwise bring them to justice.
This tactic worked so well, and so quickly, that when Mussolini marched on Rome in 1922, he was able to take over power because Parliamentarians were looking at his massed band of thugs, and knew that they were already defeated. The existing government resigned, and King Victor Emmanuel III simply handed over power.
Thousands of Blackshirts, with Benito Mussolini, march on Rome, October 1922: --->READ MORE HERE
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