The deployment of federalized National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles clearly backfired for the Trump regime. So too did Trump’s elaborately planned military parade self-staged for his birthday. Instead of a show of power, we were treated to a performance of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” in which the self-deluded emperor marches in front of his subjects imagining himself draped in resplendent majesty. In fact, he Is wearing nothing at all. Everyone Is afraid to tell him until a child shouts, “The emperor has no clothes!” Even the soldiers in Trump’s birthday parade knew it: they barely marched, basically ambling along in what many interpreted as a subtle but resounding protest of the charade. Attendance was barely sparse.
On the flip side, the huge turnout for June 14’s No Kings demonstrations drew between one and two percent of the total population of the United States, somewhere in the 4-7 million range. In the two towns where I attended, rallies were even larger and more spirited than the successful rallies on April 5. And more and more prominent Americans, including retired military officers, have been denouncing the use of troops in L.A.
Beyond the heartening rallies and ludicrous parade, that weekend also witnessed the tragic murders of Minnesota House Speaker Jessica Hortman and her husband Mark and the same shooter’s wounding of State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette. The assassin was working from his own list of 70 potential targets. As Lisa Lerer wrote in The New York Times, “Slowly but surely, political violence has moved from the fringes to an inescapable reality. Violent threats and even assassinations, attempted or successful, have become part of the political landscape—a steady undercurrent of American life.” It would be naive or cynical to deny a link between this trend and the vitriol of Republican politics and Murdoch media, as well as this country’s infantile worship of guns. As if to underscore this, Utah’s Senator Mike Lee put up two posts that seemed to applaud the killings and mock the victims. (Jon Stewart’s commentary here). Despite the universal condemnation of Lee the real story is how his unhinged comments aligned with current standard Republican rhetoric.
The body politic is in critical condition. Rallies alone won’t restore it. So what can be done to oppose ICE and its Republican masters?
1. Local police must refuse to support ICE operations. The Juneteenth dispersal of a “procession” of SUVs attempting to gain entrance to Dodger statium is a brilliant example of how this can work. Suspected I.C.E. agents (who would only admit to being part of Homeland Security) were refused entry to Dodger Stadium by the Dodgers organization. A small crowd gathered to resist the agents’ incursion and then the LAPD arrived and the “caravan” left. Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security would admit that a sanctioned operation had been in place, claiming the whole thing was more or less a pit stop by Border Patrol agents who were just…there.
Yeah. Just there. As in “dozens of vehicles” immediately redirecting to another entrance once they were blocked at Vin Scully Drive. In a word, the Dodgers, protesters, and police spontaneously thwarted an obvious planned incursion into a major sporting event on a holiday celebrating the end of slavery in the U.S. No wonder ICE and Homeland offered up the ridiculous excuse that all those agents just happened to try to get through a security gate for…coffee?…a chat?…directions?…a glimpse of Shohei Ohtani? Or maybe they were there to arrest him as a suspect foreign national?
The police’s job is to serve and protect the public. They could block ICE vehicles engaged in illegal operations and let the courts sort the mess out case by case. Similarly they could prevent ICE from absconding with people once they were seized. On a less confrontational level, they can position themselves as a thick blue line between ICE agents and protesters defending I.C.E.’s targets. They should not enable ICE operations; allow illegal seizures of individuals; or disperse protesters using the usual “anti-riot”, i.e., often “riot-provoking”, methods. By the same token violent protesters can be arrested as individuals committing criminal acts, not as representatives of the entire anti-seizure action or protest movement: make the arrest but do not interfere with the protests.
2. Organize. Grass roots organization is the key to the long-term success of any social movement. In this respect, the extremist right wing has outplayed moderates, liberals, progressives, and traditional conservatives. Now we’re the ones who are inspired. Community networks can plan coherent responses to ICE’s appearance in your neighborhoods. Participate in groups such as Indivisible, a nationwide network of local self-directing chapters. Contact legislators with your concerns and support anti-MAGA candidates. Every gesture of resistance and statement of decency has the potential to snowball into something far greater than we imagined. Meet with your school board and school administrators to consider how best to protect students from, in effect, being kidnapped by ICE Connect with local immigrant support groups. Urge religious leaders to offer their centers as sanctuaries and speak out against these assaults on American rights and America’s residents, citizens and not-yet-citizens alike.
3. Flash mobs. A few dozen neighbors gathering to protect their own are simply not powerful enough to overcome ICE’s sanctioned threat of force, especially when police assist ICE Flash mob notifications can turn 50 people converging on ICE actions into thousands. If done in a disciplined, non-violent way, and with police maintaining a neutral separation of antagonistic parties, ICE’s job will be made almost impossible.
4. California Governor Newsom is a model for other city and state officials who, rather than considering the protests the “crisis”, address the real source of violence, the assault on immigrants and America’s most basic rights. If mayors, police chiefs, or governors stand openly against ICE, and back it up by thwarting them (barricades against entry into or exit from targeted communities, refusing exit from airports, etc.), then at the very least seizures will be slowed and perhaps eventually abandoned.
5. The military needs to withdraw the Marines from L.A., even if that means challenging Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s house-of-cards authority. Courage under fire is not the only courage the uniform demands.
6. The police who manhandled and arrested Senator Alex Padilla for questioning Kristi Noem at her press conference, and any official who sanctioned the action, should be arrested and charged with assault. This was clearly intended as a warning to all lawmakers, as were the arrests of Congresswoman LaMonica McIver on trumped up charges (watch the video in which McIver, in a red jacket, is shoved into an I.C.E. agent, making inadvertent contact not even worthy of an NBA foul call) or Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan for concealing an alleged illegal immigrant. The increasing normalization of such actions is the Republican goal. If left unanswered, we’ll soon see legislators, judges, and local officials dragged away as in any tinpot dictatorship.
When agents of the state openly and continuously seize, assault, imprison, mistreat, or deport individuals in blatant disregard for the law’s most fundamental principles, the country is basically declaring war against all its inhabitants, citizens and non-citizens alike—their ideas, moral and spiritual beliefs, freedom of expression, sanctity of their bodies. The lesson has been driven home countless times throughout history. When such cruelty and violence against one group becomes acceptable, then, as John Donne wrote four centuries ago, “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Donne was referring to death itself but the death of one’s own freedom is almost as grievous a loss. And now it is, indeed, tolling for “thee and me”.
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