Ah, well, another day, another dollar short. There were all sorts of protests on Saturday, from small to large, and they went unnoticed by me. Sunday’s were missed too. But there will be more. They can’t hold all of us back. And they will be peaceful. ‘No Kings’ gave us the start and support. ‘ICE Out’ is our guidance now. We will do what we can to the ICE bullies, and we will be inexorable. With appreciation for Raw Story:
hundreds of demonstrations took place in cities large and small across the United States on Saturday to denounce the killing of Renee Nicole Good by a federal immigration enforcement officer last week in Minneapolis. The wave of “ICE Out for Good” protests arrives as a consolidated expression of outrage directed at President Donald Trump for his authoritarian tactics, cruel policies, and a lawlessness seemingly without end.
Just a day after Good was killed in Minnesota, two other people were shot and wounded by federal agents in Portland, Oregon. “Renee Nicole Good and the Portland victims are just the most recent victims of ICE’s reign of terror,” said the 50501 movement, one of the groups behind the weekend protests, said in a statement. “ICE has brutalized communities for decades, but its violence under the Trump regime has accelerated.”
Hell yes it has! We all have a list of events that were done by ICE, and we don’t forget the people who were demeaned by ICE. We remember Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who has become the face of ICE and government rule-breaking. We are now ‘officially’ at the ‘there are no rules for what ICE can do’. That’s unnerving. Yet if each one of us could do something against them, even if it’s blow a whistle, it would be overwhelming. So we need to dig around online and find something we can do. Numbers count, after all.
The killing of Good by Jonathan Ross, a 10-year veteran of the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agency, came just days after Trump’s unlawful military attack on Venezuela which culminated in the arrest of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Many who protested Saturday noted that the two events are deeply related as they epitomize the increasingly violent nature of the president’s second term. .
Also notable is how the act of war against Venezuela and the killing of Good bookended the fifth anniversary of the Trump-backed insurrection that took place on January 6, 2021. While many marked that occasion with solemn remembrances,the Trump administration released a fabricated version of the day that was denounced as Orwellian and as gaslighting of the highest form.
Let’s just not get started on the whitewashed website, which is of Trump’s perception, not ours. They were not patriots. They were rioters. It’s interesting about the two events bookending the anniversary of the insurrection. It’s showing that violence is the new normal, and we’d best get used to it. But we don’t ever want to get to the point where we accept violence as ho-hum, every day, ‘oh, it’s ICE screwing around again’. They are hurting *people*. We *need* to remember that. We don’t want to get to the point of just walking by while someone is pinned to the ground by 3 or 4 goons.
As Mother Jones’ David Corn wrote on Thursday: “The military assault on Venezuela, the shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE agent, the launch of the White House’s new revisionist website about January 6—these three events convey a powerful and unsettling message from Donald Trump and his crew: Violence is ours to use, at home and abroad, to get what we want.” //// “It feels like maybe we’re hitting a tipping point,” 49-year-old Ben Person, who marched in Minneapolis, told the New York Times. //// “We’re here to say f–k Trump, abolish ICE, arrest Jonathan Ross, impeach [Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem, and bring justice to anyone who’s ever been wronged by the patriarchy and fascist communities,” another demonstrator in Minneapolis told Status Coup News.
“We will meet them in the streets, in the courts, at the day labor corners. We will meet them everywhere. And we will win. We are not afraid or discouraged. And we will not be defeated,” Alvarado added. “The more we stand together as a community of determination and love, the harder it will be for them to divide and destroy us.”
‘Nuff said. Together we stand, divided we fall. This has gone beyond everything our country stands for. Return violence is not the answer because it will escalate, and Trump will get to call martial law on us. Protesting, alerting that ICE is in the area, and peaceful yet firm pushback are the way to go. We *all* need to do what we can. Mine may only be writing, but it’s still something. United we stand. ICE Out For Good.
Friends, I know everyone begs you for money. I promise, among all those asking for spare change, we are the smallest and the hardest working. We’re a group of old, disabled people, except for one writer in his mid-50s. The rest of us are in our sixties and seventies, and this is a labor of love. All we’re asking for is the chance to keep telling the truth about Trump and help ensure democracy survives. If you can help, please do. Thank you. Ursula
