For Their Sakes

Since President Donald Trump and his minions have begun laying siege to Americans cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and more, resistance has grown even as the blood has continued to flow.

The grisly videotaped murder, captured from multiple angles, of ICU VA nurse Alex Pretti on Saturday January 24 at the hands of border patrol agents has fueled calls for ICE funding to be paused. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer finally came around to asserting that Democrats would block a new appropriations bill giving more tax dollars to fund ICE operations.

From Keith Porter's New Year's Eve murder in Los Angeles at the hands of an off-duty abusive, homophobic, racist ICE officer, to the Minneapolis murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, to 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos's detention in Minneapolis, the list of victims continues to lengthen. And those are just the U.S. citizens. Immigrants, documented or not, have borne the brunt of ICE savagery including detention, and in-custody deaths and killings. The harm immigrants face has been less visible, yet is just as outrageous.

A few things come to mind when watching this horror show unfold:

1. Those of us who care about people, about human beings, need to stop distinguishing between US citizens and immigrants. Having papers does not make any of us any more human than the other. It is artificial distinctions such as nationality, paperwork, passports, birth certificates, work authorizations, green cards, and refugee status that states use to divide us and to demonize vulnerable people. When armed agents of the state target us, they care little about our papers. They care only if we stand in their way. And they will mow us down whether we are Black or white, man or woman or transgender, adult or child, disabled or able-bodied, documented or not. Our strength is our unity in rejecting such distinctions.
2. Those of us wishing for police or national guards to protect us from ICE goons are making artificial distinctions between fairly similar formations of armed agents of the state. Police have killed untold numbers of people, including unarmed people, and disproportionately Black and Brown people for generations. They did not slow down their killing after the 2020 racial justice uprisings, and they will not slow down as ICE terrorizes us now. There's a reason ICE officers wear the word "police" on their vests--they are no different from cops. If we care about ICE abuses but overlook police abuses, our moral compass is broken. A unifying demand to "Abolish all police, including ICE" is in all our best interests.
3. Now is the time to make abolitionist demands of the state, whether it's federal, state, or local governments. This means that when we protest, go on strike, or resist, we articulate clear demands to divest our tax dollars from policing and invest in the things that keep us all safe.

It's up to us to ensure there are no more victims, and to uphold the lives of those lost or hurt. For all their sakes, we keep fighting.