What About Protests? Are They an Adequate Response?
This Monday, two days after the second murder of an American citizen by ICE in Minnesota, the weather is big news—a massive snowstorm hit half the country. Also making headlines: we now know who will play in the Super Bowl (New England and Seattle).
The killing of Alex Pretti remains an important story, but it is no longer the story. The earlier murder of Renee Good receives less attention each day.
There have been some decent articles and editorials over the past few days which focus on Alex Pretti’s death in Minneapolis. For example, three columnists at the New York Times (Lydia Polgreen, David French and Michelle Goldberg) have stepped up their rhetoric. Ms. Goldberg made the strongest statement, saying (“if I could vote in a referendum tomorrow for a national divorce from MAGA strongholds, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”). Bravo, Michelle—I’m with you on secession. Though it won’t be easy or clean, at this point it’s the likeliest outcome.
Unfortunately, the other two columnists still aren’t there quite yet. Polgreen is “heartened” by the community response in Minnesota. French, who in 2020 published a book on the possibility of secession (Divided We Fall), said he didn’t think secession was imminent but he found it difficult to be hopeful nonetheless. Both he and Goldberg agreed with Polgreen that the citizens of Minnesota are an inspiration. And all three columnists support reducing the power of ICE, by removing their masks and their immunities, limiting their jurisdiction and restraining their tactics, all of which can be accomplished through legislation, they say. If you did a double take reading that last bit, I don’t blame you—legislation hasn’t accomplished anything so far. Despite that fact, the Times itself, in an editorial which ran yesterday, is calling on Congress to help “re-establish public faith in the agencies and officers who are carrying out Mr. Trump’s crackdown on immigration.” The editorial was titled “The Trump Administration is Lying to Our Faces. Congress Must Act.”
So, the net result of the Times’s coverage of the latest ICE murder is to summon Congress to pass legislation to fix it. No wonder David French finds it difficult to be hopeful.
As we move forward into the week, coverage of the Pretti killing will begin to fade (unless, God forbid, ICE kills someone else over the next few days). Our attention will likely wander, too.
That is why the best commentary I’ve seen on the Pretti murder comes from Francine Prose in the Guardian. Ms. Prose is an accomplished novelist as well as a columnist, which may be why she has a better grasp of how and where things are moving.
So let me break it down, Prose writes. There is one story: our country is on the brink of an authoritarian takeover. In Minneapolis an innocent poet and an ER nurse at a VA hospital were both killed in cold blood by federal agents. It is happening now. Toddlers are being sent to detention centers; videos of their gyms for kids recall the youth choruses that the Nazis so proudly showed off at the Terezín concentration camp. Intimidation and violence are being weaponized against the citizens of Minneapolis, some of whom are afraid to leave their houses for fear of being beaten, arrested and shackled, regardless of whether they are US citizens or asylum seekers or people from another country peacefully living and working here for decades.
It should also be noted that Ms. Prose does not call on Congress to magically fix the situation, or indeed to do anything at all for the moment, a more realistic expectation. She does call on the rest of us to initiate a national strike, saying that despite the difficulty in doing this, if we don’t act quickly and collectively throughout the entire country now, it may soon be too late. Please think about those words.
Meanwhile, a federal judge in Minnesota will hear arguments today on whether to end the current ICE operation in that state. I wish her luck.