To Kill A VA Nurse

It was supposed to be a weekend of solidarity and triumph, celebrating when tens of thousands of Minnesotans held a one day general strike on Friday, January 23^rd demanding ICE end its occupation of Minneapolis. Despite freezing temperatures Minnesotans rallied in huge, inspiring numbers, as always peaceful, despite the constant provocations of the invading ICE force. The collective response from the Twin cities has been nothing short of miraculous.

The very next day ICE agents attacked, beat, and executed on camera Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old VA ICU nurse as he filmed ICE thugs and tried to help a woman they’d assaulted. Alex was peaceful, he served his community, he was exercising his first and second amendment rights, he was heroic, his last words were, “are you ok?” He did everything right and he was shot 10 times on camera after being violently subdued by multiple ICE agents.

In an increasingly familiar Orwellian fashion, administration officials like Kristi Noem, Greg Bovino and Steven Miller, etc. all immediately lied about the killing, asserting “facts” which were blatantly contradicted by available video evidence, and labeling Alex a domestic terrorist, like Renee Good before him. Even knowing this is their well-trod authoritarian playbook, even knowing the violence is a feature, not a bug, it’s still shocking to see every time.

So many thoughts: How did we get here? How can it still be shocking after all this time? What can be done to stop this? Is this coming for someone I know? For me?

So many emotions: Hope. Fear. Sadness. Rage.

This is what authoritarian rule looks like. Minneapolis is under occupation, with ICE operations spreading across the country. People are kidnapped off the streets or randomly subjected to violence and intimidation by masked agents. Children used as bait. Civil and constitutional rights are violated with abandon under increasingly thin pretenses. ICE is a lawless, fascistic agency spreading secret training memos which allege agents can ignore the constitution and wreaking stochastic terror on the citizens to subvert democracy. Concentration camps are being run in America housing >70,000 people and DHS hasn’t paid for prisoners healthcare since October, with reports of torturing people into being “voluntarily deported.” We don’t know how many people have died. And this is only the smallest tip, of social, civil, environmental, political and economic disasters perpetrated by this nihilistic, criminal, MAGA death cult which has taken over our government.

Despite all the horrors we’ve been subjected to over the last year of Trump, however, this past weekend felt different. The sheer blatantness of Pretti’s execution and the brazenness of the administration’s lies may have been a bridge too far, even for many Republicans. The outrage has been palpable across the country, and it’s clear public sentiment is turning strong against Trump on these ICE terror campaigns. Abolish ICE has recently been polling at a net positive (46% to 41%), and even police officers are beginning to speak out, if only because their own non-white officers are being targeted by ICE. Enough pressure has been generated that today the Trump administration has had to backtrack on its vilification campaign of Good and Pretti, and seems to be (?) demoting Bovino and sidelining Noem in favor of Homan. ICE is cracking a bit from the pressure.

Public sentiment has reached such a fevered pitch that it’s even forced Democratic leadership to come out of hibernation. Democratic House members who just days ago voted to fund DHS/ICE in the omnibus spending bill are now apologizing for the vote (too late, primary them), and Chuck Schumer is being forced to hold the Democratic line in the upcoming Senate vote with a promise to shut down the government if ICE funding isn’t paused. At this point, it's the bare minimum he can do without actively collaborating with Trump.   

As MN Governor Walz said in a recent press conference,

“To Americans who are watching this right now — and I don’t know, maybe you’re watching with curiosity, bewilderment, horror, scorn or sympathy — I got a question for all of you: What side do you want to be on? The side of an all-powerful federal government that can kill, injure, menace and kidnap its citizens off the streets? Or on the side of a nurse at the VA hospital who died bearing witness to such government? Or the side of a mother whose last words were, ‘I’m not mad at you’? The side of tens of thousands of peaceful citizens who showed up to march when the windchill was 40 below because they love this state and they love this country?”

Is the camel’s back trembling?

Still, we shouldn’t kid ourselves. Any backtracking of the administration, or internal fighting is currently not over ICE’s lawlessness, but Trump officials’ losing the media narrative. Removing certain high-profile and incendiary figures like Bovino from Minneapolis is not accountability, merely redeploying these forces outside of the lime-light. ICE’s budget and ranks are still growing, and its mission clearly isn’t immigration enforcement, something AG Pam Bondi let slip when she offered to remove ICE from Minneapolis if state voter rolls were turned over. It’s clear that Trump and his goons want to use ICE to subvert the rule of law, intimidate the population, and interfere with our electoral process, all to avoid accountability for their crimes.

So what is to be done? The defensive solidarity tactics on display in Minneapolis are a good starting place with a proven track record: Establish neighborhood watches with whistles distributed throughout the community. Come to the aid of any community member. Follow and record ICE at a distance, don’t let their actions or movements go unnoticed or unrecorded. Bring meals and do grocery shopping for vulnerable community members. Activities like these build solidarity, (partially) shield the most vulnerable, and keep the public’s eyes on ICE atrocities. Tactics which, we’ve already seen have the administration floundering publicly. Now is the time to increase the pressure!

However, observation and public attention alone won’t stop this administration’s thuggery, nor save our democracy,. We risk turning resistance into hopelessness when ICE comes to your community if unaccompanied by more proactive efforts. This doesn’t mean violence, our opposition has a greater capacity for that than we ever could. But instead examining the political, economic and social “pillars of support” which allow ICE and the Trump administration at large, to operate. Pillars of support for ICE include the hotels they sleep in, the cars they rent to get around in, and the restaurants they buy their food from. All of these businesses can be pressured to drop support for ICE, and hobble the agency from using their businesses. Lobby your city council to do construction in front of ICE buildings and demand accountability for ICE from politicians at every level. The goal is to make it as difficult as possible (legally) for ICE to operate in your community.

Fundamentally, though this is an administration that only responds to one thing: Money. Unless we can threaten the bottom lines of the oligarchy, they won’t abandon Trump. The resistance in Minneapolis understands this, and are already calling for a second, one-day general strike, this coming Friday, January 30^th. These one day actions won’t be enough on their own, but they are good practice, building the muscle of economic solidarity. You can also grow that muscle each Tuesday! Together these weekly strikes and economic protests are a one-two punch, that if maintained could build into a powerful movement of labor and consumers that can throw off this authoritarian regime and bring back a government that represents, instead of terrorizes, it’s people! Don’t shop on Tuesday!

#DSOT