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We staggered through the darkest ever ostensible celebration of American independence mournfully grappling with what Rev. William Barber calls the "all-out attack on who we even claim we are trying to be." A tireless pillar of righteous rage, he takes a long, moral view and a tough, simple stand on fighting for our rights and moving forward from catastrophe: "All of us have to find our way together now." Hopefully, we'd add, with brass bands accompanying us.
The good Rev. Barber, of course, comes to the fight against fascism armed with far more moral clarity and fortitude than most of the rest of us. His battle, both "a moral rebellion against Trump’s America" and against a deeper, longtime "architecture of inequality" since Frederick Douglas asked, "What to the slave is the 4th of July?" confronts a politics wed to nationalism, capitalism, exploitation and, in an especially "unholy relationship," religion, even as masked goons disappear our neighbors.
For the rest of us, Barber's resolve to bear witness, to build "a memory that resists the lie," takes many other, often mundane forms. We blunder forward as best we can. We seek strength and solace in small joys - friends, dogs, gardens, nature and solidarity - increasingly, at protests around the country, with music, often tubas. Kurt Vonnegut, always wise, was on it: "If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: ‘The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.'"
In St. Louis, the Funky Butt Band sang This Land Is Your Land. In Auburn CA, people sang Les Miserables' soaring Do You Hear the People Sing? In New York, the Street Beat Brass Band play; in Minneapolis, since George Floyd's murder, it's Brass Solidarity with This Little Light of Mine and I Wish I Knew How It Feels To Be Free. In Atlanta on No Kings Day, exuberant tubas drowned out the Proud Boys with Bella Ciao, a 19th-century Italian folk song turned anthem of freedom and resistance.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
In Somerville MA, the Good Trouble Brass Band has joined forces with the Boston Area Brigade of Activist Musicians (BABAM) for parades and protests in "a tradition of resilience and community" to contribute "something that is loud and joyful." And here in Portland ME we boast and love our Ideal Maine Social Aid & Sanctuary Band - "Easy tunes with friendly people" - a community activist, consensus-governed band in the New Orleans street band tradition spreading joy and advocacy since 2017.
They've played and marched at pride, homelessness, voting rights, abortion rights, Veterans for Peace events; at puppet slams, neighborhood gigs like Porchfest; a fabulous, four-tiered May Day gala; food coop, bike coalition, park conservancy parties; at a small, moving, buoyant Kneeling Photo Art Project - "We Kneel For An Equitable Future" - four years ago during a COVID winter, in their masks and down coats and sailor caps. Searing echoes of make love and music, not war and fascism.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Entirely aptly, these messengers of hope, rage joy offer diverse music, from Civil Rights- era anthems to old folk faves to Brass Band classics. Adding some spice is feverish new entrant from left field, Boston's Celtic punk rock band Dropkick Murphys. Longtime, blue-collar supporters of workers' and veterans' rights, they've been bringing their furious energy to protests; says front man Ken Casey “I think everything we’ve been doing for the past 30 years was a kind of warm-up for the moment we’re in.”
The hardscrabble Casey - from a recent show: "This Magger guy in the audience was waving his fucking Trump hat in people’s faces, and I could just tell he wanted to enter into discourse with me...I’m not going to shut up, just out of spite” - was raised by his grandfather. His foundational lesson: "If I ever see you bullying someone, I’ll kick the shit out of you. And if I ever see you back down from a bully, I’ll kick the shit out of you." On July 4th, they released new album For the People. Its fiery first single, Who’ll Stand With Us? and a quick-cut, seething video are a gut-punch call-out against fascist scumbags and oligarchs, with all the fury the moment demands. Just whew. Onward, evidently.
Through crime and crusade
Our labor, it’s been stolen
We’ve been robbed of our freedom
We’ve been held down and beholden
To the bosses and bankers
Who never gave their share
Of any blood
Of any sweat
Of any tears
Who’ll stand with us?
Don’t tell us everything is fine
Who’ll stand with us?
Because this treatment is a crime
The working people fuel the engine
While you yank the chain
We fight the wars and build buildings
For someone else’s gain.
So tell me
Who will stand with us?
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Plunging to new lows of "cartoonish cruelty" in our fascist reality show, MAGA just voted for our "most deeply immoral piece of legislation," depriving millions of food and health care as their fuehrer celebrated the launch of a scorched-swamp, mosquito-infested concentration camp - "Let's feed people to alligators!" - to detain millions more for overlooking the paperwork in their search for a better life. And there's merch! Fact: "Snakes in the Everglades got nothin' on the vermin in our government."
The Senate's barely-there approval - fuck Shady Vance - of Trump's heinous 900-page bill represents the largest transfer of wealth to the rich in U.S. history along with the largest cut to Medicaid and food assistance, all in the obscene name of (partly) funding a $975 billion tax break for the already richest 1%. The bill, "a tipping point between normality and fascism," also pours over $170.7 billion into "a campaign of extermination against immigrants that evokes the greatest human rights atrocities of the past," funding the hiring of vastly more Nazi thugs to terrorize, humiliate and put in cages millions of brown people who do much of this country's work.
It will kick about 16 million people off health insurance by cutting over $1 trillion from Medicaid, because who needs health insurance. It will throw millions of poor families, veterans, the elderly and disabled off SNAP by cutting $285 billion in food assistance, because who needs food. It will cut funding to rural hospitals, nursing homes, student loans, wind and solar energy - electric bills will soar 30% - costing millions of jobs and adding almost $4 trillion to the national debt, to be paid by our children and grandchildren, one of many excellent reasons it's said to be the most unpopular legislation since passage of the economically disastrous Embargo Act of 1807.
Bernie Sanders calls it, "The most dangerous piece of legislation in the modern history of our country.” Decrying the GOP's "obsession" with stripping people of health care, Maine Sen. Angus King calls it "disgusting..I have never seen a bill this irresponsible, regressive and downright cruel." To longtime Sen. Chris Murphy, it's "the most deeply immoral piece of legislation I have ever voted on in my entire time in Congress." Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said passage of a bill "cooked up in back rooms, cloaked in fake numbers (that) loots our country (for) the least deserving people you could imagine feels (like) a crime scene...When I first got here, this chamber filled me with awe and wonderment. Today, I feel disgust.”
The bill is so bad the GOP delayed cuts to Medicaid until after the mid-terms, and had to bribe its own members with perks to pass it; Alaska's Lisa Murkowski won the I Got Mine, Jack award by getting exemptions for her state and then complaining about how bad the bill is. To many, even worse than its craven kowtowing to oligarchs is its grotesque billions bestowed on a brutal, unprecedented white nationalist drive to dehumanize, criminalize and rip apart millions of families deemed undesirable by the color of their skin - and, eventually, likely their political persuasions - by making ICE, America's SS, the highest-funded law enforcement agency in a now-barbaric federal government.
The bill boosts the ranks of roaming Nazi henchmen by nearly 50%, with $8 billion slated to hire 10,000 more over five years (with signing bonuses!). ICE detention will get $45 billion more, a staggering 365% increase; "removal" gets $14.4 billion, a 500% surge; enforcement (see henchmen) almost $30 billion, up threefold, but we definitely can't afford to feed hungry kids. Billions more will build new camps, ramp up flights, double beds to 100,000, and round up more (hungry) terrified kids to meet a goal of 3,000 arrests a day. Of those, despite the absurd, enduring claim of targeting "the worst" violent criminals, maybe 8% have committed crimes; even ICE data shows over 93% are guiltless of anything but crossing the border.
The rabid stalking of migrants has given Republicans "license to be as openly racist as possible." Moving on from pet-eating Haitians, Scott Bessent sneered New York is turning into "Caracas on the Hudson"; on an image of its new mayor Zohran Mamdani eating with his hands, Texas' Brandon Gill, who's evidently never met a burger, sniped, "Civilized people in America don't eat like this - go back to the Third World"; and Trump already threatened to arrest "communist" Mamdani, blathering, "A lot of people are saying he’s here illegally." (Not.) Witless Tommy Tuberville called the residents of sanctuary cities "inner-city rats" we should "send back home"; Paul Krugman, home-grown but Jewish with a bi-racial wife: "We’re all rats now."
Thus do we have once-vibrant Hispanic communities from New York to L.A. now largely shut down, with frightened residents carrying passports to the corner store, keeping their kids inside until dark, or not venturing out at all for fear of abduction by masked gangs. Farmworkers across the country, up to 80% foreign-born and perhaps half undocumented, are also staying home: "If they show up to work, they don’t know if they will ever see their family again." In California, which grows much of our fruit and vegetables, those crops can go bad in one day as farmers struggle to harvest what they've grown. Experts say that many, already barely breaking even, will likely fold.
Meanwhile, ICE's daily atrocities - and the ensuing trauma - go on apace. A 75-year-old Cuban man here for 60 years died in custody, the 13th death this year; Tom Homan shrugged: "People die in ICE custody." Jacked-up stormtroopers assaulted workers at Home Depot and a woman selling tacos, tossing tear gas as they peeled away. They arrested the wrong mother of two as her kids tried to stop them. In Texas, they detained a preschool teacher with her three-year-old outside a courtroom. In L.A., they took a Honduran mother at a hearing with two children, one a six-year-old with leukemia; they've been held in Texas for weeks, the sick boy getting sicker, and she's filed the first lawsuit challenging the carnage.
And so, because it's still not enough cruelty for these ghouls, to Alligator Auschwitz, a steamy, "sadistic one-stop deportation shop" of tents filled with cages of bunk beds soon thronged with humans in a predator-replete swamp, a "concentration camp without the culpability of execution chambers" pitilessly "designed to enact suffering,” and help sick racists feel good about their whiteness. Set on a disused "shit-hole airstrip" in Florida's vast Everglades, the "bloodcurdlingly-monikered," built-in-8-days "Alligator Alcatraz” is surrounded by swampland brimming with alligators and Burmese pythons in a flood-prone, bug-plagued area where summer temps routinely top 100 degrees, rendering it "a calculatedly provocative celebration of the dystopian."
Tents in an environmentally treasured nature preserve often hit by floods, tropical storms and hurricanes at a time the regime has decimated the agency that warns about those events, operated by a likewise-decimated FEMA and commanded by haphazardly- deputized, wildly ill-qualified members of the National Guard serving as "deportation judges" - what could possibly go wrong? Set to cost almost half a billion dollars a year - but no, we really can't afford to feed hungry children - the barbed-wire re-invention of World War ll Japanese Internment Camps, with a fresh touch of El Salvador's CECOT, evidently fulfills Republicans' most fervent wet dream: To feed immigrants to animals.
On Tuesday, touring this "beyond horrifying" showcase of ruthlessness - initial intake 1,000, ultimately 5,000 - the cartoon villains who created it proudly paraded in: Nazi Barbie, Stephen Goebbels, Ron DeFascist and Trump with a botched make-up line that made him look like The Joker. He delightedly handed the floor to "our superstar," the sociopathic Miller, who praised the use of "novel legal and diplomatic tools," along with building death camps and letting ICE goons rampage through terrorized communities, to "deliver on a 50-year hope and dream of the American people to secure the border," at least on the repulsive planet he inhabits, and we wish he'd go back to.
On her foul planet, replicating her photo-op before CECOT's shaved-head detainees in her illegal $50,000 Rolex, ICE Barbie is still somehow celebrating her imaginary "going after murderers and rapists and traffickers." Tuesday she even added an alleged cannibal they'd put on a plane home who "started to eat himself," arguing he was "the kind of deranged individuals on our streets (that) we're trying to get out of our country because they are so deranged, they don't belong here." Hmm. Ever hard-core, she's also busy menacing one patriot for a nifty ICE Block app: "This sure looks like obstruction of justice - if you obstruct our brave law enforcement, we will hunt you down."
Just before her visit, her "reptile-run Gestapo" shared an AI-generated Alligator Alcatraz image featuring smirking alligators in ICE caps; Noem giddily posted, "Coming soon!" Americans recoiled. "Have you ever wondered what it would have looked like if Hitler's SS had social media?" asked one. Many suggested putting the people who built the atrocity in it; others decried MAGA's dehumanized trolling about concentration camps: "History is repeating - just with better branding." One: "Posting memes that boast about the manner in which people will die if they try to escape the undoubtedly inhumane conditions that will become the norm in a facility (gives) major "Alligator Auschwitz" vibes."
The visit came exactly a year after SCOTUS declared Trump above the law. Standing before cages in a dumb Gulf of America cap, the eternal victim sneered "Biden wanted me in here, that son of a bitch," but "it didn't work out that way." He called Noem "elegant" and "an unbelievable horse person" (umm) before happily noting "they have a lot of cops in the form of alligators" to "keep people where they’re supposed to be." He praised his grotesque cohorts - “It’s really government working together, I'm proud of them" - made zigzag moves with his pudgy hands - "We’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator" - and opined, "A little controversial, but I couldn’t care less.”
A dead-eyed, servile DeSantis outlined the task - "intake, process, then deport" - and hailed the camp about to hold human beings who did nothing wrong: "This is as secure as it gets." He added, “This is a model, but we need other states to step up." Meanwhile, his state's party of zombies is so into it they're selling depraved merch - t-shirts, drink cozies - for "Florida’s gator-guarded prison for illegal aliens...It's a one-way ticket to regret." One appalled observer: "That's some Idi Amin stuff right there." Much like Trump on Fox, extolling his latest grotesquerie and airily explaining on potential migrant escapes, "They'll just get eaten by wildlife. I guess that's the concept."
There's more. Amidst performative acts of political intimidation, he's mused, "We also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time...many born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here too" - maybe including Musk: "We'll have to take a look." He's selling $249 perfume, "a rallying cry in a bottle...They're all about winning, strength and success." He's musing about nationwide alligator-themed camps: "They might morph into a system where you're going to keep it for a long time,” citing facilities to "handle (some) of the most vicious people on the planet." Observers: "Consider the Alligator Alcatraz gear on sale (before) deciding who are the most vicious people on the planet."
And he's losing what's left of his putrid mind. Asked about a timeline for detainees, he raved: "In Florida? I'm going to spend a lot. This is my home state. I love it." He "fixed up the little Oval Office, I make it - it's like a diamond," he has "a nice little cottage to stay at," he pays lots of fictional taxes, everyone in New York is leaving. "I'll be here as much as I can," he ended. "Very nice question." Lawrence O'Donnell on "the banality of their cruelty," the "utter emptiness of his mind," notably on the virtually ignored day USAID ends, with its expected millions of deaths, its "worldwide campaign of cruelty in their name." Others: "But her emails. I didn't like her laugh. Biden was too old." Now here we are: "A more loathsome fuck never walked the earth."
And on Wednesday, Alligator Alcatraz already began flooding.
As evidence mounts the reckless, illegal, peace-through-stupidity attack on Iran's nuclear sites did not in fact "OBLITERATE" them and could be perilous, the moronic man-child lurches, rages, yammers on with deranged declarations - THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT! CNN is scum! Prosecute Dems! - duly parroted by his rabid flunkies: "Wave American Flags!" Still, they go lower and crasser: Who had a juvenile White House resurrecting Vince Vance & The Valiants' Bomb Iran on their Clown Show Bingo Card?
After Israel finally got a U.S. president dumb enough to bomb Iran if they did - and to take his Very Serious strategic geo-political leads from what Fox News was saying - the TV-game-show-host-in chief who'd always wanted to be in a war as long as he didn't have to, you know, be in it violated U.S. and international law by launching strikes on Iran's three largest nuclear sites without legally mandated Congressional approval to do so, probably after both Israel and Iran went to him with tears in their eyes and said, "Please sir, you're the only one who can save us." Then, with only early, flimsy reports coming in, he swiftly proclaimed it "ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY" and a "PERFECT FLIGHT" and "total Obliteration for years and years" by "genius people in the military" and "it was my great honor to Destroy All Nuclear facilities & capability, and STOP THE WAR!” Uh huh
After declaring a yuge fake victory, he declared a yuge fake ceasefire - which he evidently thought was like pressing the button on the Resolute Desk for Diet Coke, or like Michael Scott in The Office yelling, "I declare bankruptcy!" - by announcing that both Iran and Israel, now that they'd "gotten it all out of their 'system,'" had agreed to “a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE” that would lead to “an Official END to THE 12 DAY WAR." He excitedly added, "CONGRATULATIONS WORLD, ITS TIME FOR PEACE!" (No, really, he did.) "THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT! DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect! Thank you for your attention to this matter! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.”
The announcement, "friendly plane wave" and all, took not just Israel and Iran but his own advisers by surprise, probably because the so-called leader of the free world is a batshit crazy, power-mad, 12-year-old living in a fever dream reality show who thinks saying something, no matter how delusional, makes it so. It didn't. Iran promptly said, "As of now, there is NO ‘agreement’ on any cessation of military operations." Israel, despite all those impressive CAPS, promptly dropped a load of bombs that the ignored, enraged ringmaster for the 7,846th time called "the likes of which I've never seen before." "Israel has to calm down," he testily told reporters. "These are two countries fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing" - a blaring pot/kettle allusion that most of the sentient world savagely noted and mocked, but he somehow missed.
Still, reality came calling. Emerging assessments - from U.S. intelligence, European leaders, media like The Financial Times, New York Times, CNN - found the attacks did less-than-obliterating damage, likely only setting back the nuclear program a few months and leaving the stockpile "largely intact.” Evidence, including photos of trucks lined up the day before removing uranium enriched material to unknown sites, suggest Iran knew the attacks were coming. Other questions linger: Maybe Fordow wasn't a major site, maybe the bombs didn't go deep enough to inflict serious damage, etc. Meanwhile, Iran charged the U.S. had "crossed a very big red line," suspended cooperation with nuclear watchdog agencies, and, experts say, may have decided to move ahead with a nuclear weapon having learned that diplomacy is "reversible, fragile and vulnerable to changes in leadership in Washington."
With the rest of us now facing what Gestapo Barbie calls "a heightened threat environment" thanks to a clusterfuck regime of clowns who make Dr. Strangelove look like a statesman, the inept juvenile who failed at casinos, steak, water, wine and now war just keeps blustering: "The sites (were) totally destroyed and everyone knows it," "It's called obliteration. No other military on Earth could have done it," "an unbelievable hit by genius pilots," "It’s gone for years, years. Inside, it’s all collapsed. Nobody can get in. It's a room that has ten million tons of rock in it." Also, he gloated, it was just like Hiroshima: "That hit ended the war. And this was essentially the same thing.” Finally, for any lingering doubts or discomfiting facts, blame "Fake News," with ZERO CREDIBILITY!” who are "scum....They're bad people. They're sick," including a CNN reporter who should be "thrown out 'like a dog."
Puffed up, he also urged the trial of fellow felon Netanyahu be "CANCELLED, IMMEDIATELY" to save a "Great Hero," because America "saved" Israel and "now it is going to be the United States of America that saves" Bibi." At NATO, he told a head-swiveling, wildly under-reported story about Iran asking if it was OK they shoot 14 retaliatory missiles at the U.S. military base in Qatar at 1 o'clock. "They were very nice," Trump burbled. "They gave us warning...I said it's fine," despite America's alleged commander-in-chief agreeing to be bombed sure sounds like treason to us. "I am pleased to report that NO Americans were harmed, and hardly any damage was done...There will, hopefully, be no further HATE." He also sagely explained that everyone was taken off the base "except the gunners - they call them the gunners." At his side, Marco Rubio looks like Homer Simpson trying to melt into bushes.
Still, lacking alternatives, the minions have gamely climbed on board. Press Barbie screeched the attack was an "overwhelming success - everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets," but spent more time trashing a CNN reporter who suggested it wasn't. Drunken Pete, even angrier and more unhinged, proclaimed the strikes "the most complex and secretive military operation in history" - except how Iran knew about them and D-Day's Allied invasion of France took a year's planning, 156,000 soldiers, 195,700 navy personnel, and the cooperation of 13 nations - and launched a furious diatribe for an audience of one against mean media for seeking accurate information, aka "hunting for scandals," insulting Dear Leader and "brave pilots," and trying to "manipulate the public mind" rather than "talk about how special America is" and "Wave an American flag." What a belligerent asshole.
Trump loved it, praising "one of the greatest, most professional, and - running out of adjectives besides "beautiful" and "strong" - most 'confirming' News Conferences I have ever seen!" Less entertainingly, he simply ignored diverging assessments of the U.S. intelligence community - a move former CIA Director Leon Panetta called "a very scary prospect" - dismissed the whistleblower who leaked them as a “low-level loser” while "declaring a war on leakers," announced he will (illegally, irrationally) limit classified information he shares with Congress despite no evidence the leaks came from Congress, the next day charged Dems leaked the information and "they should be prosecuted!" - this from the idiots who leaked actual war plans on Signal - and jabbered that the photos of trucks lined up at nuclear sites were those of "concrete workers trying to cover up the tops of the shafts." Say what?
Improbably, even without SCOTUS madness, it keeps getting weirder and worse. After NATO Sec. General Mark Rutte made a cringe joke about Trump as "Daddy," MAGA picked up and ran with the grotesque "Daddy" shtick: The White House posted a "Daddy's home" video, Fox giddily smirked that, thanks to those cool, pointless big-boy bombs being dropped, Republicans are "back to being the Daddy party - he gets things done," hideous orange Daddy merch instantly materialized. The final, puerile, demented abomination (for this week), like something from The Whitest Kids U' Know: He posted a 1995 parody video of the Beach Boys' Barbara Ann by Vince Vance & The Valiants called Bomb Iran: "Went to a mosque/ Gonna throw some rocks." Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. His country's stunned response: "Bro, how the fuck is this real?" Honestly, we have no idea.
New war hysteria looms, yet still armed, masked, unnamed stormtroopers roam the land, keeping us safe from "the worst of the worst illegal alien criminals" by abducting nefarious landscapers, car wash workers, Wal Mart greeters, tamale makers, swap meet fans and distraught mothers of children with cancer. As glorified "state-sanctioned intimidation" turns some terrified Latino neighborhoods into ghost towns, "Day by passing day, we are watching what amounts to a national police riot by ICE."
In our new Police States of America, the chilling images are everywhere: Throngs of burly, ill-trained, rifle-toting bullies cosplaying as soldiers, storming a car wash or Home Depot in their fearless face masks, headphones, neck gaiters, camo helmets, armored vests, mirrored sunglasses, dime-store badges, tight t-shirts and tough-guy walkie-talkies to round up and terrorize whatever brown-skinned innocents they can find into unmarked cars and then, whoosh just like Fast and Furious, into unknown, possibly illegal, probably distant detention camps. Who are these louts? Nobody knows. Operating under an ominous "shroud of opacity" lacking any accountability, they could be any racist losers with a penchant for violence: For an entry-level "frontline" ICE gig, they just need a driver's license and have to be a U.S. citizen, eligible to carry a firearm, younger than 40. They can apply online.
Rumors abound: They are Proud Boys, Patriot Front, J-6 warriors, former goons of Erik Prince's malignant Blackwater, which would be "quite the callback to Season One of Fascist Celebrity Apprentice." Some are likely former cops gone flabby or fired for excessive force. Many are likely garden-variety white nationalists, friendless basement-dwelling incels weary of playing Call of Duty and eager to up their ugly game by arresting brown people. To a point: Despite being giddily kitted out in over-the-top, Bagdad-ready military gear, they've reportedly been advised to avoid all the seriously gangsterish areas around L.A., which is why we've seen virtually no videos of amateur-hour Nazi thugs confronting gang members who might actually punch or shoot back - just manhandling pregnant moms, elderly farmworkers, dazed young skinny guys wiping down windshields at car washes.
Starting years ago with a heinous orange guy pronouncing all Mexicans rapists and murderers, it keeps getting worse as guard rails drop. His marauding agents of chaos can now go after frightened targets in once-safe spaces: schools, courts, hospitals, places of worship. They often skip warrants, mask up, refuse to identify themselves, grab U.S. citizens or witnesses (legally) recording - reminiscent, many note, of Gestapo on the streets of Poland. They just further limited oversight by ending lawmakers' unannounced visits to detention facilities and requiring at least 72 hours' notice. And now - thanks Goebbels - the "heat's on to (go) after the devils who are taking away the jobs." No wonder stories of random bigots impersonating ICE - "Don’t be speaking that pig-Latin in my fucking country!" - are soaring. Also, kudos to Gloria Johnson on her "unhealthy toddler impersonating a President."
And so to harrowing videos of working people suddenly assaulted, cuffed and whisked away by mobs of jumpy, bellicose hoodlums in what newly arrested New York Comptroller Brad Lander calls "a proceeding that bears no resemblance to justice." Like the 238 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador, at least 75% have no criminal history; most of the rest have paltry traffic or immigration violations before being "effectively disappeared." They grabbed a young Afghan interpreter for U.S. troops who invaded his country; he was at court, checking in as instructed. They pinned a pregnant U.S. citizen to a truck, detained the baby's father, then let her go to give birth four days later. They cuffed, interrogated and pulled a gun on a U.S. citizen in Chicago who, driving past thugs accosting a woman, "gave a little honk (to) be there for my people"; said thugs claimed he tried to kill them.
ICE rampages are nationwide. Here in Portland ME, an immigration legal advocacy group gets over 60 calls a day from people too scared to go to work, Hispanic kids only go out to play after dark, and abduction stories spread. In Oregon's wine country, thugs nabbed and put in chains Moises Sotelo, popular 2020 winner of the Oregon Wine Board's Vineyard Excellence Award, who's lived and raised a family there for decades. In a statement, ICE got all the facts wrong about Sotelo; when a friend tried to visit him in detention, he'd vanished and an official insisted they didn't have to tell him to where: "I told him I thought that sounded wrong, and he said, ‘Well, that’s the way it is.'" The Guardian managed to find out Sotelo was shipped to Arizona; when they asked for ICE confirmation they're under no obligation to tell family or attorneys where prisoners are, they responded, "That is correct."
Clearly California, and especially majority-Latino L.A., are the hardest hit. One resident tries to describe it: "Imagine vans roll up to your local Hobby Lobby. Heavily armed men pour out, body armor, masked, no I.D. They immediately move to every white person they see. They handcuff them, assuming they're Jan. 6 rioters." In Pico Rivera, they mobbed and took down a scrawny 20-year-old Wal-Mart worker and U.S. citizen when he tried to stop them from grabbing an older worker; the community loudly protested. In Huffington Park, a half-dozen cars filled with armed, masked, cosplay soldiers barged into the home of a pregnant mother of four; they were looking for her husband David; she said her husband's name is Jorge, and he wasn't there. Nazi Barbie stood outside, ready for the cameras; instead, they left empty-handed, after which the kids got to go back into their now-trashed house.
In Santa Fe Springs, a DHS copter circled overhead as about sixty armed, masked, geared-up brownshirts-in-jeans surged across a crowded flea market as vendors and customers fled in terror. After dragging out people from bathrooms and harassing whoever they found for I.D's, they cuffed and hauled off two victims. Another mob of about 20 masked, psyched, uber-armed hooligans went after a 60-year-old woman selling tamales outside a Lowe's; after she had a panic attack and collapsed, chaos ensued: Sirens, air horns, brave furious swarms of locals, cell cameras held high, yelling, "You guys are fucking terrorists!" and "What the fuck are you doing here?" As one chubby jerk lifted his rifle, they shrieked, "We don't need fucking guns here! Go get some bad guys!" "What a bunch of weak-ass cowards," said one. "If kidnapping the Tamale Lady doesn't wake you up, you're dead inside."
In Santa Ana, in video that's gone viral, hoodlums brutally beat, punched and pepper-sprayed a 48-year-old landscaper and father of three U.S. Marines before dragging him so hard into an unmarked van they dislocated his shoulder; one son said over 24 hours later his father had gotten no treatment, water or food (but thank you for your service). In Pasadena, a power-drunk thug leapt out of his car, drew his gun and (illegally) pointed it at the head of a guy taking a photo of his (illegally) glare-guard-obscured license plate. Comments on a hyper-militarized GI-Joe wannabe with zero accountability: "Needs to deport: illegal, paranoid, jumpy," "Where can I report a masked man pulling a firearm on a civilian while stopped in traffic in the middle of the day?" "In hindsight, maybe empowering thugs to become American Gestapo might not have been so wise," and, "I think we're officially a shithole country now."
In what passes for mercy these days, an El Monte mother of a 21-year-old daughter battling bone cancer - the mom filmed weeping as she was dragged off - was released on bond on "humanitarian" grounds after outraged "Free Yolanda" marches; in an interview, she stoically displayed her ankle monitor. But that was a rare, small victory. Much more common are surreal scenes like the geared-up punk in Santa Ana, part of a raid outside the Little Market, seeing an observer recording from a nearby car and swiftly sticking his rifle in her face. Later, the woman, part of a local, grassroots rapid response team, calmly posted video of the encounter with helpful information: "You are legally allowed to record an ICE raid from a safe distance, for you and them. They are NOT supposed to draw any type of weapon at you for simply recording...With that said, move with caution.",
In his Doomsday Scenario, Garrett Graff argues the regime's anti-immigrant machinery has "switftly transformed itself into the closest thing the US has ever had to a secret police at the heart of our democracy" - an entity more culturally akin to the Klan nightriders of Reconstruction than any legit law enforcement agency, and one that does not believe it will ever be subject to any meaningful legal oversight or restraint by people in power wholly indifferent to public perceptions of their abuses. Given that indifference, the S.S.-like Goebbel push for 2,000 arrests a day, and soaring assaults on California's farm workers, day laborers, street vendors and other "easy targets" in easily accessed outdoor jobs, local lawmakers and rights advocates are doing what they can to tweak the laws, educate and protect the most vulnerable, and stem the authoritarian tide.
In response to all the documented abuses, two Bay Area legislators just introduced a bill to bar all law enforcement from wearing masks; it also requires them to identify themselves with badges and names. Arguing, "These are not lawful arrests," Huntington Park Mayor Arturo Flores has also called on local police to verify identities of gun-in-your-face yahoos carrying out "masked abductions," and to enforce vehicle codes on visible license plates and agency markings. Still, with many rights advocates charging there's often distance between Dems' rhetoric and reality - LAPD is "protecting (ICE), not protecting us" - local organizers have ratcheted up advocacy efforts with groups like CLEAN Carwash Worker Center and Community Self-Defense Coalition, offering residents rights workshops, “Know Your Rights” cards, and “adopt a corner” programs to warn workers of raids. Lone patriots have quietly stepped up.
In L.A., protests continue, tow trucks are reportedly hauling off ICE rigs in solidarity, and cowboys did a unity ride because, "Nobody is going to save us. We have to come out and stand up." Elsewhere, there are No Sleep For Ice protests - drums, cans, trombones - at hotels where they stay. A new “Dictator Approved" sculpture appeared in D.C. featuring a fat, gold, thumbs-up hand crushing the crown of Lady Liberty and mock tributes from despots: "Trump is a very bright and talented man."The Onion did a special issue - sample: "Think Tank Called Himmler Institute Assures Nation This All Legal" - thanking a craven Congress for doing nothing as we "stand in the smoldering ruins of our democratic government...slipping smoothly into the warm bath of authoritarianism...Now more than ever, our nation needs your cowardice." Then they stuck a print copy in every congressperson’s mailbox.
Still, the horrors mount, brutality upon brutality. Goons abduct a woman en route to school with her kids, left sobbing; a reporter covering “No Kings” protests; a pregnant woman who suffers a stillbirth when she's denied care in custody; 15 workers on a flood control project in flood-prone New Orleans. They devise Alligator Alcatraz, a migrant concentration camp of tents and misery in Florida's Everglades, where if they escape, a baleful video leers, alligators and pythons await them. And they swarm Bubble Bath Car Wash in Torrance CA, where the owner yells, "Get outta here You guys look like fucking criminals, and you act like criminals." A defiant woman out front joins in, berating them as bounty hunters. "Who are you guys? You need to fucking identify yourselves - this is a kidnap," she shouts. "Fucking racial profiling is against the law, motherfuckers. Get the fuck outta here, assholes." Deflated thugs stand dumbly, then slink away. "Fuck them, assholes," she spits. There are monsters among us. There are also saints.Update: On Tuesday, MAGA's own Goebbels, reflecting his racist cabal's meltdown that Zohran Mamdani, a brown person (Muslim yet), won the New York City mayoral primary, blamed the catastrophe on "unchecked immigration." He called Mamdani's rise "the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration," noting a third of New York City's residents are foreign-born and almost two-thirds of its children live in a foreign-born household. Sounds pretty cool to us.