Shut It Down? Shut It Down.
The president of the United States has declared war on a major American city. He has flooded the city with ICE agents, his private Gestapo. They are heavily armed, well paid, poorly trained masked gunmen who descend on targets in packs of five or six and have been told they have absolute immunity from prosecution for their actions. They have now murdered two good people in cold blood for the non-crime of being rude to and defiant of their occupiers while legally protesting their atrocities. Two good people have already died. Countless more have been beaten bloody, pepper sprayed, kicked and pushed and punched. More will follow.
The assaults are masquerading as roundups of undesirable migrant elements but are actually transparent assaults on democracy and equality and the rule of law. They are acts of treason.
The president of the United States has defended the bullying and brutalities of his army of goons, and has flooded the city with more of them in retaliation. He has publicly defamed the two principal victims, a mother of three and a nurse in a hospital intensive care unit. The nurse is a guy who — had he been on duty — would have tried to save the life of any of the ICE officers, had they been injured while carrying out their murderous mission. Because that was his job.
The president and his minions have lied bald-facedly about the actions of their thugs, lies easily countered by ever-present videotapes of the incidents. His toadies will lie about anything, and they are doing it without shame, about matters large and small. A few days ago, his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, flatly denied that her boss had confused Iceland with Greenland in an international speech, and tongue-lashed a reporter who dared to ask about it. The president’s speech had been broadcast internationally. The embarrassing evidence of his befuddlement was there for the world to see, instantly, merely by hitting a “play” button. Leavitt kept lying. She’d been instructed to, and she did her job obediently. Trump has surrounded himself with obedient, unscrupulous stooges. Lies, this regime thinks, have no consequence.
Yesterday they lied and said the nurse had drawn a gun on the ICE agents. He hadn’t. He had drawn a cell phone on them. He HAD a gun — which he owned legally — and which ICE had confiscated from him seconds before they shot him nine times as he lay in the street, prone, brutalized, and defenseless. Watch the video. Or this one. They are revolting.
We are living in a dictatorship run by one mentally ill, amoral, power-mad, racist old bastard, supported by a meticulously assembled staff of White nationalist enablers and apologists.
Isn’t it time for a nationwide general strike modeled after the labor shutdown coordinated by Lech Walesa against the Soviet oppressors in Poland in 1980? It shut the country down, birthed the Solidarnosc movement, liberated Poland from its Russian yoke, and helped end the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
The people of Minnesota started such an action yesterday. Faith leaders, small business owners, labor unions, outraged citizens flooded the streets in peaceful protest, in defiance of the danger, semi-protected by their numbers. People took sick-outs from work. Commerce was at a standstill. The streets were at a standstill. Many businesses closed in solidarity. The instant camaraderie among protestors — united in defense of their city, state and country, and of their neighbors — was inspiring.
Shouldn’t we take this national? Every state that can be mobilized. Shouldn’t we create a situation where co-opted, docile Republican legislative leaders are forced to take action for fear of their future — fear of political punishment from intimidating numbers of the righteously aggrieved, ferociously determined electorate? Fear, perhaps, of the courts, or even of the lampposts some dark day? It doesn’t have to be a rational fear; it has to be a visceral fear. Without it, they are spineless and unbudgeable.
By definition, a public strike against a government involves coordinated actions designed to disrupt government operations, services, or economic activity to force political, social, or legislative changes. This includes organized work stoppages by public and private employees, general strikes across industries, deliberate slowdowns, coordinated protest marches of massive size and scope, and widespread acts civil disobedience.
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That’s it for the day.
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"The assaults are masquerading as roundups of undesirable migrant elements but are actually transparent assaults on democracy and equality and the rule of law."
From The Contrarian Substack:
Late Saturday Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, telling him ICE would pull out if he met a list of unrelated demands, including the release of voting files. Any shred of doubt that this had nothing to do with immigration or safety vanished in this shameful act of what amounts to extortion.
Tell every Congressman and Senator running for reelection this fall that we will vote against them, regardless of party, if they don't defund and stop ICE. We'll vote for someone else of their party if that is our preference, but Not for them.