Los Angeles is a sign of what's to come
A weaponized federal government has descended upon a community that is hurting, and is attacking their First Amendment rights in the process
This is a bit of an unusual post, in that it is less directly about Appalachia. But I don’t want to sit around and not talk about it, because it’s pissing me off.
I’m going to make this short and sweet: what we’re seeing in Los Angeles is a sign of what’s to come in every community in the country. When protesters get in the way of federal ICE agents hell-bent on ripping families out of communities, law enforcement escalate toward violence. We are seeing it happening, livestreamed from the streets of Los Angeles.
I stand unequivocally on the side of the protesters in Los Angeles, who are in the streets protesting against the violent kidnapping raids by ICE on families in the city.
This is a weaponization of the power of the federal government to strike fear in the hearts of non-white people. Donald Trump has activated over 700 National Guard troops to descend upon Los Angeles with the purpose of chilling lawful assembly and speech. Speech that is protected under a bloody and tattered First Amendment that, every day, is being eroded even further.
They do not care about your First Amendment rights. Police in Los Angeles have been filmed deliberately shooting rubber bullets at press, using vicious force on protesters that were not a threat to them, and shooting countless peaceful protesters with rubber bullets and other “non-lethal” weapons. We’ve seen this administration totally undermine the First Amendment basically since day one, and they’re totally fine with doing so as long as they get to do exactly what they want. The fucked up part? They have the power to do this—not legally, of course, but practically.
This is grounded in racist nativism. Donald Trump has always been a racist. Stephen Miller has always been a racist. They’ve always believed in deporting as many brown immigrants as humanly possible, and this is their way of doing so. The thing about this administration is that they have a reckless disregard for the law and procedural due process, which is why the raids in LA are taking place. It’s a bonus for them to be able to deploy the National Guard, because they can be seen as violently cracking down on “leftists” while throwing metric tons of red meat to their rabid, bloodthirsty base.
I’m proud of the protesters in Los Angeles. Many of them are profoundly brave, and I hope they continue pushing back against this oppressive federal regime and local law enforcement trolls.
I worry that this is a sign the government is thirsty to go to war with protesters in every community
that has the audacity1 to push back against their authoritarian, fascist regime tactics.
Obvious sarcasm.