Good Monday morning, everyone:

It’s not for me to attempt on anybody’s else’s behalf to encapsulate, make sense of, or channel our collective anger, horror, and disbelief at the events surrounding the occupation by shock troops of an American city. It is a city where I grew up . . . where my parents are buried . . .  where my brother’s family still lives . . . and where I spent decades seeking to contribute to a respectful, mutually supportive, and equitable civic community.

So, this is personal and does not in any way convey the views of our staff, trustees, or institution as a whole.

I believe it is important to recognize that beyond the unspeakable instances of individual violence – children with backpacks being detained . . . three individuals being shot on public streets . . . a seventy-year-old Hmong elder being pulled out of his home in nightclothes . . . a disabled woman on the way to her doctor dragged from her car and thrown to the ground . . . . countless acts of malicious, brutal, and unhuman physical abuse –we are witnessing in real time the construction of a machinery of authoritarian repression.

First, a machinery of authoritarianism is predicated on fabricating the basis of police action.

Sending the storm-troopers to investigate fraudulent expenditure of federal monies? Those allegations have been under active investigation for many years and have resulted in scores of indictments. Don’t send masked muscle with machine guns, if you’re serious about fraud. Send more accountants.

Second, a machinery of authoritarianism eviscerates the Fourth Amendment.

Regardless of what Justice Kavanaugh may have written (that providing “location” consent to a third party such as a phone company, or GPS provider, or other ap creator can constitute consent to “reasonable searches”), there is nothing about the actions in Minneapolis consistent with the Fourth Amendment’s explicit prohibition against unreasonable government searches and seizures and its requirements that search warrants be based on probable cause and specifically describe the place to be searched and the items or people to be seized. “Administrative warrants” are an invidious, fictional pretense under the circumstances we’re witnessing in Minneapolis.

Third, a machinery of authoritarianism creates fear and panic by amplifying acts of publicly-sanctioned violence.

Put aside for the moment the extraordinarily disturbing documentation being done by Minneapolis residents – federal agents themselves are filming their clashes with residents, turning them viral, and making the encounters as dramatic and terrifying as possible to convey that they will stop at nothing to make cities frightening, hostile, unwelcoming places. For non-documented people to be sure. But also for a much broader spectrum of people – the Hmong elder who is a citizen . . . law-abiding people who came to the country legally and are showing up at their prescribed court hearings, check-ins, and even citizenship interviews . . . nonwhite people including Native Americans, U.S.-born Latinos and a host of others who "look foreign" to the officials.  

It’s impossible to explain the federal forces’ tactics and choice of locations any other way. Hospitals? Courthouses? Schools? Public gathering places?  The message is clear: we will achieve our goal of arresting, detaining, and deporting as many people as possible through any means necessary. If you’re seeking asylum or refuge or simply a better life, don’t come to America – it’s not the welcoming place you imagine it to be.

Fourth, and in a related vein, a machinery of authoritarianism seeks to extra-legally circumscribe who is entitled to be an American.

As a constitutional principle, as a civil rights imperative, and as an unshakeable moral ground-wire, this country has moved inexorably toward the proposition that we are not defined by a single race or identity: once you are an America, you are equal. That is the antithesis of what the actions on the street of Minneapolis seek to convey, and the reality they seek to usher. Even if you are here legally, you are not safe from having your status ignored or revoked and from being removed. Even if you are a citizen, you can be stopped, detained, and physically intimidated – never mind that you might be a Brooklyn Park police officer who is Black or Brown. Even if you are a member of the Dakota nation on whose ancestral land Minneapolis sits, you can be coerced to produce evidence of “citizenship.”

Fifth, a machinery of authoritarianism creates and legitimizes a federalized domestic paramilitary force.

And not your grandmother’s paramilitary force (hoping there isn’t/wasn’t such a thing). A force that is recruited under the premise that “others” are taking over our country . . . that a gun, brute force, and cruelty can substitute for careful de-escalation training and dispute resolution skills . . . that your actions will be immune from oversight, accountability, and consequences.

Sixth, a machinery of authoritarianism relies on propaganda to – as the New York Times’ Ezra Klein states – create the preconditions that justify repression.

In his January 23rd podcast interview with the Atlantic’s Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Caitlin Dickerson, Klein lays out the proposition:

Klein: “We’ve seen this in other countries and in history – where you attack your own population and you then look for pretext to escalate.”

Dickerson: “The Department of Homeland Security is [expanding] use of labels like ‘domestic terrorist’ to . . . describe anybody who is out in the streets protesting or trying to protect immigrants without legal status in their communities.”

Klein: “When people build infrastructures like this, [it tends] to get used . . . and can be turned against all kinds of internal targets: political opposition, media, protesters, anybody they don’t like.”

Seventh, a machinery of authoritarianism directs resources toward its own needs.

The Big Beautiful Bill allocated more than $150 billion over four years to ICE, Homeland Security, and the Border Patrol – for personnel, for surveillance technology and data collection, for detention centers, for public relations, for weapons, and for other forms of immigration enforcement and border security. That is larger than the combined budgets of the Department of Human Services, the EPA, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. A budget is a policy document.

So, we know what we are looking at. The question is, of course, what’s to be done about it. Naming it. Bearing witness to it – even when it’s ten degrees below zero. Resisting it. Providing an alternative to it. None of that may be enough, but it’s a start.

Rip

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