PLEASE PARTICIPATE IN A NO KINGS PROTEST ON SAT., 6/14
I hope you’re planning to participate in a protest for No Kings Day on Saturday, June 14. You can find an event near you here. The Trump administration has escalated its attacks on our democracy, and we, and our political leaders, need to step up our resistance and make it clear we oppose the administration’s actions.
(Note: If you find a post too long to read, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)
(Personal note: I took last week off as I was on an overseas vacation – our first since Covid.)
I hope you’re planning to participate in a protest for No Kings Day on Saturday, June 14. You can find an event near you here. This important day of protest has been planned for many weeks and is even more important now that the Trump administration has escalated its attacks on democracy.
The Trump administration is actively working to impose martial law. Deploying National Guard troops, let alone Marines, to the streets of Los Angeles is blatantly illegal and unconstitutional. Trump is again declaring a fake emergency to justify his exercise of autocratic powers, and, in this case, the powers of a military dictator.
The confrontational protests in LA have occurred in a small, 4-block area of a huge city. The Trump administration has intentionally inflamed the situation first by the unnecessarily aggressive actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel (see more on this in a note at the bottom), then by sending in the National Guard, and finally by sending in Marines. The LA Police Department was fully in control of the situation and the Trump administration’s actions only made their job harder. (See Robert Hubbell’s on-the-ground testimony and video of the calm and normalcy of LA as well as his blog post.)
As Hubbell notes, the depictions and reporting by the mainstream media are misrepresentations of the situation. They play right into Trump’s hands in making the unwarranted emergency he has declared seem reasonable. Trump has declared this and other fake emergencies to justify his exercise of illegal and autocratic powers, thereby undermining the Constitution, civil rights, the rule of law, and the foundations of our democracy.
The only solution to the Trump administration’s illegal and dictatorial actions is for millions of Americans to peacefully protest to show their opposition. Thousands of protests all over the country, in cities, towns, and rural areas, by people of all ages, political persuasions, and ethnicities, are needed to clearly show the Trump administration, our political leaders (members of Congress, Governors, Mayors, members of state legislatures, etc.), and our judges that these actions are unacceptable and broadly opposed.
We, as citizens of a democracy, need to rise up in unassailable numbers to defend our democracy against the autocracy and budding military dictatorship of the Trump administration.
Our political leaders (if they deserve to be called leaders) should be leading the charge and stepping up their resistance, given that President Trump has stepped up his attacks on our democracy.
I urge you to contact your elected officials at all levels, from members of Congress to Governors to members of state legislatures to local officials, and ask them to join a protest on Saturday. Ask them to speak out in support of California Governor Newsom and LA Mayor Bass. But tell them to do more than just speak out. Now is the time for action. I’d love to see members of Congress organize and lead a march to the Pentagon to protest the use of Defense Department resources to support ICE (and also, by the way, to stage a military dictator-style parade).
You can find contact information for your US Representative at http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ and for your US Senators at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.
Note on ICE tactics: One thing our mainstream media aren’t covering at all, to my knowledge, is that if ICE was really focused on arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records, it would be operating very differently. Our police arrest criminals all the time. Unless they catch them in the middle of a criminal act, they have warrants for their arrest – which ICE typically does not. Our police wear uniforms that identify who they work for and who they are. They don’t wear masks to hide their faces. ICE agents typically show up without identification, often wearing masks, and frequently in military dress with military weapons. Their detentions are more like kidnappings than arrests. There is no need for these tactics to make arrests.