Worst of the worst

There was good news this week as Federal officials announced “a significant drawdown” of the 3000 ICE agents occupying the Twin Cities. For more than a month, people have been resisting masked men roaming the  streets with guns, chemical weapons, and a lust for violence. These thugs are exhibiting disdain and open hatred of the people. They have used deadly force, abducted children, and gloated about it.

All of this violence was justified by the administration as a crackdown on “the worst of the worst.” Americans were told that “murderers, rapists, and gang members were roaming the streets of our cities.  

This was a lie. Of the nearly 400,000 people arrested, less than 14 percent were charged or convicted of violent crimes. Many of them were already in prison. Only 2 percent of the people detained have been charged or convicted of homicide or sexual assault, and only another 2 percent have been identified as gang members.  

But now we know who the worst of the worst really is. Federal agents, recruited as storm troopers for an administration determined to expand and maintain power. 

We should welcome the pullback of forces, if it happens. 

We should celebrate the courage of people in cities across this country who are standing up to ICE.

But we should not be fooled into thinking this is any serious shift in the desire to consolidate power. The forces of authoritarianism will continue stoking fear and division among neighbors.

This “drawdown” is a strategic maneuver because the policies are upsetting at least some republicans and the vast majority of the people.  Forces of control are not yet in place to withstand widespread unrest. Nor massive disapproval.

But these forces are still at work. Most notably, they are taking aim at efforts to consolidate control of the legislative branch of government.

Ever since taking the oath of office, Trump has made clear that he only trusts elections if he wins. And he is out to ensure that any election he doesn’t win is considered illegitimate. He knows he is losing his power over some of his base. The divisions are widening in MAGA land, and his endorsements are no longer carrying the weight they did just a few months ago. So, he is doubling down on finding ways to control voting.

Almost every week, Trump mumbles about “canceling elections” or finding ways to “nationalize” them. In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center for Voting Rights observed, “It’s election subversion, not cancellation, that is the real authoritarian move. The goal is to keep elections going but without unseating those in power.”

He goes on to explain that this administration has “taken dozens of actions to undermine elections that, together, show that an attempted election “takeover” may be underway.”

While it is certainly illegal to place federal agents and troops around polling places, no one should be fooled into thinking this is impossible.  Trump and the forces that back him have made it abundantly clear that they do not respect law, the Constitution, conventions of decency, or the basic rights of people. There is nothing they will not do.  No truth they will not deny.

ICE and increasingly ideologically driven military forces are practicing what it takes to move against people who believe in love, community, and justice. They have killed people who stood up for their neighbors and laughed about it. Time and again, they denied truths we saw with our own eyes.

If there is one lesson to learn over this past year, it is that we, the people, need to scale up our capacities for self-defense. We are in for a long struggle. Resistance now to “the worst of the worst” is essential. In the process, we are expanding our capacities to shift away from systems of domination driven by wealth and power and developing new values and practices. These efforts are the basis for creating a new world that values life.