> In the past week alone, ICE boxed in a Woodbury real estate agent recording their movements from his car, slammed him to the ground and detained him at the Whipple Federal Building near Fort Snelling for 10 hours. A 51-year-old teacher patrolling the Nokomis East community told the Star Tribune she was run off the road into a snowbank by ICE for laying on her horn. Officers shattered the car window of a woman attempting to drive past a raid in south Minneapolis to get to a doctor’s appointment nearby, then carried her through the street. Feds pushed an unidentified motorist through a red light into a busy intersection, reportedly fired projectiles at a pedestrian walking “too slowly” in a crosswalk and shoved Minneapolis City Council President Elliott Payne while he was observing their actions from a public sidewalk.
You can read the full thing here: https://www.startribune.com/have-yall-not-learned-federal-ag...
Why are Americans so passive? You're literally transitioning into straight up authoritarianism, yet where are the riots? How are you not fighting back with more than whistles and blocking them in cars? Is there more stuff actually happening on the ground, but there simply isn't any videos of it, or are people really this passive in the land of the free?
Are people inside the country not getting the same news we're getting on the outside? Are you not witnessing your government carrying out extra-judicial murders and then being protected by that same government? I'm really lost trying to understand how the average person (like you reading this) isn't out on the streets trying to defend what I thought your country was all about.
There is the imminent threat of mass death, and no one here is under any illusions about it.
Every ICE agent is armed, and most have ready access to automatic weapons. These are not well-trained members of an elite organization with a storied, patriotic culture. ICE is a personalist paramilitary organization, and the president has indicated that these ICE agents are immune from consequences, even if they kill people. These are people who volunteered knowing they were going to go into American cities and do violence to people they perceive as their political enemies.
Most of these agents are inexperienced, jittery, poorly trained new recruits away from home. They aren't locals. Their nexus of power and governance isn't local. These are not our community members, they aren't from here, they don't know us or care about us, so they do not empathize with us.
In addition to this, the American citizenry is shockingly well armed. Because everyone involved is so well armed, everybody is slightly touchy about this descending into rioting, because there is a very short path from light rioting to what would essentially amount to civil war. The costs of such any such violence will overwhelmingly be borne by the innocent people who live here, and we know it.
So, people are trying to strike a balance of making sure these people know they aren't welcome here while trying to prevent the situation from spiraling into one in which some terrified agent mag-dumps a crowd of protestors and causes a chain reaction that results in truly catastrophic mass death.
Wish us luck, we're trying.
Say all you want about how any protest, no matter how peaceful will be vilified (it will) or about how the entire foundation is built on lies (it is), but we still have some real elections coming up, and the imagery of ICE brutalizing someone who's clearly not an immigrant, not violent, not obstructing is much more rhetorically effective than that of armed clashes between government and non-governmental forces.
And as you said, many of us are still convinced that this can be solved at least partially rhetorically and electorally.
Unless the president declares a permanent temporary state of emergency for whatever reason that would prevent such elections.
The vast majority of the population is relying on these protections holding.