Protesting is absolutely something you can and should be able to do casually and without having to protect your face/identity. It was enshrined in the First Amendment as a fundamental check on the federal government in order to recognize the natural right of a self-governing people to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.
What is not something that should be gone casually – or really at all – is an attempt to engage in insurrection with black bloc or globalized intifada insurgency tactics to prevent the enforcement of law.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
…
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
…
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.
>What is not something that should be gone casually – or really at all – is an attempt to engage in insurrection with black bloc or globalized intifada insurgency tactics to prevent the enforcement of law.
I disagree. If the feds, or any law enforcement, wants to enforce law that is so unpopular that people feel compelled to make it hard in this way then, IDK, sucks for them. Go beg for more budget.
And I feel this way about a whole ton of categories of law, not just The Current Thing (TM).
A huge reason that law and government in this country is so f-ed up is that people, states, municipalities and big corporations in particular, just roll over and take it because that keeps the $$ flowing. A solid majority of the stuff the feds force upon the nation in the form of "do X, get a big enough tax break you can't compete without it" or "enforce Y if you want your government to qualify for fed $$" would not be support and could not be enforced if it had to be done so overtly, with enforcers paid to enforce it, rather than backhandedly by quasi deputizing other entities in exchange for $$.
The law being alluded to here is not "so unpopular".
Immigration enforcement is overwhelmingly favored by Americans, including immigrants.
The implementation has been awful, for lots of reasons everyone already knows. However, the situation has also been significantly escalated by often-violent obstructionists.
Obstructing enforcement of the law when it's something Americans voted for is not patriotism. It's undermining democracy.
Our law is explicit: immigration is the domain of the Federal government exclusively. State and local governments should "take it" as you say, because that's the law, and we should respect the law. If you don't like it, protest. But most are fine with enforcement in a reasonable way.
Trump and his cronies shoulder a lot of blame for how things have gone in Minneapolis. But so do democrats for stoking the flames.
> However, the situation has also been significantly escalated by often-violent obstructionists
Do you think the protests leading to escalations were done simply? Or BECAUSE of the awful implementation? (Masks, no IDs, no accountability, no body cameras, etc.)
If it is the latter, then isn't the blame to be placed squarely on the original enforcement philosophy?
Otherwise it reads like DARVO tactics. If we were talking about a relationship it sounds like -- Person A emotionally abuses Person B to the point of person B pushing back, and then Person A using the fact that Person B reacted (perhaps adversely) as justification for even more emotional abuse.
> Do you think the protests leading to escalations were done simply? Or BECAUSE of the awful implementation? (Masks, no IDs, no accountability, no body cameras, etc.)
Yes, I think there would've been massive protests against the US federal government doing anything at all to be effective at deporting illegal immigrants. Significant numbers of ideologically-dedicated people think that not allowing foreigners to immigrate to the US or deporting foreigners who have illegally immigrated is an immoral, Nazi-equivalent policy that they have a moral obligation to disrupt. The masks and other shows of force from federal immigration enforcement are a reaction to the protests designed to keep individual ICE agents safe and effective; and to demonstrate to illegal immigrants that the federal government is serious about deporting them, violently if necessary, in order to try to incentivize them to leave voluntarily.
> Otherwise it reads like DARVO tactics. If we were talking about a relationship it sounds like -- Person A emotionally abuses Person B to the point of person B pushing back, and then Person A using the fact that Person B reacted (perhaps adversely) as justification for even more emotional abuse.
We're not talking about an interpersonal relationship, we're talking about mass political actions and the authority of national-scale governments.
I am talking about American support for a working legal immigration process, and enforcing that process. Not everyone agrees about exactly what it should look like.
I'm not talking specifically about the actions Trump is taking or the job ICE is doing currently. The current sentiment around ICE is very negative.
To me the obvious synthesis is that the Trump-sphere was lying about what immigration enforcement means, and the public is unhappy when they're shown what Stephen Miller and friends understand enforcing immigration law to mean.
Martin Luther King said while all should aim to follow the law and obey, if a law is unjust then one should break it proudly and in the open.
Militarized police with general warrants going door to door, going into schools, hospitals, places of worship to detain the dehumanized untermensch is legal.
People loudly protesting and sabotaging these efforts via their first amendment is a far more moral and honorable stance, despite being illegal in a round-about way.
It's quite literally a protest against state violence via non-violent means.
> Protesting is absolutely something you can and should be able to do casually and without having to protect your face/identity.
I am unwilling to risk protesting against this administration given the combination of facial scanning, IMSI catchers, ALPRs, and surveillance cameras in general. I cannot think of a way to stay truly anonymous when protesting, with enough access and time, you could be tracked back to your home even if you leave your phone at home and take public transportation. I believe the aforementioned technology chills free speech in combination with the current administration.
I’m not particularly worried about protesters being targeted by this administration, I worry about future administrations that could be far worse.
> Protesting is absolutely something you can and should be able to do casually
Then you are going to be identified and your conversations monitored. This is precisely the outcome the article is complaining about. I find that expectation absurd.
> of a self-governing people
This describes the majority not the individual.
> and petition the government
There is no expectation or statement that your anonymity will be protected. The entire idea of a "petition" immediately defies this.
> to prevent the enforcement of law.
How does "tracking ICE" _prevent_ the enforcement of the law? Your views on the first amendment suddenly became quite narrow.
> How does "tracking ICE" _prevent_ the enforcement of the law? Your views on the first amendment suddenly became quite narrow.
Because the whole point of tracking ICE is to help people dodge them. It's absurd that people cry foul when the government goes after people actively opposing the rule of law.
> It's absurd that people cry foul when the government goes after people actively opposing the rule of law.
I expect the vast majority of government abuses in recent history the world over have to at least some degree followed the law according to those carrying out the acts. Thus it is almost to be expected that as a situation escalates those crying foul might occasionally find themselves opposing the rule of law as described by those in power.
To state it plainly, not all "rule of law" is subjectively equal.
Law enforcement only works when the people have trust in those doing the enforcement.
ICE have lost the trust of a significant portion of the people in Minnesota because they are using unreasonable force, eroding constitutionally protected rights and behaving with impunity.
They are, in reality, just conducting a politically motivated campaign of harassment. If they truly wanted to deport as many people as possible they'd start with border states like Florida and Texas, places with 20x more undocumented immigrants.
Or, get this - they'd go after the people who employ illegal immigrants en masse in those states.
Illegal immigrants aren't a thing at any meaningful scale if there aren't people willing to hire them.
But since a lot of those businesses that hire illegally or "look the other way" are BIG republican donors in deep red states....we can't do anything about it.
We should have made e-verify the federal minimum standard for ALL employment as far back as 1985. We had the tech and the ability.
Y'all honestly think Donald Trump hires blue-blooded WASPs to mow the lawns at his golf courses?
> Or, get this - they'd go after the people who employ illegal immigrants en masse in those states.
This is not economically feasible, the cost of food would double or more. They know that and I know that. That’s why they aren’t actually targeting illegal immigrants, America’s dirty secret is that we need them to keep prices low on certain things.
Good luck finding Americans that will pick strawberries or work in a meatpacking plant for $12-16/hr
We have things called subsidies for that reason. Agribusiness companies of all sizes including megacorps get tons of money in subsides for this sort of situation. Unfortunately, those subsidies go towards purchasing lobbyists, growing profit margins, and paying executives instead of lowering food costs to Americans.
And yes, it absolutely is feasible, and we all know it. It's just if it happened, some very wealthy and influential people would lose a bit of money and influence - we can't have that now can we?
> They have not used the same force in other states, because the resistance to their presence and purpose has not been so strong as to motivate it.
The resistance to their actions is lesser in other states because they are more subdued. The propaganda that Minnesotans are not working with ICE is flipping the narrative from the reality that ICE is not working with Minnesotans.
> Narratives surrounding this are ignoring clear causes of action that are not in fact constitutionally protected, instead pointing at things protesters did that are constitutionally protected but not in fact related to arrests.
Counter-narratives ignore clear use of tactics which have been documented as intentional escalations, instead pointing at the officers' emotions that were direct results of said escalations.
IANAL but I don't think it's so cut and dried that creating a crowdsourced map of publicly visible ice operations is illegal. Yes such a map could be used by illegal immigrants to avoid detention. It could also be used by law abiding citizens that want to avoid the hubbub these operations cause or by legal us citizens that don't wanna be targeted just for being in the neighborhood. It seems like a decent lawyer could make a case that publishing the location of an ice operation is not the same as acting with intent to interfere with the operation.
Which law makes it illegal to track ICE? If there isn't a law against it, but you think the government should arrest people for it anyway, then you don't support rule of law.
The obvious retort is "obstruction". Of course it doesn't hold up to scrutiny because courts have consistently held that obstruction has to be a physical act. Simply being nearby, filming or calling them names doesn't count.
Is kicking out tail lights and spitting at agents obstruction?[] Because he definitely appears to have done that about a week before his death. Though that doesn't merit death.
There are a number of local citizens upset at two out of state vehicles blocking off a road while (?) executing warrentless invasions of homes in the community (?)
What is the appropriate action when Federal over reach is so blatent and unaddressed?
It's not as if people there are angry at ICE / DHS for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
Two things can simultaneously be true. That the legal criteria of obstruction have been reached, and also that the Federal apparatus routinely oversteps both the constitutional and the most essential natural rights.
Just know the King interprets spitting and kicking tail lights as a 'shot at the King.' Pretti took his shot at the King, with his cosmetic accessory piece gun tucked in his waistband, at about 4 out of 100. And expected the King to meet him with something other than 100 or 0. In that light, I'll concede of the possibility he was morally right, but I also think he was a fool. If his goal all along was to kneel, let himself be disarmed, then quietly accept his execution like a bitch -- what did he even get out of it? He handed the pro-regime a major propaganda victory and the anti-regime nothing at best.
> He handed the pro-regime a major propaganda victory and the anti-regime nothing at best.
That's not even remotely true - currently the MAGA pro-Trump crowd is cleaving on gun rights .. the big lie about the need for ICE / DHS is unravelling and now Republican support for ICE is dropping.
Last time around Trump said "take the guns and due process later" and then did an illegal (as ruled by the court) ban on bump stocks. No one following Trump with eyes wide open was under the illusion trump was a champion of gun rights.
People brainwashed or ignoring facts have seen differently, but the brainwashed crowd is already seeing this event the way they want to see it. The MAGA crowd who want to overlook Trump's views on guns will have no problem sweeping this to the side under the heading of "violent agitator suppressed" just as they made excuses for every other time Trump shat on gun rights.
So, free speech, licenced carry, local community resisting unlawful warrents, etc are all ok?
Voting, in the USofA, is ineffectual - it takes years to make change and the choices are essentially shite .. barely a Democracy, more a Republican Autocracy by design.
Of interest:
On Monday, Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, appointed by President George W. Bush, suggested his patience with ICE had run out. After officials apparently ignored his order to permit a detainee to have a bond hearing or release him, he ordered Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, to appear in court on Friday to explain why he wasn’t in contempt of court. On Tuesday, the government released the detainee.
Today Schiltz canceled the Friday hearing but went on to rake ICE over the coals. He identified “96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases” and commented, “The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated.”
“This list should give pause to anyone—no matter his or her political beliefs—who cares about the rule of law. ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.” Schiltz warned that he would haul Lyons or other government officials into court if they kept ignoring court rulings. “ICE is not a law unto itself,” he wrote.
The USofA is literally a country founded on the principle of not allowing Kings or autocracts, certainly not federal authority, step on states right and self determination.
He chose option (3). Kick the tail light out, spit a bit, literally verbally asked to be assaulted, let himself be disarmed, kneel, and quietly submit his head for execution. What was the point exactly? The guy wasn't using any more logic beyond whatever spur of the moment emotional response he had.
I can understand resistance, but whatever he was doing looks more like he had some onset of an impulse control related mental illness.
Wile I don't think they deserved to loose their lives over it, calling them "innocent" is quite dishonest. They were at the very least intentionally being a nuisance and in most cases breaking actual laws in the process.
ICE are engaging in violence, warrantless forced entry to homes, at least two shootings that border on murder, they even tried to force entry into an Ecuadorian embassy.
They are detaining citizens at random, relocating them physically and in some cases releasing them; if they don't die in detention due to lack of access to medical care.
If you cannot see how these activities should be observed, documented, protested whilst still standing for professed Amercian values...
Edit:
Ah excellent, downvotes without reply because facts are... uncomfortable!
>Because the whole point of tracking ICE is to help people dodge them. It's
absurd that people cry foul when the government goes after people actively opposing the rule of law.
By your logic, combined with the actions of the ICE folks in Minneapolis, anyone who submits the location of a DUI checkpoint into Waze[0] should be summarily executed?
Is that your argument? ICE has murdered people for documenting their locations and actions which, by your statement was to allow others to "dodge" law enforcement.
Documenting a DUI checkpoint does exactly the same thing. So. If your position is that law "enforcement" is allowed to summarily shoot to death folks who document their actions and locations in one context, then they should be allowed to do so in other, more serious contexts like DUI checkpoints.
Is that your claim? If not, please do provide some nuance around what you said, because that's how I understood your statements.
Protesting is a fundamental human right and obligation. It is something that you should do as casually as you would voting, volunteering, and taking out the garbage: something you do from time to time when the moment demands it.
That doesn't include vandalism, it doesn't include blocking roads, looting, or assaulting people. What's obvious to me is that a certain class of protestors are intentionally provoking a response from the government by breaking the law. Inevitably someone is arrested, hurt, or killed, and that is used as an excuse for more protests. The protests get increasingly violent in an escalating cycle.
That process isn't exercising a "fundamental human right", it's a form of violence. If you don't agree with the Government the correct answer is to vote, have a dialog, and if you choose to protest do it in a way that's respectful to your neighbors and the people around you.
Yes, a proportionally large and significant number of local Minnesota community members of long and good standing.
> are intentionally provoking a response from the government
are reacting to excessive over reach by outsiders, directed by the Federal government to act in a punative manner.
> Inevitably someone is arrested, hurt, or killed,
This has already happened. Multiple times. As was obvious from the outset given the unprofessional behaviour and attitudes of the not-police sent in wearing masks.
> [the people aren't] exercising a "fundamental human right"
they are exercising their Constitutional rights. Including their right to free speech, to bear arms, to protest the Federal government, etc.
> the correct answer is to vote, talk to your neighbors and friends, and peaceably protest,
The main thing I see these protesters doing wrong is that they seem to freak out and fight back once they get aarrested. This is not how to deal with under-trained law enforcement unless you want to die. Get arrested, get booked, have your friends pay your bail, and then have a media circus around the court cases that result. This seems lame and takes some self-control to do, but it works really well.
Instead, people are getting killed and videos are coming out that seem very chaotic, where people with different predispositions than you can empathize with the police. If those videos were people getting arrested and pepper sprayed for speaking out and for helping each other, they would hit a lot harder for a much larger population.
>The main thing I see these protesters doing wrong is that they seem to freak out and fight back once they get aarrested. This is not how to deal with under-trained law enforcement unless you want to die.
Actually, the less training and self-restraint an officer has, the more incentive there is for a target to do everything they can to flee or resist. If a town trusts its local police to be fair and professional, criminals are more likely to accept the offer of "Drop everything and put your hands on the ground." They trust they'll survive the arrest and avoid anything worse than a rough perp walk. But if the arresting officers are known to brutally beat and pepper spray people they detain, I would expect people to resist detainment.
Last weekend, we saw video footage of a man executed while being restrained and with no weapon in his hands. At this point, reasonable people could believe an ICE officer trying to detain them is threatening their lives. When do self-defense laws kick in?
It doesn't show what led up to this moment, but it appears the person was indeed resisting arrest. If you are not resisting arrest, you don't need three officers to pin you to the ground.
> If you are not resisting arrest, you don't need three officers to pin you to the ground.
If three officers decide to push you to the ground and jump on top of you, you have three officers on top of you. This says nothing about whether you were resisting arrest or not.
Resisting arrest at least implies that you have some understanding that you are actually being arrested and by someone who at least notionally has some legal basis for doing so. It's why police officers will typically identify themselves and tell you under what you are suspected of during an arrest. If after that someone attempts to flee or fightback then sure.
I'm relatively sure spraying chemical irritants at point blank range is not following any reasonable use of force guidelines. They are just retaliating with force because it suits them.
> That doesn't include vandalism, it doesn't include blocking roads, looting, or assaulting people. What's obvious to me is that a certain class of protestors are intentionally provoking a response from the government by breaking the law.
If protestors are doing this sort of thing to ICE agents, then ICE has probable cause to arrest them while they’re doing it. I don’t support people interfering or obstructing ICE, but standing 20 feet away and filming or blowing a whistle is not obstruction.
What I’ve seen is ICE agents losing their shit and shoving people because they can’t emotionally handle being observed and yelled at, both of which are legal. I would not be able to handle that either, I’d lose my shit too, but I’m not an ICE agent.
I’m sure there are protestors crossing the line too, they arrested a bunch of people for breaking windows at a hotel the other night. I just don’t see the need to add conspiracy charges if they can just directly charge them with obstruction when it happens.
Yeah, this is what I don't get. People have the right to peacefully protest (and they should). However, once you actively get in the way of official federal policing business, you are no longer a peaceful protester. Interjecting yourself into already stressful situation will only make things worse for you.
> get in between a federal officer and a suspect, and hope you don't get shot
Sometimes standing up to tyranny does require bravery. Like the protestor in Tienanmen Square. Did he get shot? We don't know.
> Comments like your only serve to incite more violence.
How so? We are clearly talking about the Pretti case. All the violence was from the paramilitary operatives. All Pretti did was film and stand in front of a woman who was being beaten and pepper sprayed.
Are you saying that the populace needs to learn to submit or else more violence will be inflicted on them? And that I should stop posting my opinion in case it angers the authorities or inspires more people into nonviolent resistance? If not, please clarify.
The "suspect" being the person standing alone who was sent flying backwards whens an officer approached and shoved with both hands? Why was that justified? Was that an "arrest" or physical assault?
> No. It's not. Governments are not natural. So you have no "fundamental" rights here.
You could make the same moot point about all societal laws. Fundamental rights are determined by the constitution, the UN declaration of human rights, as well as any other local charters.
God doesn't have a typewriter, as far as I know. When he gets one I hope he clears up which 99.9% of human religions are heretical and which 0.01% are divine law, that would be really helpful.
In the meantime, rights are not granted by anyone. They are a contract between the governed and those that govern. Breaking that contract is the sort of thing that doesn't end up working out well for the governing class.
Since the existence of God is implicit in your assertion, are you suggesting he isn’t omnipotent, or have you come up with a new definitional concept of ownership? Or maybe you just don’t believe in the existence of typewriters.
Barring physical limitations, what you can and can't do is ultimately determined by what the society you are by and large a part of deems to be acceptable behaviour.
Government rules and social norms can change over time, it ultimately doesn't matter what you feel is "right" or what some law says is "right", it's really about what you can get away with.
A large part of what you can get away with is determined about whether or not you will ultimately be penalized for your actions (possibly through violence), and laws can keep people aligned on what is or isn't going to be accepted and when people deemed to be acting in a socially unacceptable way are likely to be penalized in some form.
While "rights" may be somewhat philosophical, they can have very real physical "weight" behind them in the form of other people "enforcing" them.
And finally, in case you are mistakenly under the impression that I think it's okay for anyone to do anything they want so long as they can get away with it, I don't, but that discussion drifts into the territory of morality and ethics which, while related, are nevertheless different and very large topics of discussion in themselves.
If you believe rights are what God and the Constitution grant, then they're meaningless. Some piece of paper has no real–world relevance. Cops shooting people in the face has real–world relevance.
The comment was not an appeal to religion. It's making the point that the notion of intrinsic rights is philosophical, and there must be a greater authority above all human systems if there can be a right at all. Otherwise, it's just something that the prevailing authority allows.
The point as it relates to the American Constitution is that that it was conceived with the notion of these divine rights and explicitly recognizes that there is no authority that can deprive the individual of them, thereby placing a hard limit on what a government can do.
You're free to disagree with the notion, of course, but it's worth understanding the foundation.
Muhammad is not a god, and he was very insistent on that point. The Buddha is also not seen as a god is most traditions. Elohim, Allah, and Ahura are generic terms for God or gods.
One does not need to know the specific identity of God to justifiably believe that rights come from God. Suppose that I receive a handwritten letter with no name on it. By the nature of the letter, I can reasonably infer that it was sent by a human, even if I don't know what specific human it was.
GP's argument is that the nature of rights implies that they must come from God. This is because they think rights can't be taken away by others; if they could, they would be privileges, not rights. They presumably think that for a right to be inalienable, it must come from an authority above all others, like God.
You seem to think that rights only apply to specific people at specific times and places. That's fine, but it's the very point that GP was addressing—if rights are given by the government, then they're not rights at all. Restating the claim that rights are not universal does not address GP's argument.
I don't think GP's argument works when it comes to God, because it might be that rights simply exist independent of any authority. Maybe they're an emergent property of human beings, or maybe they simply exist, the way that many believe that God, the number two, or the universe itself just exist without cause. GP might not agree, but it's certainly coherent to believe in inalienable rights without believing in God.
…or, Baal, Nature, Reason, etc. take your pick, heck probably even AI; which would “happily” explain it to you and answer all your “clever” questions, unlike me.
I'm not asking "clever" questions. You clearly state that rights are given by a divine being. Since humans for thousands of years have had different ideas about "god", I'm simply asking which of those beings is the one that grants rights.
Because the truth is - there is no "god" in the way humans think there is. Saying some mythical sky-daddy grants a certain group of people "rights" at a given point in time is laughable at best, and deliberately disingenuous at worst.
> Protesting is not something you should do "casually”
Neither is violently undermining our Constitutional order.
These folks should be on notice that they will be prosecuted. If we played by Trump’s book, we’d charge them with treason and then let them appeal against the death penalty for the rest of their lives.
Realistically, we now know that the Hunter Biden Pardon (preemptive) is available and the Capitol Riots Pardon (mass pardon) is available. Given that, it’s only optimal for an outgoing cynical Republican President to preemptively pardon his allies on the street.
> Neither is violently undermining our Constitutional order.
Ah, the "ends justify the means" then? Is this something you want applied _against_ you? Seems reckless.
> These folks should be on notice that they will be prosecuted.
They will not.
> If we played by Trump’s book
Moral relativism will turn you into the thing you profess to hate.
> we’d charge them with treason and then let them appeal against the death penalty for the rest of their lives.
Words have actual meaning. We're clearly past that and just choosing words that match emotional states. If you don't want to fix anything and just want to demonstrate your frustrations then this will work. If you want something to change you stand no chance with this attitude.
I'm not choosing sides. I'm simply saying if you want to avoid FBI attention then take your heart off your sleeve and smarten up.
> Is this something you want applied _against_ you?
It’s literally happening. And sure. If I try to murder the Vice President or murder Americans as part of a political stunt, hold me to account. Those were the rules I thought we were all playing by.
> If you want something to change you stand no chance with this attitude
Strongly disagree. There are new political tools on the table. Unilaterally disarming is strategically stupid.
> if you want to avoid FBI attention then take your heart off your sleeve and smarten up
I’m going to bet I’ve gotten more language written into state and federal law than you have. That isn’t a flex. It’s just me saying that I know how to wield power, it and doesn’t come from trying to avoid crooked federal agents. If they’re crooked, they’ll come for you when you speak up. In my experience, they’re more bark than bite.
Protesting is not something you should do "casually."