Alex Pretti

 Say his name.

Alex Pretti, an intensive-care-unit nurse at the veterans' hospital in Minneapolis, was peacefully protesting Immigration and Customer Enforcement agents in the city when he saw about half a dozen of them beating up a female protestor.  Pretti quickly moved to help her and shield her from the ICE agents, who noticed the holster on his person and disarmed him of his gun by force.  Then they beat him up when he tried to shield the woman further and then shot him nearly eleven times.  He may have already been dead from the blows he sustained before they fired a single bullet.

The Department of Homeland Security refused to let local law enforcement investigate the killing of Pretti and labeled the dead man a "domestic terrorist."  Pretti, in an eerie coincidence, was the same age as Renee Nicole Good - 37.   

If the killing of Renee Nicole Good was seen as an isolated incident, and if it didn't make clear to enough people that this the new reality in America, than this killing certainly did.  If it wasn't obvious before, it's obvious now: Donald Trump has made dissent a capital offense.  He's just foregoing the ritual of show trials and public hangings.

This has to end.  Not just ICE killings, not just ICE itself, but the entire Trump administration.  Alex Pretti was doing a very Christian act by coming to the aid of a stranger in the tradition of the Good Samaritan, and he was legally permitted to carry the gun he had on his person (a gun he never brandished), meaning he was illegally disarmed.  He was brutalized and murdered with the sort of violence that is commonly associated with 1980s action movies.  Now ICE hopes to go after the people who got the Pretti murder on video, because Homeland Security counts them as "domestic terrorists."  Even the woman Pretti was trying to help fears for her life because she is afraid that she could be eliminated as a witness.

It's time for the Democrats to step up. Some of them already have.  Several moderate Democrats in the U.S. Senate who had been considering ICE funding in the appropriations bills that need to be passed to avert a government shutdown are now planning to vote against .  The seven House Democrats that already did vote for ICE funding are likely to regret it now - as they'll likely get primaried.  If the Democrats don't join the people in fighting back against Trump, they'll live to have even greater regrets.

And, given what is happening now in Minneapolis and what unfolded in Davos last week, and given that so many people are outraged that Trump has even lost the National Rifle Association because his ICE storm troopers violated Alex Pretti's Second Amendment rights, it's clear that the United States cannot go on.  Once again, I call for the dissolution of the United States.  I remain a secessionist. 

Murder In Minneapolis

 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Minneapolis caused trouble in a neighborhood in the city's southern side near Powderhorn Park when they went through the the neighborhood looking for illegal migrants and causing  a traffic jam on the street.  Renee Nicole Good (above), a 37-year-old woman, sat in her SUV and waved by the officers, who were trying to get their car out of the snow.  As one officer approached her and told her to get out of the car while another told her to get out of the area, and, unsure of what to do, Ms. Good chose to drive away as quickly as possible.  An ICE officer quickly fired his weapon thrice into her face, killing her almost instantly.  The Vice President of the United States and the Secretary of Homeland Security both praised the ICE officers - the ICE officers - for handling their situation professionally against a domestic terrorist (!) who tried to run over one of the officers.

No.  This was murder.  There is no evidence that Ms. Good was engaged in a protest against the ICE officers, even though others in the neighborhood apparently were.  All evidence points to Ms. Good being no more than an innocent bystander who happened to be there at the wrong time.  She did nothing to provoke any of the officers.  The officer claimed that she ran over his foot; the video taken of the incident showed that she did nothing of the sort. If the officers thought Ms. Good was a threat, they could have easily gotten the license plate number of her SUV as she was driving away. Firing at a departing vehicle is not proper procedure in any circumstance for any law enforcement officer.  ICE shot Ms. Good, a poet, a singer and a mother of three, to make an example of her to anyone who even thinks of protesting the presence of ICE anywhere in America.

ICE murdered Renee Good.  Pure and simple.  ICE should be defunded.  And the so-called President who expanded the agency should be forced out of office. 😡

The George Floyd Trial

While I would rather not watch wall-to-wall coverage of the George Floyd trial in Minneapolis on cable news - especially when there are still so many other things to worry about, like COVID, COVID variants, COVID vaccines, and the likelihood of COVID ending civilization as we know it - it is important to keep up with the trial, and quite frankly, the highlights are all you need to focus on.  The evidence is clear to me: Derek Chauvin is guilty.

How could this cop not be guilty?  He violated standard police procedures, he used unnecessary force (as many a trial witness and policing expert have attested), he seemed to be enjoying having Floyd's neck under his boot heel, he attracted a whole bunch of witnesses who all saw the same thing - no Rashomon situation here! - and the defense has put up a poor cross-examination before presenting its case. Its case, basically, is that Floyd was a drug user, and that was a major factor in his death, along with his various health problems..  Then Floyd's girlfriend - his white girlfriend - testified about his and her opioid addictions and how they were both striving to get clean.  So you have all of these witnesses speaking out on how they wished they could have helped Floyd, a white girlfriend telling tales of a biracial couple trying to help themselves and each other, a real sense of humanity in describing the ordeal of a man who didn't know the $20 bill that got him arrested in the first place was a fake, and the defense is saying Floyd's death is his own fault?

If comedy is tragedy plus time, then the defense case that is presented after the prosecution rests should prove that maxim, because the defense case promises to be comedy in the English absurdist sense.  Unlike the Goons or Monty Python, though, Chauvin's lawyers will be unintentionally funny - and they'll accomplish that in trying to prove that their client is innocent.  And that would be funny, if the crime and the implications of this trial's outcome weren't so damn serious. 😟 

Rock Bottom

So many black men have died at the hands of the police that I can't comment on it anymore than to say it's wrong and it shouldn't happen, because I can't find anything more eloquent and verbose to offer than that.  But the Minneapolis case of George Floyd - which sparked a riot that led to fires in Minneapolis - requires me to comment here.  When are the police going to get it?  You dehumanize black men, you dehumanize Americans . . . and America.   

And this is all happening in the backdrop of the United States having passed the number of 100,000 COVID-19 deaths.  We've sunk to a new all-time low. 

And what is the guy in the White House Donald J. Trump, doing?  Stoking the embers of resentment, calling the demonstrators "thugs" (the arsonists were outsiders having little to do with the protests) and demanding that they be shot, hoping to tilt Minnesota into the Republican column this fall with his divisive "law and order" rhetoric,", which Nixon used in 1968, a year after the Newark riot.  (New Jersey would go Republican in a presidential election six consecutive times beginning in 1968.)

And something else happened in Minneapolis that must have warmed Trump's heart - a CNN reporter was arrested while covering the riot.  (He has since been released.)

Joe Biden is expected to address the Minnesota Democratic convention tomorrow. This could be a, if not the, defining moment of hi presidential campaign  He will have the opportunity to call for calm, reach out to black voters in a meaningful way, and show more empathy and maturity than Trump all at once - if he balances his comments right - more vividly than in his most recent TV interviews.

However, he can forget about choosing Amy Klobuchar as his running mate.  It turns out that Officer Derick Chauvin, the fired policeman in the center of the Floyd killing, had had numerous complaints against him in the early 2000s, when Klobuchar was Hennepin County attorney (Hennepin County includes Minneapolis).  Klobuchar failed to prosecute Chauvin in another incident where he shot a suspect to death.  Her vice presidential hopes just burned to the ground with those buildings.