Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour
Kim Brolutti, a 66-year-old retired nurse, was participating with his wife and two adult children in his first protest against violent federal agents in Portland when they sprayed him in the face with pepper gas at point-blank range. As his family led him away to medics, he asked the question all Americans should be asking right now: “Jesus, what country are we in?”
That could be an even more personal question for Milwaukeeans as they suddenly find themselves on President Trump’s private “hit list” of U.S. cities led by Democrats he’s sending federal agents into claiming they’ve all become some sort of post-apocalyptic hellscapes. They’re not. But local police in every large city do face serious crime problems related directly to the most dangerous, life-threatening issue Trump has no intention of ever doing anything about — the widespread proliferation of deadly weapons in America.
Instead, Trump has invented “violent mobs” raging out of control “worse than Afghanistan” in cities throughout the nation “all run by very liberal Democrats. All run, really, by the radical left. This is worse than anything anyone’s ever seen.”
That last sentence certainly applies to the soaring coronavirus death toll and declining U.S economy under Trump. But a rare bit of good news for Americans is they’re more united than ever before about the need to improve racial justice in policing our cities. For the first time, 63% of all Americans support the Black Lives Matter movement and a record 69% say black people and other minorities do not receive equal treatment with white people in the criminal justice system, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Recognizing Inequality
That healthy, positive desire to improve racial fairness in our democracy is the result of millions of Americans seeing for themselves an appalling video of George Floyd being murdered for eight minutes and 46 seconds by Minneapolis police. The racially unequal treatment of minorities is now recognized by 62% of whites, an increase of 18 points since 2014 when police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York City created Black Lives Matter. The recognition of racial inequality in criminal justice increased since 2014 by 19 points to 89% among white Democrats, by 24 points to 65% among white independents, but only by seven points to 36% among white Republicans.
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Mainstream calls for ending police misconduct are on full display in Portland, just the opposite of what Trump hoped to create. Posing as a law-and-order president declaring war on fictional mobs he accused of destroying the city, Trump sent paramilitary Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs agents trying to provoke angry violence from a minority of demonstrators who’d sprayed graffiti on a federal courthouse.
Instead, the response was to swell opposition from everyday citizens protecting their city from the illegal actions of Trump’s unidentified federal agents clubbing peaceful protesters and snatching demonstrators off the street without probable cause, speeding them away in unmarked vans for questioning out of sight.
Americans don’t want a U.S. version of a third-world dictator’s secret police. Could there be any stronger proof Trump has lost the suburbs than a “Wall of Moms” protecting demonstrators from government violence and a Dads unit armed with leaf-blowers blowing tear gas back into the faces of Trump’s Homeland Security forces?
Milwaukee Wary of Trump’s Militia
Milwaukeeans are justifiably wary of Trump’s militia of border agents who previously committed crimes against humanity caging babies and toddlers ripped from the arms of immigrant mothers. A Portland demonstrator armed only with a speaker had his skull fractured by a “non-lethal round” fired at his head. Trump launched his political career stoking racist fears of Latino immigrants as rapists and murderers. Now Trump’s directing border agents operating with few legal restraints to disrupt U.S. protests against his policies
When Trump ordered federal agents into Milwaukee without consulting either Gov. Tony Evers or Mayor Tom Barrett, Milwaukee Dist. Atty. John Chisholm said he immediately received assurances from U.S. Atty. Matthew Krueger for the Milwaukee district those agents “are not going to be directed at peaceful protesters or any protesters, period.” Of course, assurances from the Justice Department run by Trump’s corrupt co-conspirator Atty. Gen. William Barr aren’t worth very much. But Chisholm could be a key figure in preventing any illegal, undemocratic actions by Trump’s federal agents in Milwaukee.
Two of Chisholm’s counterparts, Marilyn Mosby, state’s attorney for Baltimore, and Larry Krasner, district attorney for Philadelphia, whose cities Trump also has threatened with uninvited federal agents, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post warning Trump to stay away.
“Should Trump send federal agents who engage in the same illegal vigilante activities (as in Portland) unlawfully assaulting and kidnapping people, they will face criminal charges,” Mosby and Krasner wrote. “These crimes would be offenses against the residents of our respective states—not federal offenses_and, therefore, the president would have no capacity to pardon those we might prosecute.”
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