Sacramento City Councilmember Jay Schenirer and Mayor Darrell Steinberg have joined a chorus of local electeds throughout the country working to stop the Department of Homeland Security from deploying unidentified goons into their streets. Steinberg joined Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf in a strongly worded letter to the federal government condemning such tactics. Which is good. But a little ironic.
We seem to remember, just last month, mayors Garcetti and Steinberg welcoming the National Guard onto their streets. And just this week Mayor Schaaf shot down a call to defund the cops in her city. (As a thank you, the people of Oakland gave her garage a new paint job.)
Now we’ve got goons being deployed to Chicago (with Mayor Lori Lightfoot welcoming them!), Kansas City and Albuquerque. Trump continues to threaten to send them to Oakland, but we’ll see if he actually follows through. Folks in Oakland don’t fuck around.
We can be concerned about all of this. We should be furious.
But we should also remember that this is the United States’ foreign policy coming home (quite literally) to roost. Trump is invoking the 2001 Patriot Act as a way to justify the Portland occupation and kidnappings. And let’s not forget the bill allowing indefinite detention abroad signed into law by President Obama in 2011. If people in other countries are treated this way by our federal government, why should we deserve basic civil rights such as habeas corpus?
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