Seventy years ago today
Rosa Parks sparked a movement 70 years ago today by refusing to surrender her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white passenger. She was arrested. The Montgomery bus boycott lasted over a year and ended when a U.S. Supreme Court very different from ours ruled segregation on public buses unconstitutional.
Parks said of her role, “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
But it took courage. The year-long boycott shows that such courage is contagious. Oppressors fear it.
Jim Crow segregation and Klan lynchings had terrorized the Black community across the South for one nearly hundred years. A decade earlier, a murderous Nazi regime ruling Germany through fear had executed millions it deemed undesirable.
German novelist Hans Fallada, the pen name of Rudolf Ditzen, wrote Every Man Dies Alone in the fall of 1946. He based his novel on a Berlin couple that resisted the Nazis with a two-year postcard-writing campaign. Hillary Kelly discusses the work, its background, and Fallada’s plot in The Atlantic. Fallada examines how ordinary Germans dealt with the Nazi culture of fear. Many submitted, but not all.
Kelly writes:
The German authorities relied on terror, even toward party members, to keep their citizenry in line. But where they erred, as Fallada writes, was in “the assumption that all Germans were cowards.” No German freedom fighters brought down the government, no anti-propaganda mission persuaded the people to rise up en masse against their tyrants; it took a world war to knock Hitler from his perch. Yet some Germans, Fallada shows, found ways to surmount their fear and assert their moral integrity in acts of dissidence, even if they could not topple the regime.
Nazis assumed all Germans were cowards. White Democrats in the Jim Crow South assumed Blacks would never tire of remaining “in their place.”
And so it begins again. New Orleans expects a visit from Greg Bovino’s immigrant-snatchers this morning. Axios reports:
Border Patrol agents are expected to start immigration enforcement efforts Monday in New Orleans, with the goal of arresting 5,000 people in south Louisiana and Mississippi, according to reports.
Why it matters: Communities are rushing to prepare amid uncertainty and mounting fear.
The big picture: Greg Bovino, the commander of Customs and Border Protection, is reportedly leading the mission after wrapping up enforcement in Charlotte and Chicago.
The DHS claim that it is targeting violent ciminals for deportation is transparent pretext:
Two months ago, DHS sent immigration officers to Chicago to detain and deport “violent offenders” that the agency said were released from state and local jails because of “sanctuary” policies. So far, the agency says it has arrested more than 4,000 people. Officials have publicly identified only about 120 of those as having a criminal arrest or conviction, some for major crimes such as murder, and others for nonviolent offenses such as illegally crossing the border.
During arrests in Gretna, Louisiana on Wednesday, customs agents tried to enforce a 25-foot buffer zone for those filming their arrests. But a federal judge in January issued a temporary injunction on that Louisiana buffer zone law ICE appears to reference. Observers resisted.
Locals are preparing as if for a hurricane:
In and around New Orleans, some immigration lawyers say they have been inundated with calls from people trying to prepare for the upcoming operation. One immigration lawyer, Miguel Elias, says his firm is conducting many consultations virtually or by telephone because people are too afraid to come in person.
He likens the steps many in the immigrant community are taking to what people do to prepare for a hurricane — hunker down or evacuate. Families are stocking up on groceries and making arrangements for friends to take their children to school to limit how frequently they leave the house, he said.
In the days leading up to Border Patrol’s planned operations, businesses have posted signs barring federal agents from entry and grassroots advocacy groups have offered rights-related trainings and workshops on documenting the planned crackdown.
The Trump administration assumes it can terrorize immigrant communities without them and their neighbors resisting. They were wrong. Not all Americans are cowards.
Six Democratic officials, five of them military veterans, did not write post cards. The made a video cautioning service members not to obey criminal orders (as some may have already).
Donald Trump called for their arrest and execution.
Courage is contagious. That’s why Trump 2.0 fears it.
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Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?
No King’s One Million Rising movement
50501
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
