M. GESSEN, The New York Times; State Terror Has Arrived
[Kip Currier: It is fortunate to have the first-hand experience and insights of M. Gessen, who has lived through state-sponsored authoritarianism in the former Soviet Union, and more recently in Russia, until emigrating to the United States.
Forward this New York Times article to as many people as possible to raise awareness and promote advocacy against what Gessen and others refer to as Trump 2.0's strategy of "state terror". To "name it" and "know what it is" is to be better prepared to stand against it.]
[Excerpt]
"After the past three weeks of brutality in Minneapolis, it should no longer be possible to say that the Trump administration seeks merely to govern this nation. It seeks to reduce us all to a state of constant fear — a fear of violence from which some people may at a given moment be spared, but from which no one will ever be truly safe. That is our new national reality. State terror has arrived.
Please look at this list with me. Since early January, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement expanded its operation in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., federal officers have: killed Renee Good, a white middle-class mother; menaced a pregnant immigration lawyer in her firm’s parking lot; detained numerous U.S. citizens, including one who was dragged out of his house in his underwear; smashed in the windows of cars and detained their occupants, including a U.S. citizen who was on her way to a medical appointment at a traumatic brain injury center; set offcrowd-control grenades and a tear gas container next to a car that contained six children, including a 6-month-old; swept an airport, demanding to see people’s papers and arresting more than a dozen people who were working there; detained a 5-year-old. And now they have killed another U.S. citizen, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an I.C.U. nurse with no criminal record. It seems he was white. The agents had him down on the ground, subdued, before they apparently fired at least 10 shots at point-blank range."
