Restrained protesting — difficult, but necessary

There is something truly remarkable happening on the streets of Minneapolis, as protesters continue to frustrate the extrajudicial arrests, detainments and fatal shootings orchestrated by U.S. President Donald Trump’s fearsome ICE army.

Over his first year in office, Trump poured billions of dollars into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, creating what is in effect an army that operates outside the oversight of congress, and in many instances, outside legal due process. More importantly, the ICE army is Trump’s preferred tool of provocation.

The process goes something like this: the president disparages “blue” cities, urban centres that have traditionally supported the Democratic Party. Then, Trump dispatches the FBI, Homeland Security, National Guard or ICE officers to patrol the streets and perform random sweeps for illegal migrants. In some instances, like Washington D.C., these federal officers also arrest people suspected of minor criminal offences. It’s all done in quick and brutal fashion.

However, it’s become obvious now that Trump is not really concerned about unearthing illegal migrants or combating street crime. The president wants to provoke the city into violent protests. With enough video and photos of looted stores, burning cars and violent confrontations with federal agents, Trump can contemplate the activation of various federal laws aimed at quashing insurrection.

Trump has yet to legally declare any of the protests as insurrections, but his administration has continued its campaign of intimidation in blue cities, fingers crossed that protesters will cross a line and open the door to an even greater level of unilateral executive power in the White House.

It is against this backdrop that we consider the remarkable efforts of Minneapolis residents in strenuously opposing Trump’s extrajudicial intimidation of American cities without giving the president the ammunition to trigger insurrection laws.

Hundreds of thousands of people from all over Minnesota have protested daily, most following ICE patrols to record instances of brutality and violence during arrests. The protesters have also tried to make it uncomfortable for ICE, chanting loudly and blowing whistles.

What is remarkable is that the protests have been incredibly restrained with virtually no property damage or looting. This strategy is no accident. A coalition of civil rights organizations, unions and other community-based activists trained more than 65,000 people in tactics to legally protest and disrupt ICE operations.

As successful as this approach has been, it has had unforeseen and tragic consequences. With protesters buzzing around ICE units, frustrated federal agents have become more violent. The evolution from “defend yourselves against violent protesters’ — a major canon of the ICE strategy — to ‘use violence to intimidate protesters” was a key ingredient in the shootings of Renee Good on Jan. 7 and Alex Pretti on Jan. 24.

The needless deaths of Good and Pretti has not only mobilized public opinion against Trump’s ICE army, but it actually made the White House blink. Trump ordered the recall of Gregory Bovino, the senior-most ICE official in Minneapolis, and has started to reduce the number of ICE agents on the ground.

The situation in Minneapolis is still fraught, and the threat level for protesters remains high. However, as the percentage of Americans willing to denounce Trump and ICE grows — and it is growing steadily — the less likely the White House should be in trying to misrepresent legal protests as illegal insurrection.

Nothing can reduce the sense of grief and horror for those closest to Good and Pretti.

However, the protesters in Minneapolis are showing that Trump’s authoritarian aspirations can be curbed through non-violent protest. And that, while tragic, the deaths of Good and Pretti were not in vain.