Marilu Mendez said when ICE vehicles began following her and her husband Monday and then surrounded their car on Tallman Street in New Bedford, she took out her cell phone and started recording.
Her video shows a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforement agent using a large hammer to break the back passenger window of their car.
Marilu said the agents were focused on her husband, Juan, but kept calling him “Antonio”, the name of another man who lives in their building.
Juan Mendez is now being held in a detention facility in Dover, New Hampshire, with a hearing scheduled for May 7.
Go to the protests this weekend.
More is needed. I’m not a history buff, so I don’t know the exact number of times peacefully protesting has worked in authoritarian regimes, but…
Peaceful protests rarely lead to anything against authoritarians on their own. They do tend to gather a lot of people though, who will over time get less and less peaceful.
This is true, but with an important qualifier: Those people choose to become less peaceful. There’s no unstoppable march of history to cause these things; it’s real people like you and me who make them happen. If you want to escalate then you must spread that desire in your community and get them to escalate. The fact that I’m barely hearing a peep about any kind of strike is very concerning for American democracy.
Edit: By the way I said escalate, but there’s no reason that escalation must be violent. Striking and mass occupations (think occupy wall street) are very effective methods of peaceful resistance, but they’re still a far cry from protesting on a weekend.
They also hurt a lot more of their own. We need a critical mass ready to strike or they’ll just pick off the weakest. I’m gonna be asking around about strikes at this weekends protest.
Even starting with a 2 day strike, one where we could plausibly be “sick” and not lose our livelihoods would be a good step.
“Peaceful” protests (they invariably involve clashes with the military or police) do work (see: post-communist Eastern Europe, Ukraine and the Arab Spring) but when you compare something like Euromaidan to 50501 you’ll see a very clear difference in boldness even despite both being nonviolent.
Sure, but I think it’s about momentum and building blocks. Can’t ask Joe Schmo to get to the guillotines right now…not even sure I personally agree with that anyway…but we as an American society have gotten very, very comfortable with a life full of conveniences. I think a lot of people are seeing things falling apart not sure what to do. Attending a peaceful protest is really energizing and hopeful for folks that are looking to take any sort of action. You see so many other people feeling the same way you do and it kind of snaps you out of something and you realize you care and your neighbors care. Yes fighting directly against an enemy is needed but a lot of revolution and resistance is also caring for your community and taking care of one another when systems fall. I think there’s a quiet power in just showing up for one another. Why put out the doom message that step 1 is not enough, when it’s going to require step 1, 2, 3…and so on.
