They are still at it.
Recently, we covered how the gentry in Minneapolis is taking to the streets to express their dissatisfaction with the activities of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents. The need to preserve the sanctity of foreign gang members and sex offenders in their neighborhoods is apparently a local tradition. What is apparent in all the bluster is how much of this is emotion-driven fervor, and how little pragmatic thought goes into their plotting.
For starters, they are still protesting at Target stores.Talk about the most low-risk, least-resistant, barest-effort protesting you can come up with. I’m sorry, but parking your hinder in the home goods department has to rank down there with tersely-worded emails and posting a bevy of hashtags on your social media. I have pondered about why we see these retail demonstrations, and it leads to one conclusion: The stores are a helluva lot warmer.
But many residents are conditioned to the cold. Take the swelling number of “ICE Watch” community activists. These are people outraged at the efforts of the feds, who declare they do not want that kind of activity in their city. In combating this, they are outside, engaging in the very tactics they claim to abhor.
The stunted logic in play begins with the common complaint from politicians that the border agents are not properly trained, and this delivers an inherent threat. Yet, they are imploring the locals to go out and police the city themselves. I’m sorry, but ICE agents go through an extensive training period, and many of them are veterans from various law enforcement divisions.
You know who is not properly trained? The HOA presidents, 3rd-grade teachers, nose-ringed baristas, and part-time cashiers from Michael’s craft stores, who you are commanding to go out and confront the mesomorphic G-men in tactical gear. This leads to the misguided white-knighting by Alex Pretti and the see-your-manager attitude of Renee Good.
And their rationality is equally unskilled. These municipal nannies hate the prejudice on display, but they accuse random people of being agents and harass them on camera, sans proof. We are told it is unacceptable to see ICE demand ID from random people, but scores of these wine mom vigilantes are typecasting drivers in SUVs, and demanding that they prove they are not agents. While combating the detaining tactics, they literally set up roadblocks, so they can scan license plates and run them through a database. I see; it is only wrong when federal authorities do this, but Rhonda from the St. Paul PTA is free to demand your papers.
And on the subject of schools, there have been a number of calls for students to get involved. School closings and student walkouts have taken place, with local officials imploring the kids to get active. At CNN, they highlighted a pair of teenage siblings who have become full-time ICE monitors. They apparently have been so involved in this that they are known to agents as “the brothers.”
Now…it feels really odd for me to be the adult in the room here, but I see a conflict in the media messaging. Here they are on the one side, gleefully encouraging kids to cut class – who need the barest inspiration to do so, by the way – and they are promoting this pubescent duo, who are facing down agents daily. At the same time, this is the same press insisting that ICE is literally The Gestapo and is murdering innocent people in the streets. Sure, by all means, let’s encourage the kids to race around amok, with the Nazis hopped up on caffeine and have jittery trigger fingers!
All of this encouraged activism is leading to abjectly insipid displays, meant to be bold acts of resistance, but amount to impotent symbolism. A group of bicyclists road boldly through the city in a strident form of bipedal defiance of ICE.
I can only imagine the tremulous reaction the federal officers felt upon viewing this site. Seriously, you can ONLY imagine it, because not a single trained officer would see bikes on the road and say, “Welp, that’s it - I’m done here,” and then lob his badge to his superior.
Then there were the drummers. One day, it was organized that drummers would encamp on sidewalks and play. Not just on tom toms, but full drum kits were set up throughout the town. As a result, ICE and all other federal LEOs packed up their equipment and fled town by sundown! [UPDATE: It has since been learned that no agents took evasive action in any fashion as a result of the percussive activism.]
There was another bold display where a group of zeros decided they would replicate one of wartime’s greatest images. These soy-infused little imbiciles got a state flag, and decided to replicate the raising of the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima.
This is rather fitting. In the state known for pornographic levels of fraud and tax dollar thievery, why not add stolen valor to the rap sheet as well?
However, there is one message that is assured to reach all the way up to the White House. At NPR, they excitedly covered a groundswell effort taking place in a Minneapolis business, which will turn the tide for those who are in favor of keeping sexual predator illegal aliens in their community.
"It was just collective exhaustion," said Paul Neary, a shop employee. "Minnesotans — we're not going to say the big thing, but we often know what the big thing is just by looking at each other." They have received messages from people around the world, from Israel to South Africa to Norway, expressing their support for the movement.
And just what is this action that will grind to a halt the immigration enforcement in their city?
Shop owner Gilah Mashaal said of federal agents' use of aggressive tactics. It was obvious to her and Neary how the shop would protest. They pulled out their knitting needles and got to work.
These artisans are crafting what has become known as the “Melt the ICE hats,” which are patterned after similar headgear seen in Norway in the 1940s, which was a sign against the occupation by the Nazis. Scoff all you want, but you will notice the Nazis are not in power in that Scandinavian hinterland. Sure, some might say that events like Normandy played a role in beating back Hitler’s hitmen, but who can dispute the impact knitted chapeaus had in neutralizing the SS invasion?!
A warning to Mr. Tom Homan, you have been served!