RECENT events in Minneapolis are casting a giant cloud over the US. There are several reasons for this sense of gloom: Trump and Venezuela; Trump and Greenland; Trump and Iran; Trump and Palestine. But above all, Trump and Minneapolis.
Minneapolis is one of several US cities into which Trump has sent federal US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Last month two US citizens were killed by ICE agents. On January 7, 37-year-old Renee Good was shot dead as she was driving her vehicle away from ICE agents. On January 24, 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti was shot dead by ICE agents who fired multiple rounds into him as he lay on the ground. Despite clear video evidence to the contrary, the Trump administration insisted that ICE agents were attacked by Good and Pretti.
The killing of these two innocent US citizens in broad daylight caused shock and grief throughout the US and the world. There were marches in solidarity with the two dead people throughout the US. Surely ICE and Trump had this time gone too far.
But the shooting dead of US citizens by US government agents is nothing new. In 1968, Bobby Hutton, the first official of the Black Panther Party, was shot dead after surrendering to Oakland police. In 1969, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were both shot dead by Chicago police. In 1971, George Jackson was killed by San Quentin police guards. A year earlier, in 1970, Jonathan Jackson, George’s brother, was killed by police. In 1973, Zayd Shakur was shot dead by New Jersey state troopers during a traffic stop. In all, at least 28 Black Panthers were killed by police between 1967 and 1971. No state agent, police or state paratrooper served so much as a day in jail.
So while there may be incredulity and national rage when ICE agents shoot dead US citizens, don’t hold your breath waiting for the killers to be brought to justice.
US government denial of justice is not a new thing. Bill Clinton in 1992 gave his presidential campaign a boost by refusing clemency to an Arkansas man on Death Row who had the mental capacity of a child. President Lyndon Baines Johnson presided over the US role in Vietnam. On March 16, 1968, US troops destroyed the village of My Lai and killed at least 350 villagers, most of them women, children, elderly people and infants. Many of the victims were shot at close range. Women were raped, homes burned. Only one US soldier was convicted of murder, and he spent most of his three-year sentence under comfortable house arrest.
At the Davos conference recently, the Canadian Prime Minister made a speech which was widely admired. In it, Mark Carney spoke of an international rupture of relations between the US and its one-time allies. One sentence in his speech seemed to sum up present international relations: “The powerful do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” In fact Carney was quoting from a speech made by Thucydides, who lived some 400 years BC.
Carney’s speech is seen as a milestone, where countries throughout the world face up to the bully Trump and form alliances to protect themselves from this ruthless oaf.
Great speech, Mark, but that Thucydides quotation drives home a painful reminder: human beings haven’t morally evolved much over the past 2,400 years. Governments in the supposedly free West routinely arrange the killing of their own citizens; the powerful prey on the weak within states as well as between states.
And consider how long it took to squeeze the truth out of the British government about events on Bloody Sunday.
Trump’s brazenness may seem uniquely brutal, but it isn’t. Citizens have always been lied to and executed by those in authority. The only difference with Trump is that he doesn’t quite see what the fuss is about.
