DAVID MARCUS: Impeding federal law enforcement is not protest, it's just crime
There seems to be a bit of confusion in our society of late about what "civil disobedience" is and what it isn’t. Last week, this very confusion got 37-year-old Renee Good killed.
Political protest in the form of civil disobedience has a long and very proud tradition, from Mahatma Gandhi non-violently defying the British in India, to our own Martin Luther King, Jr. penning his eloquence from a Birmingham jail cell.
There is a stoic dignity to this practice, which in and of itself grants the words of its practitioners a gravity and profound humility.
What we are seeing across the country as organized gangs of wine moms use Antifa tactics to harass and impede Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents is not civil disobedience. It isn't even protest. It's just crime.
The word "civil" in civil disobedience refers to the fact that the protester is allowing themselves to be arrested in order to emphasize just how important their cause is to them. It is also generally done in a context that threatens minimal harm to police and bystanders.
Today, across the country, but especially in bastions of democratic socialism like Minneapolis, Portland and Seattle, we see something entirely different: bands of people following, harassing, doxxing and sometimes engaging in direct assault against ICE agents.
What these ICE Watch groups across the country, of which Good was reportedly a trained member, do is entirely different. They are trying to impede federal agents from carrying out democratically enacted laws, not sending a message, and importantly, they are trying to evade capture.
Sorry, that is crime, not protest.
Further, we need to ask ourselves, quite seriously, if groups of people training and then executing missions that put law enforcement and the public in harm's way may, in fact, be criminal conspiracies.
If one’s job is to be a neighborhood lookout for a street drug dealing operation, that is a crime. It's not entirely clear why doing the same thing to protect illegal immigrants, including many of whom are vicious criminals, isn’t a similar activity.
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According to a recent poll, only 24% of Americans believe that it is acceptable to go beyond peaceful protest in response to ICE enforcement. But among White women 18-44, that number leaps to an astounding 61%.
Maybe they are listening to too many true crime podcasts, but we have to ask ourselves, how on Earth did this become acceptable behavior in our society?
The short answer is that for most of this century, our law enforcement agencies and courts have just let it happen, they have decided that some criminal activity is just fine so long as your cause is just.
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This often begins with infractions of the law that border on silly, such as throwing a Subway sandwich at a cop, but then the sandwich becomes a snowball, then a lock, and the next thing you know people are striking federal agents with SUVs.
The video of Good and her partner heckling and, let's be honest, goading ICE officers with an obnoxious smugness that makes most people’s skin crawl, is just one of many.
We see these self-important White women doing it in video after video after video, taunting cops, insulting journalists, or even bystanders, often with a weird and disturbing glee.
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Let’s be clear, this is happening because we let it happen. Where I live in West Virginia, if I saw a state trooper had pulled over a friend of mine and decided to start throwing things at the cop, I would rightfully be arrested. So why are the rules different when opposing ICE?
The responsible thing for every Democrat in politics and in the media to do today, right now, is to tell their audiences that it is never okay to assault a cop, it is never okay to impede a federal investigation, and they need to knock it off.
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Instead, Friday saw Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., riling up a Minnesota crowd from the back of a pickup truck saying, "You all have insisted that this resistance is not one that can be intimidated." If she was referring to using automobiles to thwart federal agents, as she seemed to be, that is simply a call for insurrection.
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In fact, there is good reason to believe that anyone who would say that should not be in Congress.
Sadly, Democrats will not do the responsible thing, even though it would protect their own supporters such as Good, who should still be alive today.
No, there is only one answer here; enforcing the law.
And here is my warning: If we do not enforce the law, if we simply allow these cosplaying would-be revolutionaries to do whatever they want, including hitting cops with cars, Renee Good will not be the last to needlessly die.
This madness needs to end, and it needs to end right now.