Movement For Black Lives Responds To Arrests Of Don Lemon And Anti-ICE Protesters In Minnesota

Movement for Black Lives has issued a response to the recent arrests of Don Lemon and the demonstrators who took part in an anti-ICE protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn., where a local ICE director serves as a pastor. As previously reported, Lemon has said repeatedly that he was only there to cover the protest earlier this month, and a magistrate judge and an appeals court both rejected the Trump administration’s bid to charge Lemon, but the federal government needed its pound of flesh anyway. This is all happening while the administration is getting torched from both sides of the political aisle over its handling of ICE-related violence in the Twin Cities area—so the Department of Justice had federal agents arrest the former CNN journalist in L.A. while he was covering the Grammys, as well as three additional people on top of the three who were previously arrested, including organizer Nekima Levy Armstrong, whom the White House tried (and failed) to humiliate by digitally altering her arrest photo.

Besides Don Lemon, federal agents arrested Trahern Jeen Crews, journalist Georgia Fort—who filmed herself just before her arrest on Facebook Live—and Jamael Lydell Lundy.

M Adams and Dr. Amara Enyia, the co-executives of Movement for Black Lives, responded to the Trump administration’s obvious lawfare with the following statement:

“These arrests in Minneapolis are a blatant attempt to silence those who are documenting and protesting the immense cruelty of the Trump administration’s fascist tactics. They have arrested faith leaders, activists, students, teachers, and anyone else who dares express their disagreement with this administration in an effort to protect their communities. A tactic of authoritarianism is crushing dissent, and we are witnessing this play out not only in Minnesota but around the country.

This administration will do anything to prevent people from seeing the evil and violence they are inflicting on our communities every day, and their intentional failures to address rising costs of food and healthcare, skyrocketing rent and utilities, and the devastating impacts of climate change, as half the country is currently enduring a record-breaking ice storm and cold front. It’s their hope that the threat of arrest, abuse, and deadly violence will silence journalists, that the fear will push people off the streets and back into our homes so they can continue kidnapping and terrorizing our people without resistance.

In the face of this repression, care and people power are the only ways efforts of resistance can endure and defeat these right-wing attacks. Much of that has begun to develop organically in cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, and Washington DC, but more support is needed. That’s why we’re developing Community Care Networks in key cities across the country. In partnership with local organizations, these networks are meant to help develop and expand local connections, meet each other’s needs as the right decimates social programs, and build political power together to resist fascism and win back control of our communities, our systems, our courts, and, eventually, our nation. We will continue to show that an ethic of care is the answer to the cruelty of empire.”

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