On the heels of mass protests demanding justice for those killed by federal agents and demanding ICE out of our communities, the capitalist state has escalated its assault with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) executing ICU nurse Jeffrey Pretti in broad daylight.
In response, Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted on X, “A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists.”
Meanwhile on Truth Social, Donald Trump called Pretti a gunman, justifying the killing and attacking various Democrats.
Republicans are digging in their heels, maintaining that these federal forces can kill anyone that protests them, even in legal ways, like filming. They’re showing the public how the state can commit whatever type of violence it likes, when it likes.
Democrats, meanwhile, have responded with assurances that the state, through government channels, will fight this murder. During his press conference, Minnesota governor Tim Walz tried to pacify the masses fighting back in the streets, urging peaceful protest — despite the fact that he saw the same video many others did, where Pretti was being peaceful, yet killed execution style after being beaten by a gang of CBP agents.
At the same time, Walz claimed that the way to “fight” ICE was to bring more armed forces — the National Guard — to a city already being violently occupied. Meanwhile, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC), self-described democratic socialist also called for activating the National Guard, stating, “we can and must stop this.”
Both politicians claim this is about maintaining order and safety, but it is actually about protecting the private property of capital and repressing protests as more individuals become moved to action, bearing witness to their community members being murdered by the state via livestream.
The National Guard is not going to protect anyone. One force that aims their guns at our class siblings isn’t going to be stopped by another force that aims their guns at us too.
Meanwhile, the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office agreed with Waltz and AOC’s calls. They stated the National Guard is needed to “assist the Sheriff’s Office in protecting life, preserving property, and helping to ensure the safety of all community members.” They went on to emphasize the Guard’s presence will “create a secure environment where all Minnesotans can exercise their rights safely.”
But we cannot trust the National Guard to “protect” us in any way, shape, or form. Its history is one of repressing the working class and oppressed. It has been deployed to crush strikes, suppress Black uprisings like in Detroit and Newark in 1967, and has even murdered peaceful student protesters, like at Kent State in 1970. This is not some type of protective force as these politicians try to frame it; it is an occupying army for capital.
Whether it is the police or National Guard, liberal politicians are reiterating that more “training” and technocratic solutions will prevent these horrors from continuing. So all we need are the better-trained cops that have “learned” from the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprising or the better “trained” National Guard, along with maybe a few more body cameras — and crisis averted. Calls for better training have been around since the Civil Rights era, but training or body cameras won’t stop the fact that all of these forces are meant to impose themselves on the public through violence or the threat of violence in order to protect the system of capitalism and the status quo.
The response of Waltz and AOC makes it crystal clear that the Democrats have never been on our side in this fight. They have voted time and time again to increase ICE’s budget since its inception, they helped create this army that is now being weaponized against us. Hell, several recently voted to continue funding for DHS amidst the ongoing crisis around the country. It took two people being killed in cold blood in plain sight (along with countless others killed in detention centers) for Senate Democrats to finally oppose the bill that would continue funding ICE.
The fight against this violence falls to the working class, not the National Guard. We must build from the actions of January 23: unions must mobilize for a nationwide strike, and we must organize democratic assemblies in every workplace to broaden the struggle. We cannot wait for 2028, like some labor leaders suggest. The fight is up to us and the time now.
The post No, Tim Waltz and AOC, the National Guard Won’t Save Us appeared first on Left Voice.
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While I don’t necessarily disagree with the overall point, especially about the history of national guard deployments, activating the guard is still an important step and different from previous deployments. This not a labor dispute or a typical political protest of the past. People are expecting the state government to do something to protect them from masked men who are murdering them in the streets. The guard is also made up of people from Minnesota. If ever they had an opportunity to step up and do the right thing, this is it.
Also, if the author is correct and the guard will not protect Minnesotans from ICE, then all pretense of law and order will evaporate for a large chunk of society. There is no coming back from that without more violence than America has seen domestically since the Civil War. That may well be where we are already but most will not accept that as truth until at least after the guard has demonstrated that they will side with the federal government. I think the actions of the Minnesota national guard in the coming weeks will determine whether this comes to be known as a ‘state vs federal government’ conflict or a ‘people vs the system as a whole’ conflict.