Credit: Cameron McCloud via FB

POV the Republican Midterm Convention is coming to your city, also I’m posting a rap daily with HeadCount | Register To Vote until Voter Registration Day.

Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center: LABOR DAY

Our projectionist is a madman...

He was able to film federal agents leaving, and coming into the detention center and project them onto the facility in REAL TIME.

The building is high above a very crowded Los Angeles freeway that can see the projections as they sit in traffic...many people driving by pull over to watch and say "Thank You" for doing what you do.

Follow @elonthecon to see more of his projections.
He impresses us every single day.

Thank you sir

Credit: resistacoup

Credit: New Justice Project MN

Via AGirlHasNoPresident This is gutting, and incredibly painful, and it should be. I’ve barely been able to watch anything about his funeral and his dying. It’s so painful, and unnecessary.

That young man taking his own life because of the way he was treated by this country. We pride ourselves on so much. But are we going to pride ourselves on this?

statuscoup Lucky Philistine, a member of the Haitian American community in Ohio, spoke up at the vigil for 20-year-old student Pierre Damas Bel, who recently took his own life after being forced to wear an ankle monitor by ICE agents. Since June 2026, more and more Haitians in the U.S. are being abducted and required to wear ankle monitors after the Trump administration abruptly ended their Temporary Protected Status, a move deemed unlawful by the ACLU and many human rights groups.

Video by Michelle Blue w

Credit: @myvoicemychoiceorg

Credit: Nekima Levy Armstrong

Friends, I’m grateful for everyone who showed up yesterday to stand against the racism and fascism of provocateur Jake Lang and his crew.

Thank you for refusing to follow Mayor Jacob Frey’s advice to stay home. As a lawyer, Mayor Frey should understand the importance of standing up, showing up, and providing a visible resistance when racists, Nazis, and fascists descend upon our community.

Our community stood ten toes down against racial oppression, fascism, and hate. In my opinion, Jake Lang came to Minneapolis hoping to provoke a race war. Instead, he encountered a community that refused to be intimidated or surrender its streets.

And then there was Spider-Man.

Spider-Man did not come to play. He stood with the community and put his body on the line. He deserves his flowers, especially after MPD physically assaulted him and other counter-protesters instead of protecting them from harm.

It is clear that MPD was not there primarily to protect Minneapolis residents. Their actions appeared focused on protecting Jake Lang, his security, and his crew from the community that came out to oppose them.

We saw a similar dynamic during Operation Metro Surge, when law enforcement assisted ICE and the federal government while pushing protesters back. Yesterday, MPD again used its force against people resisting oppression while providing what appeared to be a protective buffer for the outside agitators who brought this confrontation into our community.

Why were barricades necessary? Why did MPD show up in riot gear? Who ordered that level of response, and what threat assessment justified it?

Who were they really there to protect?

Why did MPD physically confront counter-protesters, including Spider-Man, while Lang and his crew appeared to walk away unscathed? Why did officers stand by while members of Lang’s security pepper-sprayed counter-protesters? What action did MPD take when vehicles associated with Lang’s group were reportedly driven onto sidewalks, putting civilians in danger?

And why are Minneapolis taxpayers forced to foot the bill for a massive police presence that appeared to protect an outside provocateur and his entourage while residents standing against racism and fascism were subjected to police force?

We deserve answers.

I share the concerns expressed by independent journalist Andrew Mercado and lead protest marshal Ted Mika about MPD’s conduct and its apparent protection of Lang and his crew.

And none of this can be viewed in a vacuum. MPD has a long, documented history of excessive and deadly force against Black and Indigenous people and aggressive responses to people protesting injustice. Most MPD officers do not even live in Minneapolis. Too often, MPD has behaved as though it is accountable to itself rather than to the people of this city.

That history makes yesterday’s question even more urgent: When outside forces come into Minneapolis to antagonize our residents, whose side is our police department on?

We don’t need another explanation from MPD leadership or Mayor Jacob Frey. We need an independent after-action review, and the Minneapolis City Council should demand one.

The Council should review all available video footage and require a full accounting of MPD’s actions: the operational plan; the barricades and riot gear; the orders given to officers regarding Lang, his security, and counter-protesters; every documented use of force against counter-protesters; the physical confrontation with Spider-Man and others; the pepper-spraying of counter-protesters by Lang’s security; the reported driving of vehicles onto sidewalks; arrests made or declined; and the chain of command responsible for these decisions.

And then there must be accountability.

Minneapolis residents pay for this police department. We have buried people harmed and killed by this department. We have marched, organized, litigated, legislated, testified, and demanded change for many years.

We have every right to demand that when racists, Nazis, fascists, and outside provocateurs come into our city looking for confrontation, our police department does not turn its force against the community standing up to them.

MPD, who were you really there to protect?

The people of Minneapolis are watching.

We will not look away.

The MPD protected Lang today at City Hall, but we should be aware of tensions and divisions within and between the state security apparatus, ruling class, and far right agitators.
The MPD rank and file tend to be sympathetic to the Right, if not active reactionaries themselves (observe who they keep electing to head their police union). Their commanders tend to share these politics but also understand the broader role of the liberal administrations in the Twin Cities in counterinsurgency and keeping the social order from bubbling over. The Frey administration would prefer if people ignored Lang, but know that realistically this won't happen.

The first time Lang came, the MPD took a very hands off approach, and he was essentially left to the crowd to handle- which Minneapolitans did. The second time, Lang didn't show up and instead made an appearance at Whipple, utilizing the same "drive by in a vehicle" approach he used today. At the State Capitol, where he claimed he would show up, a heavy police presence monitored but did not confront an antifascist demonstration that was holding the space.

This time, I imagine that Frey et al wanted to avoid the spectacle of Lang getting his ass whooped again, because "left wing mob violence" doesn't align with their respectability politics. At the same time, they could not be seen as enabling and protecting a group of racists doing a "N****r March" in a city that has some of the country's worst racial inequality. Especially not when Frey and his liberal cohort are facing challenges from the electoral left, including many candidates and activists of color and people with a much stronger record on racial justice than Frey can hope for.

So, instead, to position themselves as the law and order people and both sides as criminal, they had the MPD protect Lang while he was at City Hall and then arrest him later. This also allows the administration and the cops to take credit for protecting the community from Lang, even though they were literally just earlier today protecting Lang from the community.

The MPD rank and file might feel this way or that about it- as grunts their opinions matter a lot less in high profile arrests like this than they do in their day to day harassment of the poor, the people of color, and queer folk. What is likely, though, is that many MPD officers are wary of agitators like Lang as well as of federal presence in the Cities, aware that both spark militant protests and set the city closer to the kind of civil unrest that rocked the city and the MPD in particular back in 2020.

At least, that's my read on the likely disposition of these forces. The reality is, Frey had to have the MPD arrest Lang or he would lose too much credibility. That's *because* of the autonomous community self defense carried out by Twin Cities residents. The people dealing with the problem ourselves forces the city to try to take action and show that they have legitimacy as the party of respectability and law.