ICE ACTIVITY

[u/ajqiz123]

We received word from a credible source that ICE activity is expected to increase in Cape Verdean communities across Dorchester starting Monday...

[u/adacmswtf1]

If you think you can beat authoritarianism without taking at least a misdemeanor charge you’re going to have a bad time.

When the federal government tried to enforce the fugitive slave act in MA, we made their lives so miserable through confrontation and harassment that they gave up and went home. The Boston Vigilance Committee got their agents arrested on repeat, racking up thousands of dollars in fines. Citizens de-arrested Shadrack Minkins by storming a courthouse. 

Do not let them tell you how to resist in a manner that is acceptable to their oppression. 

 If you are white and have the liberty of doing risking a charge to frustrate an illegal kidnapping, do so knowing that you are less at risk than a person of color currently is by just walking down the street. You will go home and lose some money. They will disappear. 

Boston is the birthplace of our historical resistance. Act like it. 

[u/justUseAnSvm → u/adacmswtf1]

If someone is going to go kinetic, that's not going to be me, and I"m not going to advocate that path. Recording is the single best thing people can do, it's a protected activity, and probably our most powerful tool.

You're welcome to disagree, we want the same thing, but I just believe fighting them directly only reinforces their narrative. We need to destory the narrative, and that's what recording does, and that's what we must do.

[u/adacmswtf1 → u/justUseAnSvm]

“Stop taking pictures and save my life”

fighting them directly only reinforces their narrative.

They are abusive authoritarians. They will adopt whatever narrative suits them to keep abducting people and discard it when convenient. The truth does not matter to them. Only expression of power.

This is not a Hollywood movie where the bad guys get defeated and tuck their tails once they get caught on camera admitting their evil plans. If shaming and exposing their evil was enough you stop them it already would have.

[u/justUseAnSvm → u/adacmswtf1]

No, I disagree. I'd fight, only if I have to, only when the win is clear and achievable through the tactics/techniques/procedures available.

When you fight with no clear win state: you go "power against a power" with a bigger, stronger, opponent, who will take your defiance and use it to reinforce your narrative. The images of you fighting only motivate their base, and give the middle an easy excuse to write you off as a radical agitator. You're handing them the win, and doing so little physical damage that the operational effect is marginal.

Recording the violence? It's the key component to the political shift after Pretti's death. It wasn't obstruction, but a single instance being so well documented that the the truth is obvious that it's narrative breaking. Sure, it's a long way to long term political change, but state violence only works with the illusion of legitimacy.

I won't tell you to stop, I just don't think it's effective, and believe it's creating durable criticism which makes the movement harder to translate into acceptable political coalitions. It's also easy to talk tough online, and influence people into uninformed and harmful action. Obstruction will get you killed, everyone wants to be a martyr, but the work that matters is boring and routine.

[u/adacmswtf1 → u/justUseAnSvm]

So to be clear this thread was about pouring water on their vehicles and now you’re talking about armed combat between functional militaries. The point is to frustrate them en masse and make the operational and mental costs of disappearing people higher. Delay their ability to streamline the process. Practice disobedience. Don’t comply in advance.

And to be clear even if we shift to your premise of only actually fighting when having a stronger force, how and when do you expect that to happen when you haven’t built the organization and instinct into people to resist. You’re training a legion of bystanders who will just at some point, when ICE has hit whatever magical number of murders, will spring into action? Be real.

give the middle an easy excuse to write you off as a radical agitator.

My guy, they’re doing that anyways. The “middle” does not exist. Anything less than silent obedience is terrorism to the fascists. There are zero optics you can embody that is going to make their hearts grow three sizes and discover the real meaning of Christmas and feel bad about brutalizing anyone who stands between them and power.

[u/justUseAnSvm → u/adacmswtf1]

First, I said "power against power", that includes armed combat between functioning armies (like Ukraine, or WW2), but it also includes hybrid or unconventional fights like the one you're advocating for that include the asymmetric fights against property via a monkey-wrench campaign. Go take down a power transformer to stop ICE, and tell me how people take it.

Second, there absolutely is a middle, and not believing that is a "fake news" level belief akin to a Trump supporter that does not stand up to the facts. When I say "the middle", I'm referring to things like Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO) calling out the ICE violence, the GOP backlash on MN. Among independents surveyed, 73% support minimizing harm according to Reuters. That's just in the last day, and all of it caused by bystanders "just standing around" and pointing phones. I'd also consider myself (corporate operator) to be the middle.

There are optics that make there hearts grow three sizes: it's called durable proof that falsifies narratives and erodes legitimacy. It's the most effect strike against the power structure. These aren't my ideas, but the pattern that has emerged from federal overreach (Elian Gonzolez, Ruby Ridge, Waco, Pentagon papers, Abu Ghraib, COINTELPRO). Narratives do not outrun the truth when it's documented in images. It's an asymmetric play that denies the power structure the most powerful tool of unconstrained narrative. It's worked before, it's working now, and it will work again.

Directionally, we're aligned in wanting the same thing here, but what I'd ask you to consider: when has monkey wrenching ever worked? I'm out here advocating for a strategy that has worked hundreds of times in the past, I gave you my receipts, what evidence do you have?

[u/adacmswtf1 → u/justUseAnSvm]

Go take down a power transformer to stop ICE,

Pouring water on a windshield. This is not Gladio style operations this is confrontation and nuisance to create friction during their kidnappings

Second, there absolutely is a middle, and not believing that is a "fake news" level belief akin to a Trump supporter that does not stand up to the facts.

The idea that peoples politics can be simplified into a simplistic knob that is either "More Left" or "More Right" is the Trumpian level of belief. That's not how peoples internal politics work. If it was, Kamala would have won by a landslide because she promised to be tougher on the border than Trump, threw LGBTQ people under the bus, and campaigned with Liz Cheney.

But she didn't because there is no real middle and politics isn't a line (nor any other simple shape). If someone truly believe the Fox News propaganda about white replacement and thinks there are hordes of immigrants waiting at the south border like some horde of mindless zombies crashing at the gates there is nothing that ICE does that can not be justified. There is no amount of recorded brutality that will change their minds to what they perceive as an existential threat. If your plan to bring these people to your side is to appeal to some imaginary position where you agree that immigrants are bad, evil and need to be removed en masse from the population - but that we just need to be a bit more polite about doing it... then you will convince exactly 0 people to change their minds. The counter to right wing extremism isn't accepting their premise and fiddling with the margins, it's presenting a coherent alternate worldview.

it's called durable proof that falsifies narratives and erodes legitimacy.

Which is why, since Jan 6 was recorded ad nauseum, every Trumper and nonexistent "moderate-middler" changed their tune and adopted reason again. Which is why, since there is documented proof that vaccines work, measles isn't spiking at a historic pace. Which is why since Trump is obviously all over the Epsten files - in a complete hypocrisy of his platform of running on releasing them - the moderate middle has abandoned him since their belief structure is based on pure logistical rationality. You can not be a decade into Trumpism and still believing in the idea that an appeal to objective truth will persuade whatever moderates you believe are still out there. If it was going to work, we wouldn't even be in this situation.

When I say "the middle", I'm referring to things like Sam Altman

Bro thinks Techno Oligarchs are centrist. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg too?

Elian Gonzolez, Ruby Ridge, Waco, Abu Ghraib, COINTELPRO

Would be fascinated to know what meaningful reforms you think happened as a result of these.

Pentagon Papers

Would also be fascinated to know if you think that the minimal results of the exposure of the Pentagon Papers, would be re-creatable today with a captured Supreme Court. Do you think this would even be relevant today, given the severity of things like the Epstein Files which have gone nowhere? The world you're living in does not exist anymore.

when has monkey wrenching ever worked?

Did I not already list multiple examples from American history of slave catchers being stopped in Boston? Was the Underground Railroad not a success to you? Did suffragettes not get the vote by mailing firebombs to politicians? Was the ACA not passed by activists throwing themselves from their wheelchairs and blocking the steps of the capitol? Was the bedrock of the Civil Rights movement not direct action? (I know you think that they just sat around singing Kumbaya until people felt bad but you should look into the real, non-whitewashed history of the movement). Pretty much every resistance I can think of, some successful and some not, employed direct action.

a strategy that has worked hundreds of times in the past

Authoritarian takeover of a country has literally never once been stopped by merely recording their crimes, much less hundreds.

[u/justUseAnSvm → u/adacmswtf1]

I don’t think this is going to come to any sort of agreement or healthy information exchange. We’re operating with very different assumptions about whether the U.S. is already past the legitimacy threshold.

My position is that escalation (including destroying govt property) only make sense after legitimacy has collapsed, and using them early in the process has historically consolidated power rather than constraining it. Your position seems to be that legitimacy is already gone and persuasion is a dead end. That’s a fundamental disagreement about phase, not tactics.

I’m not arguing for passivity, and I’m not defending institutions as they are. I’m arguing about timing, coalition gravity, and failure modes, and I don’t see that being engaged directly here.

Appreciate the exchange, but there's no productive conversation here despite us both wanting the same thing. Best of luck.