Last Friday, the usual pre-winter storm mood hung over Memphis like, well, a cloud, inspiring the standard “Snowpocalypse” jokes, the bread-and-milk memes, and the typical haha jitters that affect this Southern city when winter weather looms large.
A few years ago, I wrote a column in which I suggested that then-Mayor AC Wharton declare Memphis’ first day of snow each year an official civic holiday: Snow Day! It already has all the trappings, I wrote. Like Christmas, it begins with a shopping frenzy, as we scurry to grocery stores to stock up on Snow Day foods. And the Snow Day holiday spirit abounds as we wait in long lines, buying booze, smiling and laughing in anticipation of the dangerous excitement to come. “They’re saying we might get 14 inches,” says the cashier, as we shiver in anticipation. And, as I wrote then, everyone takes the day off anyway, so why not make it official? But the mayor ignored me. Surprise.
We all went to bed Friday night with the understanding that snow or freezing rain or sleet or some awful combination thereof would pile up high during the night and greet us at daybreak. But no. We got a boring two or three inches of crunchy snow, just enough to keep most of us inside for the day with our phones and computers, where we were greeted at mid-morning by news of another horrific killing by ICE/Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis.
DHS officials immediately issued statements that Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old American citizen who was shot, was planning to “massacre federal agents,” and posted a photo of a gun that they claimed belonged to the victim.
As one video after another of the incident emerged, the true story became clear. Pretti was filming with a cellphone and wasn’t interfering with any sort of “operation,” when two federal agents approached him, pushed him to the ground, and sprayed his face with tear gas. He never reached for a gun. Then a scrum of five or six men piled on, pinning him to the sidewalk and beating him as he covered his head with both hands. As they subdued him, one agent pulled a handgun from a holster on Pretti’s belt in back, and within two seconds, agents had fired 10 shots, killing him on a public sidewalk in broad daylight.
Trump apologists went into their usual “just comply and nothing will happen” mantra. But comply with what and with whom is the question. There was no leadership evident in this encounter, no one to assure proper policing protocol was followed. It was just a bunch of guys pushing someone around, then beating him, and then shooting him as he was on his knees.
I studied a still photo image of the moment just before the shooting. Each “officer” was dressed differently — a couple were in jeans, a couple were in camo, one was in an Navajo-patterned shirt. They wore hats and coats of various kinds and colors. The only thing consistent in their appearance was that they all wore masks and none displayed identification. After they shot Pretti, most of them quickly walked away, seeking to distance themselves from the scene.
Alex Pretti wasn’t the “worst of the worst.” He wasn’t even an immigrant. He was a nurse at a VA hospital who was exercising his right to film federal agents in his neighborhood. What happened in Minneapolis on Saturday wasn’t “law enforcement,” and it certainly wasn’t police work. It was disorganized bullying sanctioned at the highest levels of our country’s executive and judicial branches. It’s a massively funded private army, like Hitler’s “brown shirts.” But not even the Gestapo wore masks.
These anonymous thugs aren’t looking for the worst of the worst. They’re paid vigilantes, out to enforce the legalized terrorism this administration has set up as its key domestic policy.
When people get hurt or killed or shipped off to camps in the middle of the night, when children get mishandled and abandoned, when Americans get held in custody for days without access to counsel, administration toadies like Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, and JD Vance are quick to tell us that what we see isn’t happening. It’s a snow job. Iceland is Greenland. War is Peace. Non-compliance with the unidentified masked men is punishable by death. The choice is clear: Say loudly what you see with your own eyes or shut up and get in the boxcar. The storm is still gathering.