If Alex Pretti was a domestic terrorist, may we all be so accused. His last act on this Earth before he was shot and killed on Jan. 24 by federal agents in Minneapolis was to aid and protect a woman. She had been, without provocation, shoved to the ground by a masked bully. Her offense may never be known. Videos show no interrogation, no hostile exchange, no disrespect as was the pathetic excuse given for why ICE agent Jonathan Ross killed Renee Good on Jan. 7. Without a thorough, unbiased investigation, the full context of this killing may never be known.
Alex Pretti was an American citizen, an Intensive Care Unit nurse who worked with U.S. military veterans. He was not brandishing his lawful firearm as was alleged by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem nor was he a threat to the officers, several of whom had him pinned to the ground when they shot him multiple times.
He is one of three people murdered in Minneapolis this year, two of whom were killed by the very people this administration says were sent to allegedly protect it from criminals rampaging the streets. Yet we can clearly see who is actually rampaging those streets every day despite pleas from the governor and the mayor to de-escalate tensions.
Federally funded thugs are making true Donald Trump’s claim in Iowa on Jan. 23, 2016, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” The president who promised to be “the protector of women” says Pretti’s killing was justified even though his own militia of masked, lawless agents killed Pretti for protecting a woman from their own brutality.
Trump’s criminal prediction has twice proven to be true. The calculation of his voters was probably that the hypothetical person he’d shoot wouldn’t look like them. He continues to call immigrants “stone-cold killers,” “blood thirsty criminals,” “animals,” “the enemy from within” who are ruining the “fabric” of our country because criminality is “in their genes” and claiming “they’re poisoning the blood of our country.” But someone with so much animus toward people based solely on race or ethnicity will predictably turn his venom toward anyone outside his orbit. Just ask Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Trump’s federal agents are now killing white American citizens. Renee Good and Alex Pretti are being cast with as much criminal culpability as the immigrants ICE is supposedly looking to round up simply because they disagree with the administration’s policies. So here’s the real agenda: political dissent is now a capital offense and the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms applies only to MAGA supporters.
What this regime is really fighting for is not to make America great again but to enrich themselves while becoming all-powerful and crushing any opposition to their white supremacist agenda for our future. By pitting us against each another and fanning flames of fear they are trying to use our differences as their weapon. That might work in homogeneous rural areas of the country. But Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Chicago have shown that Americans regularly work across differences and neighbors support neighbors. Diversity fuels our unique ingenuity and multiethnic, racially diverse communities all across this country know this.
Every bully needs enforcers which is what the Republicans in Congress are for this president. They stand silently on the sidelines as he damages the economy by using tariffs as a cudgel to bring nations to heel; uses the Department of Justice to file groundless lawsuits in attempts to punish his rivals; threatens the international balance of power by insulting and menacing our allies; and continues his law-breaking cover-up by refusing the release of the FBI’s Jeffrey Epstein files wherein he is named. And that’s the short list.
Republican lawmakers continue to enable him even when they have the power to stop him! They voted to punish their own constituents by diverting taxpayer money that could have been used for health, education and food assistance in their own districts. Instead, they gave these hard-earned dollars to Trump as a big blank check to expand his private army which is now let loose in American streets. To make matters worse, they see no reason to be accountable for investigating cases of lethal violence that impact those of us in their crosshairs. American tax dollars run amok as never before.
It is time we call on every representative in Congress — Democrat, Republican and Independent — to demand an end to this heartless and needless cruelty and killing. Congress must demand an end to the violence this administration is perpetrating against its own people.
Representatives who do not vote to cut off ICE funding should not be returned to office next year since they are actively aiding and abetting Trump’s 10-year-old threat to shoot people in the streets. They might not be loading the guns and pulling the trigger, but they are buying them. We need people in Congress who act like Alex Pretti, standing up to protect us, not kill us.
Candace Waldron is the former executive director of HAWC, Healing Abuse Working for Change in Salem, Massachusetts. She lives in Rockport.