This was an execution! What are we going to do about it?
St. Lawrence County considers partnering with ICE; Pollution increasing in Adirondacks
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This was an execution.
In America.
Seen by Americans and people all over the world and the most powerful people in the government are telling us that is not what we saw.
But it is what we saw.
Nine shots rang out aimed at a 37-year-old man lying face down in the street and being held down by ICE agents.
And he was dead.
The ICE agents walked away and made no effort to help him or preserve the crime scene.
Top government officials said there was no crime. They claimed the man was menacing them with a weapon and intended to massacre ICE agents.
They are still saying it.
That’s nothing close to what we saw on the video.
What we saw was a murder.
New York Times reporter Charles Homans has spent the past 10 days in Minneapolis, chronicling the mood and witnessing the protests and ICE raids.
“For weeks, these agents had been actors in a kind of theater of power, meting out various forms of state force and violence, framed by the smartphone cameras they carried, providing a steady stream of content for the Trump administration’s various social media platforms,” Homans wrote. “What was clear in person, seeing the scene outside of the frame, were the limits of this performance of power. The agents had no capacity to maintain order or much apparent interest in doing so. Their presence was a vector of chaos, and controlling it was not in their job description. All that was holding the crowd back, as far as I could tell, was the knowledge that an officer like these shot a woman a week earlier and that another shot a man up the street an hour ago. I left the scene that night certain it would happen again.”
It has.
s Alex Pretti’s parents said they are heartbroken.
But they also said they are angry.
We all should be angry. Not just angry, but incensed.
“Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital,” his parents went on in a statement. “Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact. I do not throw around the ‘hero’ term lightly. However, his last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He had his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed. Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”
A good man was killed in Minneapolis Sunday and his murderers are not going to be held accountable.
Coming on the heels of the murder of Rene Good, this should hit home for every American that this can happen to anyone now.
These were regular good Americans standing up to evil.
Remember, ICE’s mandate was to remove the “worst of the worst” from our country. It is clear now, they are the “worst of the worst.”
Homans summed up what we were seeing in ICE’s actions as something chilling.
“These were pictures of the state deploying violence confidently and with open disinterest for the niceties of process or protocol — the expression of power as an end to itself,” Homans wrote. “To some, it was horrifying; to others, it was exhilarating. To many city residents I talked to, the message of it all was clear enough: Nobody could help them. They were on their own.”
Maybe that is how we all should look at this.
We are all on our own now.
If you voted for Donald Trump, defend this, because you are culpable.
If you can’t, then protest it. Make your voice heard.
Over the weekend in Queensbury, protesters turned out to protest the Target Corporation’s cooperation with ICE at its store in Aviation Mall. Each person bought a container of salt, checked out, then got in line to return it with an action called “Salt melts ICE.”
It was called: “Ice out for (Rene) Good: National Day of solidarity with Minneapolis.”
I’m not sure if that is enough of the message the corporation needs to hear.
I believe we need to hold our local elected leaders accountable.
On Sunday I sent this message to Sen Dan Stec’s office (stec@nysenate.gov):
Does Sen. Dan Stec condemn the two recent murders in Minneapolis by ICE agents? Yes or No?
Ken Tingley
The Front Page
Flood his email with that question. Call his office and ask if he supports ICE and its current immigration enforcement tactics.
Do the same with Assemblyman Matt Simpson (simponsm@nyassembly.gov) and Rep. Elise Stefanik.
And Warren County’s chairman of the Board of Supervisors, Kevin Geraghty (kevin.geraghty@townofwarrensburg.net).
Does Warren County condemn the two recent murders in Minneapolis by ICE Agents?
And Washington County chairman of the Board of Supervisors, Bob Henke (www.washingtoncountyny.gov/Directory.aspx?DID=24):
Does Washington County condemn the two recent murders in Minneapolis by ICE agents?
Email the Warren and Washington county sheriffs, too.
Just hours after Alex Pretti was murdered, Substack columnist Heather Cox Richardson reported that ICE agents pinned down another U.S. citizen on the street in Minneapolis.
“I have done nothing at all. My name is Matthew James…Allen. I’m a United States citizen…. You’re gonna kill me! Is that what you want? You want to kill me? You want to kill me on the street?” Allen was reported to have screamed. “You’re going to have to f*cking kill me! I have done nothing wrong.”
Allen and his wife were running away from the scene after tear gas was fired.
This is America today.
North Country ICE
North Country Public Radio reported last week that St. Lawrence County is considering a partnership between its sheriff and ICE.
NCPR reported that the St. Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office wants to join the ICE 287(g) program. It allows local law enforcement to train with ICE to perform specific actions under ICE’s direction.
“The reason that we want to sign into this opportunity is because it offers training to our officers on immigration law, multicultural communication, and also training on avoiding racial profiling,” Chief Deputy Sheriff Leighton Filiatrault said when he presented the resolution to county legislators earlier this month. “We realize that this is a big topic right now, but we want to make sure that we’re going to handle it correctly in this county.”
In light of this weekend’s events, St. Lawrence County may want to reconsider any partnership proposal.
Whiteface pollution
Air quality is getting worse in the Adirondacks while pollution guidelines continue to erode in places upwind of the North Country.
North Country Public Radio reported that scientists at Whiteface Mountain’s summit are seeing troubling trends in pollution. They have been monitoring air quality for decades.
The results show organic carbon in cloud water has more than doubled in the past 10 years and that PFAS “forever chemicals” are showing up in samples while microplastics are floating through the atmosphere.
The scientists found that “while sulfate pollution from coal plants has declined as expected, the spike in organic carbon—likely tied to wildfire smoke and other sources—took researchers by surprise.”
The researchers hope to expand their work to understand what is driving the changes.
Lying is OK
The White House posted a photo on X of a church demonstrator being arrested in Minneapolis.
It was noted elsewhere the photo had been manipulated, using artificial intelligence, to show the person arrested was crying. When it was pointed out to the White House the expression of the person being arrested had been manipulated, the response was that the photo was a meme.
CNN Media writer Brian Stelter noted the White House then responded with “Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue.”
CNN’s Jake Tapper said, “So apparently the White House is now officially in the business of ‘fake news.’”
Out at WHO
While President Trump withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization shortly after he took office last year, it was made official last Thursday.
The World Health Organization is part of an early warning network of global health organizations that identifies and fights infectious diseases.
Leaving the organization has been characterized as “scientifically reckless” by experts.
“It’s almost laughable that the Trump administration thinks they can lead in global health,” said Lawrence Gostin, a law professor at Georgetown University and director of the WHO Collaborating Center for National and Global Health Law. “They’ve decimated the global health capacities of the CDC. They’ve slashed global health funding around the world.”
Brooks and Trump
New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks had this to say about President Donald Trump’s authoritarian tendencies in his column Thursday:
Every president I’ve ever covered gets more full of himself the longer he remains in office, and when you start out with Trump-level self-regard, the effect is grandiosity, entitlement, lack of empathy and ferocious overreaction to perceived slights.
And while Brooks is concerned about what happens next, he does write this:
And no, I don’t think America is headed toward anything like a Rome-style collapse. Our institutions are too strong, and our people, deep down, still have the same democratic values.
But I do know that events are being propelled by one man’s damaged psyche. History does not record many cases in which a power-mad leader careening toward tyranny suddenly regained his senses and became more moderate. On the contrary, the normal course of the disease is toward ever-accelerating deterioration and debauchery.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book “The Last American Newspaper” into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
Just left a comment for the Saint Lawrence County Sheriff’s office. I suggested that there were other ways to train their officers rather than resorting to the Gestapo. Do what you can to stand up and speak out. Thank you Ken for your reporting.
We must witness, testify and resist. We must rally others. We must never be silent. We must never be complicit. We must stand. All of us.