A wake-up call for #WhiteAmericans

The deaths of #ReneeGood and #AlexPretti are forcing white people to face hard truths about power and violence

By Chauncey DeVega, Senior Writer, February 1, 2026

"None of what we have seen over the past few weeks — not the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis at the hands of federal officers, the seizure of children by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents, the callous disregard of civil rights and liberties from an increasingly authoritarian administration — is supposed to be happening in America. But it is.

"American citizens are being arrested and brutalized for exercising their constitutional rights — recording ICE, standing nearby or simply being the 'wrong' color in the wrong place. The Trump administration has labeled these Americans 'domestic terrorists,' claiming they posed existential threats to heavily armed federal agents, despite clear video evidence to the contrary. Immigrants are hiding, afraid to go outside. Entire neighborhoods and communities are under siege. Even though it’s only January, at least eight people have died from their encounters with ICE.

"The #CognitiveDissonance is dizzying. #Disorientation is one of the #authoritarian leader’s most powerful weapons.

"Hours after Pretti was killed on Jan. 24, hundreds of people protested near the site in Minneapolis where he died. There, an older white woman told a reporter that 'the government is not supposed to be doing these horrible things to the American people. It is unbelievable. This is something like Nazi Germany or Russia.'

"I yelled at the television. 'What d**n country do you live in?'

"But her sentiments are common among people who are gathering at protests, community meetings and town halls all across the country.

"Like many other white Americans, and too many Black and brown Americans, she seemed willfully ignorant of her own country’s history, which includes #genocide and #LandTheft against #FirstNations; white-on-Black chattel #slavery; #JimCrow and #JaneCrow; the #BlackCodes; the #RedScare; violent social and political repression of #LGBTQ Americans; the #PalmerRaids; mass #incarceration and the #WarOnDrugs, to name just a few examples."

Read more:
https://www.salon.com/2026/02/01/a-wake-up-call-for-white-americans/

#AmericanHistory #Racism #SystemicRacism #USPol #Authoritarianism

Today is #GeneralStrike day!

No working. No buying. Take #action against #ICE.

I'll be making #zines about topics related to ICE. Its #history in #SlavePatrols and the #PalmerRaids, and links to #Israel. People #killed whose #stories are not being told. Effective #DirectAction ideas. And sustaining a #strike long-term.

And I'm making my paid #substack posts #free until Monday.

January 2, 1920 - U.S. Attorney General Alexander Palmer, in what were called the Palmer or Red raids, ordered the arrest and detention without trial of 6,000 Americans, including suspected anarchists, communists, unionists and others considered radicals, including many members of the IWW.

This followed a mass arrest of thousands two months earlier based on Palmer’s belief that Communist agents from Russia were planning to overthrow the American government.

A suicide bomber had blown off the front door of the newly appointed Palmer the previous June, one in a series of coordinated attacks that day on judges, politicians, law enforcement officials, and others in eight cities nationwide. Palmer put a young lawyer, J. Edgar Hoover, in charge of investigating the bombings, collecting information on potentially violent anarchists, and coordinating the mass arrests.

#PalmerRaids

Today in Labor History December 21, 1919: U.S. immigration deported anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman to Russia. The authorities deported, arrested and killed hundreds of anarchists, communists, labor leaders, IWW members, and oter radicals during the Palmer Raids (also known as the First Red Scare).

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #IWW #deportation #redscare #Revolution #russia #soviet #prison #unionbusting #PalmerRaids

Today in Labor History November 15, 1919: The main headquarters of the New York City Wobblies (IWW) was ransacked and destroyed by agents acting under the US Attorney General Palmer. The Palmer raids were part of the first U.S. communist witch hunt, starting well before the more well-known McCarthy purges. It was also where J. Edgar Hoover cut his baby teeth. Between 1917 and 1919, the IWW membership had plummeted from 300,000 in the U.S. to around 30,000, due in large part to the mass arrests, murders and deportations of IWW members, anarchists, and other radicals during the Palmer raids.

The accompanying photo is of men arrested in the Palmer raids awaiting deportation hearings on Ellis Island, January 13, 1920.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #anarchism #wobblies #redscare #palmerraids #police #union #repression #FreeSpeech #solidarity #communism #mccarthy #JEdgarHoover

Today in Labor History November 7, 1919: The first Red Scare, or "Palmer’s Reign of Terror," began in the U.S. on this date, on the 1-yr anniversary of the Russian Revolution, with the imprisonment of 3,000 anarchists without bail at Ellis Island. During the Palmer raids, thousands of anarchists, communists, union leaders and other radicals were rounded up, imprisoned, deported and killed. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were among those who were deported.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #palmerraids #redscare #anarchism #communism #socialism #anticommunism #freespeech #prison #murder #Revolution

September 5, 1917 - In 48 coordinated raids across the country, later known as the Palmer Raids, federal agents seized records, destroyed equipment and books, and arrested hundreds of activists involved with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), known fondly as the Wobblies.

Among the arrested was William D. “Big Bill” Haywood, a leader of the IWW, for the “crimes of labor" and “obstructing World War I.”

An Italian anarchist’s bomb blew himself up on the porch of Attorney General Mitchell Palmer’s residence in Washington shortly after the discovery of 38 bombs mailed to leading politicians.

#PalmerRaids

Today in Labor History June 2, 1919: Anarchist Galleanists carried out a series of 9 coordinated bombings across the Eastern United States. They damaged the homes of U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, as well as then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt. They also targeted a number of judges. None of the targeted men died, although a night watchman, a former editor of the Galleanist publication “Cronaca Sovversiva,” did accidentally get killed. The bombs were delivered in packages that included the following note: “War, Class war, and you were the first to wage it under the cover of the powerful institutions you call order, in the darkness of your laws. There will have to be bloodshed; we will not dodge; there will have to be murder: we will kill, because it is necessary; there will have to be destruction; we will destroy to rid the world of your tyrannical institutions.”

The response by Palmer included mass illegal search and seizures, unwarranted arrests and the deportation of several hundred suspected radicals and anarchists. He also carried the nationwide witch hunts known as the Palmer raids in November 1919 and January 1920, arresting 10,000 anarchists, communists, and labor leaders, imprisoning 3,500, and deporting 556, including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), was founded in response to the raid, by IWW organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Helen Keller, and others.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #bombings #palmerraids #redscare #policebrutality #prison #deportations #fdr #union #communism #EmmaGoldman #alexanderberkman #elizabethgurleyflynn #HelenKeller #IWW #aclu #classwar