Police at Delaney Hall prove that all cops are bastards
And Mikie Sherrill is complicit
Since stories of ICE raids have hit social media, I've seen countless people calling for local or state police to come to the aid of protestors and other victims of federal agencies. This completely ignores the real function of the police: to enact violence on those the state deems "dangerous," an amorphous term whose definition constantly changes based on the whims of entrenched power.
We need to reckon with the fact that "sending cops to protect protestors" is a fantasy. All they know is violence and deference to the state. Believing otherwise is a dangerous delusion.
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There is no world in which cops of any stripe will stand against ICE, and why would they? Cops are largely conservative hardliners, with up to 85% of them having voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2024. One study found that what little ideological diversity there may be in police departments is negligible in terms of real-life outcomes. It only stands to reason they support the goals of the administration, namely those of ethnic cleansing and white supremacy.
There really needs to be pushback on the idea that you need to court police support in order to be successful, especially as a member of the "opposition party." They have never once shown that they will be on the side of the people because they are the lapdogs of capital. They are paid to maintain hegemonic control over poor people, people of color, queer people, disabled people, immigrants, trans people, and various other marginalized groups.
Mikie Sherrill signed multiple bills designating New Jersey as a sanctuary state, limiting use of masks by federal agents, and limiting local police collaboration with ICE. Immigrant advocacy groups criticized the bills for being watered-down versions of legislation that they initially supported but nevertheless applauded their passage.
Sherrill called for Delaney Hall to be shut down in the wake of a partial health inspection that was hampered by federal agents, saying ICE needed to "immediately de-escalate" and promising to "uphold the Constitution."
But these words ring hollow when you see the reality on the ground: constant violations of the very same Constitution that affect both protestors and journalists. They are restricted to penned-off areas with the dystopian name "free speech zones," in direct violation of the First Amendment.
Not to mention the constant assaults journalists face while trying to do their jobs to share the reality on the ground with the world and not even receiving lip service in their defense. Photographers and reporters were maced, shot, and beaten with batons, resulting in broken fingers, battered knees (and potentially stolen property!), and various other injuries of unknown severity. Yet, there was not a single word said about these blatant attacks on the First Amendment by the governor. Press freedom in the United States is and always has been a myth, and Mikie Sherrill is doing her part to prove it.
Not only were New Jersey State Police sent to brutalize demonstrators, New Jersey's attorney general, Jennifer Davenport, further justified their response by claiming that individuals showed up "armed with helmets, shields, or gas masks," an absolutely ludicrous inversion of reality. The statement released by her office essentially justifies police violence against people trying to protect themselves from police violence. (Never mind the hypocrisy of it all, considering ICE agents and cops have all of those things AND an entire arsenal of weapons.)
As Will Bunch says in a column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, both Mikie Sherrill and Jennifer Davenport invoked the age-old trope of "outside agitators" coming in from out of state to do harm. The same rhetoric was used during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests to snuff out radical movements that were beginning to gain steam. This useless canard harkens back even further, to pro-segregation rhetoric that claimed Martin Luther King Jr. employed supposed outsiders in an attempt to delegitimize the Civil Rights movement, something King pushed back on in his Letters from Birmingham Jail:
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial 'outside agitator' idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
The only outside agitators are the ICE agents who are undoubtedly not from New Jersey and are there to torture and imprison human beings, including children, at the behest of a demented pedophilic war criminal. What could possibly be more agitating to anyone with a conscience than running a concentration camp?
It should also be noted that media, both local and national, is complicit in this rhetoric, choosing over and over again to call unilateral violence by police officers against protestors "clashes."
What is the average person supposed to take away from these headlines besides the idea that protestors are equal participants in a sort of mutual combat scenario against police officers and federal agents?
When you actually read these articles, they have zero evidence of violence coming from protestors and plenty of references to cops using pepper balls, tear gas, concussion grenades, rubber bullets, and other weapons. To be clear, headlines are typically written by editors, so I'm not directly blaming the writers of these pieces; I'm criticizing the power structure that claims impartiality as a defense against claims of bias while tipping the scales in favor of those higher up in the political hierarchy.
Ultimately, this is all happening amid a backdrop of horrific human rights abuses that have led to hunger strikes within Delaney Hall and sustained protests outside of it. That is not to say all of this is a distraction; it isn't, and claims to the contrary drive me insane.
It's to say that the machinery of the state is well-oiled. Decades of copaganda have led us here. We've been sold a fake bill of goods that says police are here for our protection, our safety, yet when it comes to matters of great consequence like what we're seeing in New Jersey, they always willingly slot into the machine as violent, mindless cogs.
You can find ways to support protestors and journalists below.
