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Mainers have been watching Minnesota. And they were prepared when ICE agents surged to Portland and Lewiston earlier this week. Saturday morning, Maine’s Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (she’s running for Governor) joins us for coffee at 8:30 am ET on a Substack Live to discuss what she’s seeing on the ground. Shenna has joined us in the past to discuss voting rights and election issues and I’m delighted we’ll have her with us in the morning.
So far, Maine is standing for community. In Lewiston, people packed up food for delivery to their neighbors who were afraid to go out.
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The fear and intimidation are real as word spreads that ICE is indiscriminately picking up people who have legal status in the U.S. as they sweep the streets and even American citizens, if they’re the “wrong” color. The fear, it should go without saying, is a feature, not a bug.
Today in Portland, Maine, ICE agents began videotaping people who were observing them. Apparently, they thought this was clever. When asked why they were doing it, the agent in the video below responds: “We have a nice little database.” “And now you’re a domestic terrorist.”
That threat relates back to a post I wrote two weeks ago about the risk Trump would use his NSPM-7 memo to treat citizens exercising their rights as though they were terrorists. Now it’s a reality. (If you missed the post initially, this is a good opportunity to go back and connect the legal dots to see what they are planning.)
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You have a legal right to observe and film law enforcement on public property, so long as you don’t obstruct or interfere with what they are doing. We should all use common sense and avoid escalating tensions, but we are entitled to observe law enforcement activity within reasonable limits. Retaliating against Americans for exercising their rights is precisely what government is not supposed to do.
Trump learned no lessons in Minnesota, not even from the death of Renee Good. Instead, he’s making people like the two-year-old who was swept up into ICE custody today in Minneapolis pay for the petty vengeance he wants to exact and the political power he hopes to accumulate.
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Be careful and safe out there, but don’t let anyone take your rights away from you, or keep you from exercising them to protect others.
See you in the morning with Secretary of State Bellows. I’ll be the one with lots of coffee.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
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