My old neighbourhood was raided yesterday. I read THIS article, and knew it was utter bullshit-they most certainly were not carrying out this large-scale raid to look for a few gang members. They terrorised a community, carted off people for minor violations, and are holding them incommunicado without access to legal representation. You are not going to convince me that the alleged gang activity wasn’t simply an excuse to bang on terrified people’s doors demanding they produce identification. You know damn well that it was. You’re going to suggest that if they just happened to spot (or smell) drugs that they are going to say, "Oh gosh, sorry, you just keep smoking that weed there Ma’am, we’re only looking for Salvadoran gang members." Look, let’s just call bullshit right here and now, OK? What’s more, you can be certain that the homes with Italian names on the mailboxes were not subjected to the whole storm trooper routine.
What the paper doesn’t mention is what they did to the poor people who weren’t arrested. Just what does it mean when they say they "Scoured" the houses but came up "empty"? Is being Latino now justification enough for the Feds (with local assistance in this raid) to knock down your door, demand identification and "scour" your property? When do we start smashing the windows of their businesses and making them wear badges identifying them? I mean we’re already carting people off to the equivalent of concentration camps in the open desert to do forced labour. There aren’t any ovens, (yet) but I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here in the depiction. We’ve taken a vulnerable and really quite helpless group of human beings and made it socially acceptable to hate them, scapegoat them for the economic and political decisions of the people in power (Latinos didn’t send your jobs to China and India) and then terrorise them because it is convenient. Might as well start practicing clicking your heels because they really like a good crisp click when they shout "Achtung."