'They're bringing Jim Crow from DC to all across the country... The bet is that people will be numb or will be afraid.' [View all]

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Senior opinion writer and columnist for the Boston Globe,Kim Atkins on Deadline White House today:


Kim, you're in DC as you alluded to. Just tell us what that's like. How has it changed? What can you see?

"Well, I was felt quite safe in the city before all of this. But again, crime is not the point. Whether there or not there was crime in DC, it was dropping precipitously. Uh so that's one thing.

But I find it heartbreaking that I walk and see Humvees and armed guardsmen on the streets of Washington DC when I'm going about my errands and trying to live uh daytoday seeing children going back to school while this is happening.

It is gut-wrenching to see videos of mostly black and brown people being detained on the street in broad daylight by masked agents and taken away to who knows where as bystanders videotape it and ask these people what their names are because otherwise their families might not even know where they are.

And that's a big part of this too that we cannot ignore. Donald Trump is attacking cities with large black and brown populations, with a lot of immigrants, and with black mayors, all three, DC, Chicago, and Los Angeles. I do not think that that is by accident.

That has been part of his entire political message that these cities are out of control. They're overrun... he got rid of the dog whistle a long time ago and is just proudly stating that outright, especially be and this force being all but led by ICE who is led by someone who keeps putting white nationalists uh imagery on the on their social media sites tells you exactly what this is.

So, as a black woman living in DC right now, a place that I've been almost 19 years, uh, and that I've grown to love, it is absolutely heartbreaking and it is something that should shock every American who witnesses it.

...

We cannot believe, listen, we we do a lot of evaluations and and comparisons to other places, right? places where autocracy has marched in sort of slowly and away, places like Turkey, but we don't talk enough about what history right here in the United States of America has shown us.

What I am seeing happening in DC right now is Jim Crow.

It is the force the force implementation of the kind of segregation attack, xenophobia, that we are seeing against black and brown bodies who dared to live freely in a city, let alone a city that is the nation's capital to live, to be to be free, to have drum circles happening and and to have a genuine diverse place.

And the president did not like walking here in the time that he was actually living here and not in Bedminster or Mara Lago. He did not like seeing that. He did not like the Black Lives Matter Plaza. So, what's the first thing he did? He bullied Mayor Bowser into removing it.

He did not like that right at his front door. The same way that he left New York City because he couldn't stand the fact that uh you know things like the exonerated five being exonerated actually happened there. He has been this way from the beginning.

So don't think that that is not part of the purpose of this. It's the autocracy too, but the cities that he's targeting, he's doing it on purpose. And either he believes that there's enough of his base who are clamoring for that or it's just something that he genuinely believes.

But this is a roll back. This is like reconstruction or or the the destruction of reconstruction all over again. This is Jim Crow happening. And it's reminding me that uh DC is not uh above the Mason Dixon line. It is a part of the South, but they're bringing Jim Crow all across the country and Chicago's next apparently. The bet is that people are numb or will be numb or will be afraid.

Yeah, look, the tyrants govern through fear. They govern by assuming that people will not stand up for each other because they would rather not call attention to themselves. Dictators take their power from the acquiescence of not the bad people but the good people. The people who know that what is happening is wrong but yet don't speak out.

And so it is the obligation of all of us as citizens, whether we fear for ourselves or we fear for our neighbors or we fear for our communities. It's our all of our obligations to take a step back, not a step uh take a step forward, not a step back.

When the big law firms refuse to do the right thing, it's the job of all lawyers to say we will we will we will double down and do more. When when when large institutions crumble in fear out of Donald Trump, the the out of the ash of that, we all need to stand up and do more.

I do want to add one thing though that JB Pritsker in the first clip you showed at the top of this hour got it 100% right. Donald Trump is sending the military to these blue cities because he wants to undermine free and fair elections in 2026.

He is normalizing the idea that there will be members of the military on the streets in blue cities exactly as was said cities where there are large numbers of black voters. And he is doing it because he believes that his way forward is to prevent those folks from voting.

And what was once literacy tests, what was once guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar, what then became more respectable is uh various laws that made it harder to register to vote, made it harder for people to find their polling place, for black voters to have to wait in hours long lines. to say that he the counting and the tabulation of voters voting and to deploy the military in the cities that he thinks will make the difference between Democratic and Republican victory.