Not a time to be quiet

It's hard to stop feeling shattered amid both fear and fury watching what is happening in Minneapolis right now. Americans are finding out what it is like to be occupied by an invading army of unconstrained goons -- sent by our own government. All over social media, you can see the thugs in their pretend military garb, roughing up people who question their authority. They sure seem to like being the Big Guys with Guns.

And you can see your fellow citizens rejecting the invaders, at known risk.

A sociologist who studies sexual violence, Nicole Bedera, has some thoughts about resisting if this invasion comes to your neighborhood.

I’m seeing lots of people on here misunderstand the purpose of ICE watch. It’s de-escalation. And it’s grounded in the social science of violence.

Among perpetrators of violence, there is a very small share who are independently motivated to violence. But the vast majority of perpetrators commit violence to seek approval and status from others. This is particularly true among men who use violence to affirm their masculinity.

The goal of ICE watch is to surround that second type of perpetrator with people who *disapprove* of their actions. It will make them less likely to be violent and we’ve seen that, in some cases, that includes rethinking their original plan to tear a family apart too.

The success of ICE watch interfering with ICE’s mission is almost certainly why DHS keeps sending more agents to Minneapolis. They used to execute their raids with just a few agents. Now they need 6-12 to even begin to disrupt the social pressure to be nonviolent. 

I’m just echoing others who have already said this, but it’s a good thing that it takes so many ICE agents to make a single arrest. It makes the whole operation slower and more resource-intensive.

It can be hard to see the success of prevention efforts because we can’t see inside the minds of the people who changed their behavior because of those efforts. But there are a lot of reasons to believe ICE watch is working. And it’s also part of why ICE watch is generally safer than it sounds. 

Let's hope she's right. My city is full of people who are determined to protect our neighbors when/if the goons arrive. 

Everybody go get those whistles!