{"id":15574,"date":"2020-08-13T12:00:46","date_gmt":"2020-08-13T19:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=15574"},"modified":"2020-08-13T12:00:49","modified_gmt":"2020-08-13T19:00:49","slug":"the-case-for-abolishing-the-department-of-homeland-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2020\/08\/13\/the-case-for-abolishing-the-department-of-homeland-security\/","title":{"rendered":"The Case for Abolishing the Department of Homeland Security"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"The
BLOOMBERG<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This op-ed argues that the agency poses a grave threat to our civil liberties and operates with near impunity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

BY SHIYAM GALYON AND LA\u00cfSSA ALEXIS – AUGUST 10, 2020 (teenvogue.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The videos of armed men in fatigues\u00a0picking protesters off the streets<\/a>\u00a0and shoving them into unmarked vans are the stuff of nightmares. That\u2019s how the federal government has responded to Black Lives Matter demonstrations that continue to advocate for racial justice and demand real solutions to community safety. Both the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have\u00a0deployed agents<\/a>\u00a0in an effort to protect federal property and crack down on crime, respectively. The Trump administration frames this as its\u00a0response to violence borne of anti-police rhetoric.<\/a>\u00a0In the bigger picture, DHS and DOJ are institutions working to carry out the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, and their policing efforts are extensive across the United States, in the U.S. borderlands, and abroad. During this national\u00a0conversation on policing and its abolition<\/a>, we must push for the abolition of all the appendages of the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, including DHS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The War on Drugs began with President Nixon in the early 1970\u2019s. One of his former aides later claimed<\/a> it was launched in response to the Black Power and pacifist movements. It criminalized<\/a> Black and brown people and was used to justify mass incarceration. This war was later taken beyond U.S. borders and became part of a decades-long story of U.S. intervention in the political affairs of various Latin American countries<\/a>. This international crackdown on drugs was still underway when George W. Bush’s administration launched the War on Terror in the aftermath of 9\/11. This new front served as a pretext to invade and occupy Iraq and Afghanistan and expand the security state. Outwardly, the War on Terror has cast Muslims as the primary \u201cterror threat,\u201d but in reality it identifies anyone who opposes the U.S. government\u2019s interests as a terror threat. For example, Black Lives Matters activists have been investigated by the FBI as \u201cBlack identity extremists,\u201d<\/a> while Trump has labeled antifascist protesters \u201cterrorists<\/a>.\u201d Together, the War on Terror and the War on Drugs have given the government a blank check to maintain and expand a militarized U.S. presence not just around the world, but also along U.S. borders and within U.S. communities that are seen as threatening to the status quo. They are a central framework used to justify surveillance, intimidation, and the erosion of civil liberties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DHS was first established after 9\/11 and quickly grew to be an expansive and sophisticated security apparatus<\/a>. Reports of tactical DHS agents in Portland, Oregon, clashing with Black Lives Matter protesters caused a national outcry: Some theorized the U.S. government was using Portland as a testing ground for how it would respond to BLM protests across the country; others were perturbed by the theatrics of it all, with the New York Times<\/em> calling to \u201cleave the soldiering to soldiers<\/a>.\u201d The reality is, the federal agent response in Portland is an extension of the kind of tactics they use at the border. What the ACLU has referred to as the \u201ckidnapping<\/a>\u201d of BLM protesters is not so different from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers using coercive measures to pull immigrants from their homes<\/a> late at night and detain them. After all, ICE is a sub-agency of DHS. In a show of grotesque force, we\u2019ve seen DHS agents forcefully separate families at the border<\/a> and place migrants in detention camps. These agencies traffic in fear and operate with near impunity. While scenes from Portland scared white America, they are nothing new for migrants, Black people, undocumented folks, and Muslims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s worth taking a moment to distinguish between the distinct operations the government has deployed in recent weeks. The DHS agents dispatched to Portland, through \u201cOperation Diligent Valor,\u201d were specifically tasked with protecting U.S. government buildings during protests, as Politico reported<\/a>. \u201cOperation LeGend<\/a>,\u201d a multiagency initiative, has recently expanded to cities including Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Detroit, which Attorney General Bill Barr said<\/a> \u201care experiencing upticks in violent crime.\u201d Both of these operations seem to be a response to protesters\u2019 anti-police activism, as members of the administration have used recent riots and protests as the explanation for increased violence in cities<\/a>. But there seems to be less alarm<\/a> about the general crime-fighting focus of Operation LeGend. There are likely two reasons for this: one, the distinction between these operations is confusing; two, it is easier for many people to recognize the neat narrative of federal agents repressing protesters than it is to understand the systemic criminalization of Black and brown communities. It is systemic criminalization that the Black Lives Matter movement is asking us to oppose with calls to abolish the police and invest in life-affirming resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By taking to the streets and confronting local and federal forces, the Black Lives Matter uprising is making it painfully clear how policing on U.S. streets, at the U.S. border, and abroad is interconnected. In a time when people are calling for the abolition of police and prisons, it is no surprise that federal agencies and leaders would use this moment to build up its tough-on-crime rhetoric. Also unsurprisingly, they do so without addressing any of the likely root causes of crime<\/a>, like rising unemployment, and job insecurity due to the failed government response to the pandemic. We cannot allow the U.S. security state to police and surveil as it does. Our vision for abolishing the police fundamentally includes the call to abolish ICE and DHS. We can\u2019t settle for anything less if we want a world without policing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This op-ed argues that the agency poses a grave threat to our civil liberties and operates with near impunity. BY SHIYAM GALYON AND LA\u00cfSSA ALEXIS – AUGUST 10, 2020 (teenvogue.com) The videos of armed men in fatigues\u00a0picking protesters off the streets\u00a0and shoving them into unmarked vans are the stuff of… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15574"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15575,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15574\/revisions\/15575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}