On June 27, in Huntington Park, California, federal agents from Customs and Border Protection (CPB) carried out a violent raid on the home of a working class family while Jenny Ramirez was caring for her two children, aged six and one.
In a scene of militarized terror more typical of a war zone than a residential neighborhood in Los Angeles, agents used an explosive device to blast the front door off its hinges—without warning or announcement—before storming the premises.
Home surveillance footage of the raid shows eight heavily armed agents, guns drawn, storming the home after blowing the door off its hinges. Later in the video, Ramirez and her children are seen being escorted out by the agents.
It would seem that by “tyrannical government” most of us actually meant “non-whites”.
More directly, I would guess the people who are in a position to do something, like myself, would prefer not to be the only one showing up against a militarized police force and federalized national guard troops. Armed resistance isn’t widely viewed as necessary even though I would argue we’re past the point where it should have been widespread. Perhaps holding that belief and not engaging in such methods makes me a coward, I’m honestly not sure. I do know that I see a lot more sentiments like “where are the armed leftists” than I do “how do I join an armed leftist organization” and I don’t think we’re going anywhere until that changes. Everyone, myself included, is waiting on someone else to step in and stop this rather than deciding that it’s up to us to do it ourselves.
I think it’s also that each individual person is so isolated and each small geographic region has such a lack of interconnected community. Each individual person, no matter how well armed or courageous, is nearly powerless against these organized paramilitary occupying forces in their communities.