Blood in the streets
- Guest contributor
- 10 hours ago
- 3 min read
By Art Petersen
Sen. Sullivan replied to most of my letters, but didn't address any of the issues I raised. As for Rep. Begich, he did not reply at all. So last August I wrote to the senator and congressman to say I was finished writing to them because they didn't care about my constituent issues. An article about that frustration appeared in the Juneau Independent under the title "Red Lines."
Now, however, I have written to both of them again. New red lines have been crossed, lines of the reddest kind: the blood of two Americans in Minnesota, a mother of three and a VA nurse, shot dead seconds after encountering Homeland Security agents.
Outrage over blood in the streets revoked my self-imposed ban on constituent communication. I sharpened my pencil and wrote letters of demand for opposition to the barbarous and unconstitutional ICE operations in America.
An escalation of this cruel lawbreaking began with another invasion of masked men in military costume, this time by a force of 3,000 in St. Paul-Minneapolis. They scooped up people for disappearance without warrants or hearings, among them, a two- and a five-year-old. The agents broke into homes without warrants, in one case removing a man in his underwear in minus-degree weather. But the man they sought was found to have been in jail for a year, so the arrested man, an American citizen with no criminal record, was released. Similar mistakes are common.
Menacing and brutalizing the populace regularly occurs. These are flagrant breaches of not just basic policing procedure but also many laws. This untrained, unsupervised, quota-driven force routinely denies people at least half a dozen of their civil rights under the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
Urged by conscience and citizen sense of duty, I wrote to demand that Rep. Begich and Sen. Sullivan speak up for their constituency against this cruel and rampant lawbreaking, to include shooting people to death. If that conduct is allowed to stand unexamined and unchallenged, then that behavior can go unchallenged anywhere, including here in Alaska.
I also demanded that they, as our representatives, need to seek ways to restrain the terrorist actions of Homeland Security officers and their failed leadership. They should call for hearings and seek to withhold funding that would extend and proliferate unconstitutional assaults. Also pointed to was that Minnesota and other states are being denied their Tenth Amendment and Article IV rights and powers. And that people are being denied an array of constitutional rights: their right to peaceably assemble without being attacked and killed, to petition Government for redress of grievances, to keep and bear Arms, to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, and against unreasonable searches and seizures, and not to be deprived of life without due process of law.
It was an angry letter. Surely better communications can be made, focusing, for example, on how ICE can and must be reformed as part of the funding process now underway in the Senate. But any kind of communication would be worthwhile that calls on the representative and senator to stand up and oppose brutal unconstitutional acts. Senator Murkowski has registered concern and called for redress. How about Senator Sullivan? Could he come around as some other Republican senators have? Maybe, at long last. Concerned constituent communications might help.
Our representatives in Washington have shown that they need to be reminded of their oath of office, which is to serve and support our Constitution, the document of basic laws designed to keep people free of fear, including the fear of a violent death delivered by agents of our own government.
• Art Petersen is a 50-year resident of Alaska and professor of English emeritus from the University of Alaska Southeast.
