Martin Luther King Day: Civil Rights Threatened

Today America marks the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., whose non-violent civil disobedience moved the U.S. to grant liberty denied black citizens, as the fate of American liberty itself is challenged on every street.

Last week, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement  (ICE) officer shot and killed Renee Nicole Macklin Good in Minneapolis as she slowly drove her SUV away from a confrontation with the federal agents, according to an Associated Press report. The shooting and the moments beforehand were captured on multiple videos, showing the officer clear of danger from the moving vehicle before he shoots at Good.

The agent’s actions apparently violate Department of Homeland Security Policy, reported by ABC, “Deadly force shall not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing subject. However, deadly force is authorized to prevent the escape of the fleeing subject where the LEO has a reasonable belief that the subject poses a significant threat of death or serious physical harm to the LEO or others and such force is necessary to prevent escape.”

The killing isn’t the only example of the agency, at the direction of the Trump Administration and funded with $11 billion, stepping outside its bounds. ICE agents are difficult to discern from well-equipped thugs, masking their faces and without marked uniforms. Their increasingly aggressive tactics have pushed the agents into businesses, and the public areas of schools, court rooms and places of worship. They have indiscriminately harassed, assaulted and detained American citizens.

Today, on the federal holiday recognizing King, the public and media talk of King’s efforts in the early days of the civil rights struggle, memorialized in Selma, which you can rent on Redbox or stream on Amazon. Some will direct your attention to a day of service among Americans by way of honoring King’s legacy.

One other way to honor King’s legacy is to lend your voice to support the peaceful protest of the federal government’s continuing Civil Rights violations. Call your Senators and Congress members. Speak out on social media. Among your friends and family.

The exercise of peaceful protest helped extend the promise of liberty to those long denied it during the Civil Rights movement. Now, many bravely protest federal overreach that ignores the Civil Rights of all Americans, as ICE assaults, illegally detains, maims and kills Americans.

The Constitution, and the Civil Rights it affords, do protect everyone in the United States, citizen or not. But if the violation of immigrants’ rights were not cause for outrage, it should now be clear that even citizenship isn’t protecting citizens.

We are either all safe, or no one is.