Courtesy of Pam Martens
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
If you feel like you’re waking up every day to a country that’s reenacting a page from the Dr. Seuss children’s classic, “Wacky Wednesday,” you’ll be comforted to know you’re not alone.
Today is Wednesday. It was wackier than usual.
First there was the story by Brentin Mock of Bloomberg News about how the District Attorney of Philadelphia, Larry Krasner, had said this about the potential for Trump’s paramilitary coming into his city and hauling people away in unmarked cars:
“Anyone, including federal law enforcement, who unlawfully assaults and kidnaps people will face criminal charges from my office.”
That Wacky Wednesday statement was made because federal “law enforcement” is actually assaulting and kidnapping peaceful protestors on the streets of Portland, Oregon on orders from Donald Trump, the President of the United States.
The Attorney General of Oregon, Ellen Rosenblum, has sued the Trump administration in federal court, alleging criminal acts by federal law enforcement. The charges in Rosenblum’s federal complaint are so Wacky Wednesday that you may want to print it out and store it safely to read to your children when they are older as a cautionary tale of the time that fascism arrived in the United States in the middle of a pandemic.
Rosenblum tells the court the following:
“On information and belief, federal law enforcement officers including John Does 1-10 have been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland, detain protesters, and place them into the officers’ unmarked vehicles, removing them from public without either arresting them or stating the basis for an arrest, since at least Tuesday, July 14. The identity of the officers is not known, nor is their agency affiliation, according to videos and reports that the officers in question wear military fatigues with patches simply reading ‘POLICE,’ with no other identifying information…
“Ordinarily, a person exercising his right to walk through the streets of Portland who is confronted by anonymous men in military-type fatigues and ordered into an unmarked van can reasonably assume that he is being kidnapped and is the victim of a crime.
“Defendants are injuring the occupants of Portland by taking away citizens’ ability to determine whether they are being kidnapped by militia or other malfeasants dressed in paramilitary gear (such that they may engage in self-defense to the fullest extent permitted by law) or are being arrested (such that resisting might amount to a crime).
“State law enforcement officers are not being consulted or coordinated with on these federal detentions, and could expend unnecessary resources responding to reports of an abduction, when federal agents snatch people walking through downtown Portland without explanation or identification.”
