It’s been almost 27 months of the Trump Presidency. There were the beatings of dissidents at his campaign rallies. The hyped up Muller investigation of Russian corruption ending in a delayed disappointment. The hush money Trump paid to silence porn-star Stormy Daniels ended in both the arrest of her and her lawyer Michael Avenatti. There has been a massive rise in hate crimes. There was the Muslim air travel bans. The Jewish Community Center robocall bomb threats. There was Nazi marches in Charlottesville. Brownshirts fist fighting anti-fascists at UC Berkeley.
Since he became President, immigration and executive orders eliminated the residency protections of a million Dreamers and TPS families. DHS police escalated the detention and deportation of families. More prison construction. The military was deployed to the Southern Border with the authorization of lethal force. To get his wall, Trump locked out a half million federal workers for a month, forcing another half million to work without pay, then declared a national military emergency to build it anyway.
Bombs were sent to CNN headquarters and to key Democratic Party funders and figures. Then there are the news room, school, concert, church, and synagogue shootings. A white supremacist Mosque shooting was live streamed as a Neo-Nazi propaganda film. Cloaked and openly fascist media platforms have continued to flourish, with millions of daily views. Enjoying 24 hour news coverage, Trump has called news outlets enemies of the people. Tens of thousands of journalists have been laid off at corporate media outlets across the country, and these entities the President loves to hate have continued to amplify his hateful message.
We are living in Terror, under a National Emergency.
Bomb scares have plagued black Austin, a young Ohio juvenile justice activist was found dead. When black gay movie star Justin Smolett was hospitalized following an apparent hate crime attack by Trump supporters, evidence concocted days later by the Chicago Police Department alleged he orchestrated the entire incident in an attempt to raise his profile; officer Jason Van Dyke received a lenient sentence for the murder of foster child Laquan McDonald, and those accused of fabricating evidence and covering up the murder remain unpunished.
Meanwhile, rather than investigate these terrorist attacks , the FBI has ramped up a secret surveillance against “Black Identity Extremists,” according to civil rights group the Color of Change.
Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians very right to exist is under attack. In this environment, indicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defended Trump, with Israeli officials refusing to call the Tree of Life congregation a real synagogue. Silent on Trump’s signaled support of white supremacists, AIPAC, the American Israeli Political Action Committee, has attacked Ilhan Omar and other young Congresswomen of color who dare support a peaceful coexistence between ethnicities, religions, and cultures at home and abroad.
But in many ways, the State of Terror is but a distraction covering up economic policies that hurt both minorities and white Americans. The stock market is crashing and we have been entering a recession, despite the temporary fiscal stimulus of record military spending and corporate tax cuts paid with increased debt. Under Trump’s economic policies, trade deficits are at record highs. In many ways all the fear and scandals only distract from a poor economy, record inequality, and attacks on the Affordable Care Act and other the social programs.
But in this maelstrom of mass deception there are heroes. And I hope to tell their stories. People with the courage to care and love for one another against all odds. To reach out and help despite the hate, distrust, stereotypes and lies. They organize, united by the bonds of solidarity, and human empathy.