Heroes of the Resistance: Keeping ScOR #16
Do we dare call Sandwich Guy a hero? (Sorry, no pun.)
A Washington, D.C. jury acquitted Sean C. Dunn last week on charges of misdemeanor assault, after the August incident in which the 37-year-old Air Force vet and former Justice Department paralegal threw a Subway sandwich at the chest of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
Dunn does deserve credit for expressing himself clearly on the Trump Administration’s anti-immigrant policies and its militarization of the Capital. “I don’t want you in my city,” Dunn reportedly shouted at the officer before flinging the salami sub at the agent’s bullet-proof-vest-protected torso. Dunn delivered the edible projectile “at point-blank range,” in the grave words of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office. “It smelled of onions and mustard,” the agent testified. Dunn then sprinted off before being chased down by the feds.
The incident, captured on video, brought joy to millions. So too did its courtroom conclusion, with nary a slap on the wrist for the fast food assailant. Pirro initially sought felony charges but members of a grand jury called b.s. and declined to indict. The prosecution lowered the charge to a misdemeanor and took the case to trial. Pirro, the bombastic former Fox News host, accepted the not guilty verdict but sniffed in a statement that any attack on a law enforcement officer, “no matter how ‘minor,’” is unacceptable. “Even children know when they are angry, they are not allowed to throw objects at one another,” she said.
Ms. Pirro has a point. Next time, Sean, use your words! Don't choose violence; hold onto your hoagie. But even if Sandwich Guy is not an untarnished hero of the resistance, the members of his jury surely are.
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A quick disclaimer before we go further: I’m not a political analyst, strategist, or traditional partisan. In anything like normal times, I would not be writing about how we the people might defeat a president and his party and extract them from power. But of course the times are not ordinary. This is not your standard Democrats vs. Republicans thing. It’s about saving self-government in America, such as it is, from a transparently authoritarian ruler and his drive for complete power. As a journalist I’m openly biased in favor of democracy.
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In my last check-in on America’s descent into autocracy, two months ago, I ended by saying that, although there was plenty to be alarmed about, any pronouncements about the death of American democracy were premature. Trump and his snarling subordinates were asserting a degree of dominance and control that was unsupported by both the law and the politics of the moment. The Vances and Millers could yell all they wanted that the regime would soon “disrupt, dismantle and destroy” its “enemies” — that is, half of the country — but the rest of us were not required to take them seriously or bow down in advance. The popular will still mattered. The best hope for democracy, I wrote, was democracy.
In the following weeks, millions of Americans filled streets across the country at the second No Kings protests. Then voters came out and helped Democrats win sweeping victories in off-year elections, and Trump’s approval ratings sagged to new lows. All this has lifted the spirits of the regime’s opponents and eased the sense of doom somewhat.
Still, the fight ahead will be long and hard. It’s not time to claim victory anymore than it was to concede defeat in September. The outrages and the abuses continue: the troops and federal agents in U.S. cities; the mass rounding up and deportation of Brown people by masked agents; the prosecutions of the president’s personal enemies by his lackeys in the Justice Department; the murder of people in boats in the Caribbean and Pacific — labeled crimes against humanity by a former International Criminal Court prosecutor; the brazen corruption and the enrichment of Trump’s family and friends. And so on. Trump is politically weak, but anyone who thinks that he and his crew are going to allow free and fair midterm elections in 2026 if they can possibly rig the outcome in their favor, or quietly accept defeat if and when it comes, isn’t paying attention. (What do Trump and his henchmen have in mind for a refashioned U.S. military, purged of dozens of generals deemed too independent and devoted to the Constitution?)
If and when push comes to shove, we need to know that even more of us will take to the streets.
Most of us know by now that we can’t count on the nation’s “checks and balances” to save us. The Congress, led by Republican majorities in both chambers, has effectively closed up shop until further notice, handing its Constitutional power to Trump. The courts are creating some speed bumps while proving themselves an unreliable brake on a rogue president. In its current term, the Supreme Court will answer big questions about how far it will allow Trump to go in his grab for absolute power. This is the same court that already granted him immunity for most any action he takes as president.
It still looks like it’ll come down to the people, the roughly 60% of Americans who now oppose the regime. And whether enough of us will find a way to stand up and say no to authoritarian rule. The administration wants to intimidate, to make us believe its consolidation of power is inevitable. Every piece of evidence that in fact the Trumpists are deeply unpopular and that, just as crucially, people won’t cower, weakens them further.
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The No Kings marchers and the voters of New Jersey, Virginia, New York, California and elsewhere helped to shift the vibe. But I want to salute some other people who’ve also shown the way — just a smattering of examples among many.
Boots in streets, butts on seats
Let’s start with folks in communities, standing up for their neighbors and for the truth:
The people in Chicago’s Rogers Park who came out by the hundreds to protect their neighbors from ICE — as described by a resident of the community, writer Kelly Hayes. “[ICE] had a much harder time trying to take people because there were so many watchers out observing and confronting them,” one organizer told Hayes.
The hundreds of high school students in Chicago’s Little Village who walked out of class to peacefully protest the ICE immigration crackdown in their city.
The Portland, Oregon protestors ingeniously ridiculing the Trump Administration’s claims that their city is a “war zone” by dancing about in cute inflatable animal costumes — and riding bicycles in the buff.
In San Antonio, the folks who took signs to the city’s Riverwalk to engage in public theater and political education about the blatant fascism of the Trump regime.
The people in Philadelphia who heard about a planned Proud Boys rally in their neighborhood park and filled the space with an anti-fascist, pro-democracy crowd playing music, giving speeches, and sharing food. The Proud Boys slinked away.
Documenters
To collect and disseminate facts in the face of a corrupt regime’s lies is another powerful form of pushback:
Gillian Brockell, a former Washington Post reporter who is now keeping a list of third-country removals — the immigrants the Trump Administration is seizing and sending to countries not their own and without their consent.
There’s a lot of good journalism being done, but I want to highlight one more example simply because it was published in the face of a cringey, would-be authoritarian threat. ProPublica’s Doug Bock Clark was reporting an illuminating piece about the Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, Paul Newby, and how he has used (and perhaps abused) his office to push the state to the right. When Clark approached the state Republican Party for comment, its communications director, Matt Mercer, emailed: “I’m sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump Administration and I’m sure they would be interested in this matter. … I would strongly suggest dropping this story.” Nice try, Bud. ProPublica simply printed the scarcely-veiled threat as part of its story.
Don’t kill all the lawyers
Given my comment above about the checks and balances failing to check or balance, I think it’s only fair that I mention a few attorneys and judges. These are people in positions of authority — but with limited power, ultimately — who’ve tried, at least, to stand for the rule of law in the face of Trumpian lawlessness:
Erez Reuveni, the former Justice Department immigration lawyer who blew the whistle on Trump’s top appointee Emil Bove and another DOJ lawyer, Drew Ensign. Reuveni said that in carrying out Trump’s mass deportation plan, his superiors had knowingly violated court orders by sending planeloads of Venezuelan migrants out of the country, and, in Ensign’s case, lied to a judge about his knowledge of the plane’s departure. Reuveni was fired after he refused to sign a brief calling Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia a terrorist — a claim for which he says the government had no evidence. Reuveni went public with his story.
Karen Immergut, the U.S. District Court Judge who was nominated to the bench by Donald Trump. She blocked the president’s attempt to deploy National Guard troops to Portland, ruling that Trump overstepped his authority. Immergut called out the administration’s dishonesty, saying claims by an ICE official about disruptive protests and damage to an Oregon facility were not credible.
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis of Illinois, who issued an injunction against federal immigration agents over their violent tactics in Chicago. She listened as a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Commander, Gregory Bovino, tried to justify his agents’ use of tear gas and riot control weapons against protesters and other civilians. Ellis said Bovino lied about being hit by a rock before he himself deployed tear gas, and wrote that the feds’ use of force “shocks the conscience.” Underscoring the gravity of what she saw unfolding in Chicago, Ellis alluded in court to the words of John Adams: "Liberty once lost will be lost forever."
The road ahead
In the wake of No Kings, many of the groups that organized the protest issued plans for further action. There’s something for almost everyone to do — from targeted boycotts and mutual aid to immigrant defense and civil disobedience. Not to mention standard stuff like campaigning and voting, calling one’s representatives, and donating money to organizations doing any of the above.
Protests themselves have a powerful role to play. They send an unmissable message that vast swaths of the American public are horrified by this government and its actions. As Nicole Carty put it in The Intercept, images of protesters gathering in the millions “resonate with … key decision-makers in places like the Supreme Court, the military, and other institutions that may soon be in a position to decide if they will further comply with the administration’s demands.”
Just as important, these acts of resistance buck up the body politic and inspire hope. Some 7 million people marched in October, according to the No Kings organizers. (An independent analysis put the number at 5.2 to to 8.2 million.) A pivotal question looms: If and when push really comes to shove — if, say, Trump and his allies try to shut down the midterm elections or to overturn their results — will many more of us take to the streets to defend our freedoms and the will of the people?
If you’re more confident than you were a couple of months ago that the answer is yes — you’re not alone.
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