Our Moral Imperative

Masked federal paramilitary troops executed another American in the streets of Minneapolis Saturday. 

The only thing we can count on by way of explanation from federal law enforcement officials is that they’ll lie about what happened, slander the victim, then try to cover it up. They’re already claiming he deserved to have an entire clip of bullets unloaded into his body while he lay on the ground.

As always, we also can count on the minority maga crowd in San Luis Obispo County to defend these atrocities, predictably declaring that we all need to just shut up, bend the knee and obey.

They’ll assert it’s perfectly fine for ICE to keep busting down front doors with no warrants, beating people who object, violating the very essence of what it means to be an American. They’ll promote the Orwellian notion that submission to amoral authority equals freedom.

The local maga crowd may never understand that we will never bow down, that it’s not in our American character, our national DNA. From birth, we’ve been programed to resist the very thing they’re trying to force us to do – give up our democracy and our freedoms.

The key first step in expressing our overwhelming revulsion over this tyranny is to get our local elected leaders to simply declare “ICE is not welcome here!”

We’re collectively in the throes of a historic and demonstrable threat to American democracy. Hearing our voices, knowing our pain, now is the time for our local elected class to lean in hard and push back on our behalf.

The significance of the Tuesday, Jan. 27, SLO County Sheriff’s public workshop about ICE must go well beyond a pro forma recitation of data.

It's also on the agenda to serve as SLO County’s first official forum specifically about ICE, where residents can express their opinions about the kidnappings, beatings, shootings, killings and other violations of the Constitution being committed in the name of our federal government, and detail their impacts and repercussions here at home. 

As required by SB 54, the California Values Act, county Sheriff Ian Parkinson is expected to report all interactions his department had with federal immigration authorities during the past year. The workshop will take place in the county Board of Supervisors chambers in SLO. This will be an “informational hearing.” No official action is on the agenda requiring a vote.

The SLO County Democratic Central Committee, all seven of its local Democratic clubs and every local chapter of Indivisible and SLO County 50501 recently issued a joint call for the county Board of Supervisors to declare ICE-free zones on county property.

If the board decides to respond to public testimony by directing consideration of such zones on county property (or some other measure), they’ll have to bring that action back for a formal public hearing and vote at a later date.

The hearing this Tuesday is the first chance for the people of SLO County to have their say since this regime took control of our federal government and began wielding its incumbent power to exert violence on the people of this nation and across the world.

Our recent joint statement should be taken by our elected leaders as a political reflection and expression of the public’s desire for them to “do something” official by objecting to these now-daily federal affronts.

Dan Dow, SLO County’s maga-right district attorney, recently weighed in with an unsolicited decree saying, in effect, “don’t even bother” trying to push back against ICE, proclaiming any such effort would have no impact locally since federal law supersedes state and local law in nearly all circumstances.

That may be. But declaring SLO County's official opposition to ICE would be a powerful statement, however symbolic, reflecting the collective outrage of tens of thousands of our residents.

That Dow seems to not understand this, or doesn’t care, is of a piece. He also apparently doesn’t understand the difference between what is lawful and what is moral. What Dow seems to be saying is that killing American protesters under color of federal authority isn’t just legal, but that he also has no moral qualms about it.

Would that someone refer Dow to Dr. Martin Luther King’s “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” quotation.

We trust that our sheriff and county supervisors want justice. We understand they have the power to “do something about it,” and that they understand their moral imperative to do so.

Yours in unity and righteous anger,

Tom Fulks

Chair SLOCDP | chair@slocdp.org