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The claim that the victim was trying to run an agent over is not only not true, video footage clearly shows that it isn't. That won't stop DHS from lying (again) and claiming that ICE agents were victims instead of perpetrators (again). It's thoroughly unclear why they were trying to stop this woman in the first place, and given ICE's pattern of lying, I have zero confidence in their testimony (see also: Chicago)
The slippery slope here is one we've already slid down: "law enforcement needs certain authority to do their job" has become "law enforcement can do whatever they want if it's allegedly part of their job and it's a spin of the roulette wheel whether they'll ever face consequences." The best you can realistically hope for is an order telling them to stop violating your rights, which is of limited utility when you're dead. Maybe you'll get lucky and there will be earth-shattering protests, but more likely the taxpayers will get stuck footing the bill while nothing of consequence results for the actual perpetrators.
It appears she had parked her car perpendicularly on a small road, presumably to block or otherwise obstruct ICE activity, this being the cause of their apprehending her, which seems legitimate to me.
I will agree she was most likely not specifically trying to run over ICE agents, but rather to flee. However there was an agent on the hood of her car that she certainly did hit.
She is doing a piss-poor job, then, because another car passes in front of her shortly before ICE agents approach her. It looks more to me like she got stopped in the middle of a three point turn.
I have a strong suspicion that ICE deliberately hemmed her in, given that there are ICE vehicles on either side of her. Likely doing the thing they often do where they stop and harass people for observing them. Only this time, the observer panicked and so did ICE.
Where? The agent in front of her was some ways off and she unambiguously turns away from him.
There was a longer video I saw that showed a few minutes beforehand. There were dozens of people on foot "observing" the ICE agents, where "observing" is some dishonest libtard euphemism for "screaming insults and hostility like psychotic banshees in a way that absolutely and obviously made the situation more tense, stressful and dangerous for everyone involved."
Yes. The protestors should all be tried as accessories. In the best case for your take here, they were idiotically engineering the precursors for a tragedy. In the realistic scenario, they were actively hoping for it, plus or minus some dead LEOs.
Surely you don't seriously believe that protestors should be tried as accessories simply for being obnoxious and increasing background stress? If you don't, please don't say it, because it doesn't do favors to the discourse here whether or not it's specifically prohibited. If you do, you need to do better than simply toss out something inflammatory like that. Making the action of 'raising tension' a crime is bananas.
Morally? I think they're absolutely culpable. I find their behavior virulently anti-social and anti-civic, and it ought to be possible to crack down on it in some fashion. Maybe if they'd gotten hit with obstruction or harassment misdemeanors beforehand, we wouldn't be talking about how much blame they deserve for a death.
I agree that in practice, these kinds of histrionics aren't good for much. But I'm curious how you would answer the following - suppose, for the sake of argument, that you did believe ICE under Trump are an institution of evil, that ~every ICE operation is a moral outrage. How would you behave if you were walking around your neighborhood and found yourself witness to just such an operation? If necessary, switch out ICE and immigration enforcement under Trump for any atrocity of your choice that a lawfully-elected government with diametrically opposed values and politics to your own might legalize within your lifetime, and ask yourself how you'd react to seeing that underway.
The way I see it, no one wants to be the guy who walks past the drowning child without comment. A man's conscience won't take it - for that matter, neither will his pride. He must do something - anything! The absence of such a moral instinct would actually be quite a worrying sign. Lucky for the fabric of society, for most people, that instinct is tempered by reason, so they don't jump in blindly and try to suicidally obstruct the enactment of the (perceived-to-be-)evil law all by themselves. But the outrage still has to out. So they jeer and scream and organize protests.
In other words, where you see something that needlessly escalates tense situations towards violence, I see the useful venting of energy that could otherwise boil over into far more immediate violence.
Isn’t this just Jan 6? If you are morally outraged - you Protest and go to jail. In some cases perhaps tortured. Or you keep your mouth shut and show up to work everyday while providing for your family etc. That is your choice when you fight the regime.
In the case of Jan 6 everyone else basically decided to agree with them. The regime changed and in many cases you become a hero and often the leaders of the new regime.
Jan 6 differed from what I'm talking about in that they actually broke laws. Not, I would gladly agree, to the extent that it justified the cartoonish levels of pearl-clutching or the severity of the repression - but I was specifically talking about the displays of helpless disapproval that are available to a citizen who remains committed to not breaking the law, even as they bear witness to something which they find unconscionable.
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