Editor:
“Just do what the police tell you and you won’t get shot.”
Used to be good advice and generally worked if you are white.
But then the felon in charge decided no one deserves due process, the cornerstone of American justice.
It doesn’t matter if you’re an undocumented worker, a college professor, a Venezuelan fisherman, a reporter or a legal observer at a protest.
We all now have to worry about being murdered by this regime without due process. We risk being kidnapped by people masked up, not wearing official uniforms, driving unmarked vehicles. Why should we cooperate when the next thing you know you could end up in a hellhole prison in El Salvador for the rest of your life before you’ve had any chance to talk to your family or a lawyer.
This same felon pardoned over 1,000 violent insurrectionists, people who not only disobeyed orders given by police, but brutally attacked them.
A year ago, I met with a prominent local citizen who has supported Trump, hoping to have an open dialogue. I began the conversation by asking, “If you were in Germany, in the 1930s, would you have been part of the resistance?”
He pondered for a bit, and then answered, “I’d like to think so.”
A year later, I know the answer, and sadly, he was wrong, because whatever you are doing right now is what you would have been doing in Nazi Germany.
Matt Knowles, Ferndale