Minnesotans are Revealing ICE as the British in this American Patriot Moment

History can help, if we remember + Benito slays

Hi you,

The people of the Twin Cities are living under siege by our federal government. A local told me that all the Mexican restaurants near them no longer deliver. They are in pick-up mode only and have their doors locked and windows covered. They’ve all become speakeasies, forced to go underground… to sell food to people. Do you feel safer now that the beans and rice are on lockdown?

This ridiculously harmful and stupid situation reminds me of another time when a U.S. city was under siege by troops. I’m referring to the forces of the Royal armed services occupying Boston during this nation’s pre-natal moment. Today’s federal immigration agents are the British in this story. They use the rhetoric of freedom while denying it to their neighbors and fellow human beings.

I watched the entire Ken Burns documentary series on The American Revolution, and I’m posting a custom clip I made from the section in the first episode.

Here’s all my writing on the series, and here’s episode 1.

Now someone who has done a massive public service in comparing today in the Twin Cities to yesterday in Boston is investigative journalist Radley Balko. I heard him on my favorite podcast, On The Media, and here’s a moment from his in-depth Substack post on the topic.

The rage from those pre-revolution clashes in Boston continued to linger for years into the Constitutional Convention, and then the debate over the Bill of Rights. The Founders were also students of history, and saw how the domestic use of the military led to the fall of the Roman Republic. This, in large part, is why we have the Second, Third, and Fourth Amendments, and why the Constitution splits control of the military between the president and Congress. You really can’t overstate how much the Founders worried about . . . exactly what we’re seeing in Minneapolis.

So that’s about it. Here’s a link to Radley’s full piece

Two cities under siege

And here’s Bad Bunny saying things we need to hear during his two Grammy award acceptance speeches last night. Excited for Benito-Bowl!!

Below is the transcript from the PBS clip above. There’s some quotable stuff there. Thanks

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Mostly-Accurate Transcript of the 5-min Ken Burns documentary clip

For 17 months, Boston was an occupied city. A rattle of drums awakened residents every morning. Passersby were routinely stopped and searched. Many soldiers had brought their wives and children. Others courted Boston girls or were pursued by them. 40 troops were married during the occupation and more than 100 of their offspring were baptized.

But some soldiers got drunk, robbed people insulted women, profaned the Sabbath. There were brawls, stabbings, suits, and countersuits from London. Benjamin Franklin was concerned.

“Some indiscretion on the part of Boston’s warmer people or of the soldier may occasion a tumult. And if blood is once drawn, there is no foreseeing how far the mischief may spread.”

On the evening of March 5th, 1770, there were tussles between Bostonians and British soldiers all across the city at the Royal Customs House. A crowd of young men surrounded a lone sentry and pelted him with snowballs and chunks of ice. Convinced a citywide uprising was underway. Captain Thomas Preston raced several armed grenadiers to the scene.

More snowballs and rocks and oyster shells greeted them. They fixed bayonets.

Somebody starts ringing the church bells, which in Boston is a sign for fire. Some people are bringing buckets to be part of a bucket brigade. Some people are drawn by the noise. It’s very hard, in fact, impossible to know what happened, which is that somebody yells fire.

All we know really is that when the smoke cleared, there are five people dead or dying.

The first was a tall dock worker, part Native American, part African American named Crispus Attucks. The second was a rope maker named Samuel Gray, who was standing next to Attucks. The third was James Caldwell, a sailor who was in town, it was said, to call upon the girl he hoped to marry. The terrified crowd began to scatter. John Greenwood’s, older brother Isaac was there too and escaped unharmed. But a ricocheting ball hit their friend, Samuel Maverick, in the back. He died in agony. The following morning, Maverick, an apprentice, had shared a bed in the Greenwood home with the now nine-year-old John, who recalled that after his friend’s death, he deliberately slept in pitch black darkness, hoping to see his spirit.

People start arguing already, even before they go to bed about what happened. Paul Revere creates probably the most famous engraving of the 18th century, which he titles the Bloody Massacre. The British Army is very anxious to try to spin this as a story of self-defense, but the language of massacre is the one that holds

A fifth man, a leather maker named Patrick Carr, would die several days later. 10,000 mourners accompanied the coffins of the dead to the old granary cemetery.

“The fatal 5th of March can never be forgotten. The horrors of that dreadful night are but too deeply impressed on our hearts when our streets were stained with the blood of our brethren, and our eyes were tormented with the sight of the mangled bodies of the dead.”
- Joseph Warren.

Not everyone was grieving. An Anglican clergyman. Mather Biles asked a fellow cleric, which is better to be ruled by: one tyrant 3000 miles away, or by 3000 tyrants, not a mile away.

Captain Preston was found not guilty of ordering his men to fire. The other eight soldiers were put on trial separately. Samuel Adams, younger cousin, John Adams, risking his reputation served as the soldier’s attorney. Most of his clients were acquitted as well. Two were found guilty of manslaughter. They were branded on their right thumbs so that if they were ever charged with another crime, they could not make a claim of innocence again.

The British government was relieved by the outcome of the trials. Most of the regulars were withdrawn to Castle William, their harbor fortress. Once again, American colonists had forced the British to back down, and Parliament had already repealed all but one of the Townsend Acts, only the duty on tea remained.