Not invisible
Fascism is not an abstraction. It invades our most intimate moments. It becomes real not only through the policies of faceless bureaucrats but through the actions of people we know. Fascism depends on disrupting normal relationships to induce fear. That is part of its power. But that is also its vulnerability.
Recently, in the Detroit community, we have seen the results of the fascist impulse in ordinary interactions. In Van Buren Township Veronica Ramirez Verduzco reported an assault by a co-worker. Two weeks later, after trying to withdraw the complaint, she was surrounded by unidentified officers who swarmed her car, broke the windows and dragged her out of the vehicle. Ms. Ramirez Verduzco is a small woman, 49 years old, and a mother of two. The local police said they made a mistake and did not intend to alert federal officials. Ms. Ramirez Verduzco is currently being detained, most likely will be deported, and has limited contact with her lawyer, family, and friends.
This incident was followed by the arrest of an immigrant mother from Guatemala, Sarahi, who did what many of us have done in Detroit. She got confused by the I-75 exit that leads to the Ambassador Bridge. She and her two daughters had been on a trip to Costco but ended up spending 5 days in detention.
We know these kinds of actions are happening everywhere. We have seen the high-profile kidnappings of university students and heard reports of the arrests of fathers, mothers, friends, and coworkers. These are typically carried out in ways that violate the most fundamental of human rights. Extreme force and intimidation, the depravation of liberty and dignity, the lack of charges of a crime, and the violation of basic due processes and, civil protections.
In a valuable article in the New York Times looking at the experiences of people who have lived under authoritarian regimes, M. Gessen provides a vivid understanding of the role the “disruption of daily life” plays in spreading fear. He says:
The citizens of such a state live with a feeling of being constantly watched. They live with a sense of random danger. Anyone — a passer-by, the man behind you in line at the deli, the woman who lives down the hall, your building’s super, your own student, your child’s teacher — can be a plainclothes agent or a self-appointed enforcer. People live in growing isolation and with the feeling of low-level dread, and these are the defining conditions of living in a secret-police state. People lose the ability to plan for the future, because they feel that they have no control over their lives, and they try to make themselves invisible. They move through the world without looking, for fear of seeing too much.
For those of us seeking to resist this fear and spreading fascism, we need to look not only at the roles of Trump and Musk, but at the border guard who made the decision to detain a woman and children and contact federal forces. We need to ask who, exactly in the Van Buren police department contacted ICE. Why were they not sensitive to the possibilities of deportation? Who are the men and women who wake up in the morning, put on unmarked uniforms, carry masks and guns into unmarked cars, and go to “work.” These people are someone’s spouse, son, daughter, friend. And they are making choices every day of which they should be ashamed. We need to shame them. And we need to stop all contact with them by local officials.
Federal actions require local cooperation. Here in Detroit, when a woman who reported a crime was turned over to immigration officials, Media Relations Directo Vic Pratt said that this action was in violation of police department policy.
This highlights the importance of setting policies and ordinances on the local level to govern the behavior of people for whose actions we share responsibility. Over the last few months, the Coalition for Police Transparency and Accountability has been working on policies that will ensure First Amendment protections and greater accountability for police actions. The Detroit City Council is currently considering an ordinance that will automatically allow public access to all body camera images in incidents where police use force.
On the local level, we can find ways to hold each other accountable for our actions, to establish higher, more human values. We can question, control, and direct the actions of those people we elect and those whose salaries we pay. We can do this publicly and openly. We are not invisible.