A video recorded last week has ignited outrage online after it captured ICE agents violently arresting two brothers in South Norwalk, Connecticut, in broad daylight without producing a warrant. The men, identified as Ricardo Chavez and his brother, reportedly hold legal status to live and work in the United States.
The footage (credit @alwaysfilmthepolice) shows plainclothes ICE agents forcibly detaining the men in a public area. Witnesses say the agents refused to provide identification or present a warrant when asked, instead resorting to physical force and a taser to subdue the brothers before hauling them away. They also allegedly damaged their vehicle.
Community members who know the Chavez family insist that both men are law-abiding residents with valid documentation. “They work, they pay taxes, and they belong here,” said one South Norwalk resident who witnessed the arrest. “This was nothing short of a kidnapping.”
And MLK himself is extremely whitewashed. His focus on economic justice and anti-imperialism are typically left out of the stories told about him in media. As well as the fact that he was broadly unpopular with Americans in his time.
Also the fact that he credited the Black Panthers with allowing him to be able to do what he was doing by protecting the protesters from retribution, and saying that the only reason that they weren’t doing anything more was because what they were doing already was illegal and anything more would risk actual jail time.
There’s also the armed nonviolent wing that gets left out, like the Deacons and the various unaffiliated armed people who literally did have to be ready to kill in order to defend some of the nonviolent protestors - one SNCC person in an interview mentioned they and a few friends were staying at an old black woman’s home after a march in Alabama, and she had half of the local black community entrenched, quite literally, with their guns in her front yard all night, because the police had shown up with what amounted to a lynch mob for the protestors.
I also think a lot of people confuse moral nonviolence with strategic nonviolence or pacifism. You can be nonviolent and still be absolutely armed, trained, and ready to do violence if needed.
There’s a fantastic book, This Nonviolent Stuff Will Get You Killed, that really hits the lost portions of the civil rights movement, including the armed wing of the movement.