California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the No Secret Police Act into law this week, banning all law enforcement — including federal immigration agents — from covering their faces while conducting raids in the state.
“What this law is trying to do is to take us back from the era of routine masking based on completely foundationless officer claims of fear,” says Eva Bitran, the director of immigrants’ rights at the ACLU of Southern California.
Trump administration officials have already vowed to ignore the California law, “and this is why we need to have a federal solution that will apply nationwide,” says New York Congressmember Nydia Velázquez, who has introduced the No Masks for ICE Act in Congress. “This administration is out of control, and it’s affecting everyone.”
OK. Not Californian, but if I were, and saw someone getting kidnapped by masked men on the street, I am opening fire. Cops can’t legally be masked? Fine. Those masked men are criminals engaged in kidnapping. “How was I to know judge?”
Yes, I am well aware that the outcome would likely be my personal extinction, or life in a concrete and steel box. Not allowing the latter option. And all the authorities have demonstrated is, “Fight to the death or we’ll kill you.” Aight. I chose to die with my boots on.
I’m no warrior, a coward in many ways. But I’m well armed and practiced, shoot a few days a week with a variety of firearms. Have, let me count, uh, 4 guns within reach ATM. All guns I’ve worked with extensively, all with ammo attached or chambered. All reliable and most set for fighting in the dark, and I practice in the dark. (I have loads of guns just for fun, most are.)
I have a brown, legal, immigrant wife and I’ll not see her screaming and crying as masked fascists drag her away. I’d be shaking in my fucking boots, but at some point, someone has to say, “This will not stand.” Someone has to say, “I’ll die first.”