{"id":571,"date":"2026-02-03T22:04:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T22:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oregoncommentary.com\/?p=571"},"modified":"2026-02-03T22:04:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T22:04:21","slug":"has-ices-brutality-finally-gone-too-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oregoncommentary.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/03\/has-ices-brutality-finally-gone-too-far\/","title":{"rendered":"Has ICE’s Brutality Finally Gone Too Far?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Will ICE\u2019s grotesque killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, coming less than a month after Rene Good\u2019s equally horrific death at the hands of ICE, stop Trump\u2019s lawless reign of terror?<\/p>\n

Unlike after Good\u2019s death, bipartisan outrage exploded after Pretti was killed, fueled by multiple videos that definitively showed agents shoot Pretti multiple times after he was restrained on the ground. But will it finally be enough?<\/p>\n

In 1970, I was a 22-year-old senior at the University of Washington. I had seen a lot over the previous seven years. The assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luthur King, and Robert Kennedy.\u00a0 Protesters savagely beaten<\/a> by Mayor Richard Daley\u2019s police force at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Black Panthers targeted and murdered<\/a> by J. Edgar Hoover\u2019s FBI. And of course, the Vietnam war, which by 1968 was killing over 500 American soldiers every week.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Then came Kent State.<\/p>\n

On May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guard troops opened fire without warning on Vietnam war protesters at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine. Student photographer John Filo captured what has been called one of the most important photographs of the 20th<\/sup> century<\/a>. Now known as the Kent State Pieta, the image shows 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body student Jeffrey Miller, her arms outstretched, screaming for help.<\/p>\n

Surely this will be enough to move us to stop the war that was tearing our country apart, we thought. But it wasn\u2019t. The war ground on for five more years, as brutal as ever.<\/p>\n

Back then, war protesters were despised by \u201cthe establishment.\u201d The Greatest Generation had returned from World War II and built the American middle class during a golden time of shared prosperity and a feeling of common purpose. The Vietnam War shattered this moment in history. War protests increased in lock step with the escalations in Vietnam. And the Greatest Generation turned on its children.<\/p>\n

Polling after the Kent State massacre found that 58 percent of Americans blamed the students for their own deaths. President Nixon privately called them \u201cbums\u201d and publicly said they had invited the tragedy. No national guard personnel were held accountable.<\/a> Federal charges were dismissed, and the state of Ohio refused to prosecute.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m cautiously hopeful that this time might be different. But I\u2019ve seen enough in my long life to understand it may not.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oregoncommentary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oregoncommentary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oregoncommentary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oregoncommentary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oregoncommentary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oregoncommentary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":572,"href":"https:\/\/oregoncommentary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions\/572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oregoncommentary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oregoncommentary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oregoncommentary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}