Prison Radio
Mumia Abu-Jamal

“The Raids Cometh.”

America has always had periods of state violence, attacks against dreaded others, people who were considered alien to a false white norm.

The Palmer raids of the early 20th century, named for the then-attorney general A. Mitchell Palmer, 1919-1921, targeted activists and radical Jews for deportation to Soviet Russia.

The infamous and unjust incarceration in U.S. concentration camps of Japanese-Americans during the 1940s, and the targeting of black revolutionaries during the sixties and seventies for internal repression.

Today, the targets are Latinos from the lands south of the U.S. These people are being demonized and criminalized to make their expulsions and deportations more politically acceptable. And the reason is as simple as 1-2-3: white fear of an emerging brown America.

Today’s raids have their beginning on the staircase of Trump Tower, when the candidate announced his candidacy with a now-infamous anti-Mexican screed.

From then to now can be drawn as a straight line. It is the crass, stoking, and exploitation of white anxiety and fear. We shall see if it works this time as it did the first.

These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.