I video of the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis they clearly deny the version provided by the Ice agents and relaunched by the president Donald Trump. The 37 year old nurse he had no weapons in his handshe didn’t threaten anyone and simply was filming the operation of the immigration police with his phone.
According to the images, both Trump and the secretary of Homeland Security lied Kristi Noemwho had claimed that Pretti “wanted to harm the officers”. The videos tell another story.
In the videos you can see Pretti alone in the middle of the streetwith a phone in one hand and the other free. He is wearing a jacket, baseball cap and sunglasses. When an officer violently pushes two protesting women, Pretti protects themhelping one to get up after a fall. At that point he comes sprayed with stinging sprayThen landedimmobilized on the ground on his stomach and beaten by multiple agents.
An officer walks away holding a gun: it is the weapon that Pretti legally carriedas permitted by the American Constitution, but that had been taken from him while he was already on the ground. An officer is heard shouting, “He has a weapon,” but it is clear that Pretti never challenged it or used it to threaten.
Immediately afterwards they hear each other ten shots in five seconds. Alex Pretti comes killed while unarmed.
Second Percival EverettAfrican American writer and author of James“what you see in the videos is a public execution”. In an interview with Republic speak openly about authoritarian drift: “In the United States the civil war has already begun. A state that shoots its defenseless citizens and then lies about the facts is a state against the people.”
Everett accuses the Trump administration of using the hunt for illegal immigrants as a pretext to also terrorize American citizens: “Masked agents who act with impunity, violating the Constitution. The message is that the rules no longer matter.” And he adds: “Maybe they are looking for a fight to be able to invoke the Insurrection Act and restrict rights even further.”
For the writer, it is no longer just about racism: “You hit those who don’t align. This has a name: fascism”. A phenomenon that, he warns, many Americans struggle to recognize: “They live immersed in their cell phones, drinking lies repeated endlessly, while information is increasingly concentrated in a few hands.”
Everett closes with praise for the protests against Ice: “I am proud of those who take to the streets without falling into the trap of violence. It is tragically ironic that Trump says he wants to bomb Iran to defend the protesters, while allowing his agents to shoot unarmed American citizens”.
