Resisting Trump's Stormtroopers
Make no mistake, Trump's Operation Safeguard, his plan to start ICE deportation raids in Chicago within hours of his second inauguration, is an act of terrorism. It's timed to be the first footfall of Trump's stormtroopers.
Its goal is to frighten all of us, not just those who fear deportation. It says Trump means business. It makes clear that all that we feared in Project 2025 is, sure enough, coming down the chute. It says that while his oath of office to defend the Constitution is—wink, wink—an empty gesture, now, Project 2025, that’s the real deal.
The New York Times reports that at Trump’s direction ICE plans to send roughly 150 agents to Chicago for the raids. For the Times, “the incoming administration is eager to find ways to send a message that it is cracking down on undocumented immigrants and punishing so-called sanctuary cities.” But the eagerness to have an impact extends beyond the immigrants and the sanctuary cities that dare to give them safety. He’s got you and me in his sights.
Given Trump’s goals, we must push directly back against his nativism. Unless we are truly native sons, we are all sons and daughters of immigrants. While I don't wish to minimize the fear immigrants must feel at this moment, and for good reason, the larger point is not to succumb to Trump’s fearmongering. As Yale historian Tim Snyder makes clear, our first duty in resisting tyranny is not to obey in advance:
Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do. (On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century)
This we must not do.
As we hear the march of Trump’s stormtroopers, real and metaphoric, we must understand and resist its purpose: terror.
We learned as children that the two responses to fear were fight or flight. But trauma psychologists have recognized a third innate, evolutionary response. We know that many animals freeze when attacked, an effort to become a less interesting target. Trump’s terror has another purpose: to remove our sense of agency. If we succumb to this first attack on our freedoms, what freedoms will he next pursue?
When prey animals wake from their frozen state, they tremble violently. By “shaking it off” they minimize the long-term effects of PTSD.
Even better is not to freeze at all, not to lose one’s sense of agency from the get-go. Trauma psychologist Philip Levine offers the example of the 1976 Chowchilla, California kidnapping to address one of mysteries of trauma, why people experiencing the same event can have totally different responses. Of the 26 children who were buried in a truck trailer in an abandoned quarry, only one survivor differed in the aftermath from all others. Fourteen-year-old Michael Marshall found a way to dig his way to freedom. Finding a way out and urging his schoolmates to follow him, Marshall never lost his sense of agency. During confinement, his fellow victims succumbed to numbness and a state of dissociation. Afterwards they suffered “recurring nightmares, violent tendencies, and impaired ability to function normally in personal and social relations.” Marshall was symptom free (Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma).
The counter-inaugural parade we will kick off in New Orleans at Louis Armstrong Park at the stroke of noon when Trump takes his oath of office may be without serious consequence to the body politic. But those who join us in the frigid weather may guard a measure of their sense of agency.
Our Lady Libertas, having suffered through Trump’s first term—and Hurricane Milton—is not a little bit the worse for wear.
But we have done what we can to make her ready for this sad day. Join us and Dr. Brice Miller & The Mahogany Brass Band. Lady Libertas needs your support.
Parade Details
On Monday, January 20, 2025, please wing it with krewedelusion’s King Guerrilla Gorilla (Randy Fertel) and the Krewe of Libertas as we kick off a new era of political improvisation with a CounterInauguration Celebration.
It will be cold; dress appropriately or inappropriately — or both!
8:00am - Breakfast at Bywater Bakery (3624 Dauphine Street)
9:00am - The GerryMeander: An Improvisational roll with the Statue of Libertas, from Bywater Bakery to Armstrong Park
11:00am - The Rituals of Libertas at Armstrong Park (701 N. Rampart Street). The Mahogony Brass Band will lead a quantum mock jazz funeral marking rebirth, predeath, zombification, resurrection and perpetuation of the Statue of Libertas!
4:00pm - krewedelusion’s CounterInaugural Ball at Maison (508 Frenchmen Street), featuring:
4:00pm - 8:00pm - Hot Club of New Orleans
8:30-11:59pm - Gene’s Music Machine
