On "Heroes" and "The Narrative"
Jan. 30th, 2026 02:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chris_gerribComes news that Alex Pretti, the person most recently murdered by ICE in Minneapolis, got in an altercation with ICE a week prior to his death. Said altercation (at least the video portion of it) seems to have started when Pretti kicked an ICE rental car and broke a tail light. I've seen on the ICE-apologizer sights claims that this "ruins the narrative."
Here's the thing - Pretti doesn't have to be a saint for me to be mad at his murder. Nothing he did at either of the incidents with ICE justifies him being killed. The tail light incident was at most a misdemeanor property damage* and the second event started with him standing on the sidewalk when ICE pushed another woman down.
This "no sainthood required" concept goes back with me at least to George Floyd. I am under no illusion that Floyd was a nice guy and I probably wouldn't have invited him to dinner. There's a few thousand miles between "not a nice guy" and "deserved to die in the street."
I also don't particularly want to hear about people (who seem to all be suspiciously white, blond and female) who were killed by illegal immigrants. Their killers were caught and punished. More importantly, my tax dollars were not being used to pay their salaries. We give police guns and uniforms for a reason - we expect more from them than of J. Random Dude.
This whole mess started because Trump decided to punish Minneapolis for the crime of not voting for him. That's "the narrative" of this story.
ETA: a report from somebody who knew Pretti.
*The fact that ICE was able to subdue Pretti at the first event actually proves that they *can* subdue armed men if they want to.
Here's the thing - Pretti doesn't have to be a saint for me to be mad at his murder. Nothing he did at either of the incidents with ICE justifies him being killed. The tail light incident was at most a misdemeanor property damage* and the second event started with him standing on the sidewalk when ICE pushed another woman down.
This "no sainthood required" concept goes back with me at least to George Floyd. I am under no illusion that Floyd was a nice guy and I probably wouldn't have invited him to dinner. There's a few thousand miles between "not a nice guy" and "deserved to die in the street."
I also don't particularly want to hear about people (who seem to all be suspiciously white, blond and female) who were killed by illegal immigrants. Their killers were caught and punished. More importantly, my tax dollars were not being used to pay their salaries. We give police guns and uniforms for a reason - we expect more from them than of J. Random Dude.
This whole mess started because Trump decided to punish Minneapolis for the crime of not voting for him. That's "the narrative" of this story.
ETA: a report from somebody who knew Pretti.
*The fact that ICE was able to subdue Pretti at the first event actually proves that they *can* subdue armed men if they want to.
