Authentic anti-police statism means opposing police at every level and within every institutional sector, including federal, state, local, tribal, military, university, or private.

By Melissa Gira Grant

The New Republic

Painful images are still coming out of Portland—law enforcement wielding exterminator-like sprayers of tear gas, firing “less-lethal” munitions that have left protesters hospitalized with life-threatening injuries—more than two months into continuous protests against anti-Black racism and policing. In recent weeks, federal agents have joined local police to patrol parts of Portland, dispatched by executive order and apparently managed by Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS.

Protesters in Portland soon reported that unidentified, armed federal agents in unmarked vans had pulled protesters off the street and detained them in unknown locations. On Tuesday in New York, similarly unmarked minivans carrying unidentified men rolled alongside a march and arrested a woman at the front. As the protesters cried out and pressed closer, as seen in videos from the scene, New York Police Department bike cops in their usual neon regalia formed a line to hold protesters back. The president had threatened that federal agents could be sent to New York, and it looked like they had made their first stand.

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