MOSES supports the advocacy work of our parent organizations, including the WISDOM Immigration Task Force and the Gamaliel Civil Rights of Immigrants Campaign.
With gratitude to Pablo Tapia Mendoza, Chair of Gamaliel’s Civil Rights of Immigrants, we borrow from his statement to the Gamaliel Network.
Our hearts are broken and our spirits are deeply challenged. On January 7th, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot and killed Renee Nicole Good on the streets of Minneapolis. The very next day, Customs and Border Control officers shot two more people in Portland.
These actions by federal agents demonstrate a growing pattern of violence carried out by the current federal administration with alarming ease and without remorse. These actions are in fact all too commonplace. Police have shot and killed people in their cars, their homes, their neighborhoods, and on playgrounds for years without constraint, with an extremely disproportionate impact on people of color. Lives are being lost, and the human and societal cost of these practices is unacceptable.
We were once told that enforcement actions would focus narrowly on individuals who posed a danger. Instead, we have seen members of our communities intimidated and targeted without any evidence they pose a danger to society. Now, this escalation has led to the loss of life. Similar incidents have already occurred in Tennessee, Iowa, Illinois and California.
We choose to speak, act, and stand together—before it is too late.
MOSES opposes these killings and all other acts of violence against the members of our national community. We call for nationwide adherence to use of lethal force policies, de-escalation training, and enforcement of the practices called for by these policies and training.
We commit to continue our efforts to understand, support, and advocate for systemic improvements in local, statewide, and national policies to reduce the appalling use of lethal force. As the local Dane County affiliate of WISDOM, MOSES supports WISDOM and Gamaliel advocacy in these areas while focusing our advocacy work on the local and State of Wisconsin standard operating procedures and the realities of training and adherence to policy by local law enforcement.
We call out the failure to abide by policies pertaining to use of force and de-escalation practices and the failure of the criminal legal system and law enforcement to hold officers accountable, especially when it involves killing members of our society, whether or not they are citizens. This includes the failure to adhere to policy by individual federal officers and federal agencies in the recent killing in Minneapolis and the woundings in Portland.
As quoted in the New York Times, Dwight Holton, the U.S. attorney in Oregon during the Obama administration, said that law enforcement training emphasizes that “you can’t put yourself in a position that creates risk to yourself so that you can have authorization for use of force.”
MOSES calls on the federal government to cease and desist in these practices and to hold the officers accountable.
The time to speak out against these atrocities is now.
“First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”