Vigilantism Returns, Or Never Left
[Excerpted.]
This week we are inundated with images reminiscent of the past and stories of vigilantism.
Several weeks ago the Texas state legislature passed a bill (that was then signed by Gov Abbott) that essentially bans abortion in the state of TX. The Supreme Court declined to intervene. The law works around the provisions of Roe v. Wade by targeting those that aid in abortion efforts, rather than the patient, and empowering any random person to bring a civil lawsuit against any person who is thought to have been supportive of or enabling an abortion. That includes doctors, cab drivers, nurses, people who give patients rides, spouses, family members - anyone with any knowledge of an abortion past 6 weeks is liable to be sued in this new law. The person who brings the suit (if it is successful) is rewarded with $10,000 by the state of Texas. A bounty. Once the law passed it was only a matter of time before a lawsuit would be brought to bear, despite clinics immediately shuttering their doors and denying service to any woman in the state of Texas. There are heart-wrenching accounts and stories that are being shared by nurses and doctors of women who need and are seeking but unable to obtain an abortion in Texas right now. Over the weekend, a doctor in TX publicly shared that he had performed an abortion for a woman who needed it, essentially challenging someone to sue him. Yesterday it seems that two lawsuits were filed against him. It's not clear to me whether both can go through, or if one is contingent on another. The first is being brought by a “disgraced former Arkansas lawyer” who is apparently serving a federal sentence but is partly motivated because of the $10,000 that he could get as a reward if the lawsuit is successful. Apparently a second person in Chicago filed a second suit. I hadn't even realized that the people filing the suit didn't need to be in Texas themselves.
Last night pictures of border agents whipping Haitian refugees as they attempted to cross the Rio Grande River the images are horrifying they depict men on Horseback with long whips chasing after black refugees in a way that's really reminiscent of depictions of slave catchers particularly after the Fugitive Slave Act that was passed in 1793. There's the normal amount of outrage and disgust and anger online today and many people drawing connections to the history of our past and images that we should all be well familiar with. There's an equal amount of shock and horror and surprise as well as justification, rationalization and outright callousness. Aside from the historical connection and echo, what seems really important to note is just how much of our border patrol the agencies down there how much of those have been really outsourced to any civilian who wants to raise their hand to be a part of that orce.
It seems like we are looking more and more in our country to undermine structural protections for people and again returning power to those who are willing to violently take up arms against others for money in the name of patriotism and civic duty.
Today I spent some time reading through my history books about the Fugitive Slave Act again and one connection that I hadn't realized before was that much of the energy Around the legislation in the late Seventeen hundreds was also in response to the Haitian revolution of 1791 which was a violent and well-known uprising of enslaved people against their enslavers and that history and Legacy made people in this country nervous and it helped to build momentum for the Fugitive Slave Act, an act which until the time of the civil war and emancipation proclamation (70 years later) endangered the lives of every free black person living within the US borders.
We seem to excel at sanctioning and outsourcing our violence to our fellow citizens.