The Boston Kidnapping

 The Wall Street Journal published an article today, collating more than a hundred videos of ICE arrests in the Boston area. Together, they provide a chilling glimpse into a series of DHS operations—codenamed "Patriot" and "Patriot 2"—that appear designed to target Massachusetts in retaliation for proclaiming itself a sanctuary jurisdiction. 

The parallels from history are hard to escape. In the nineteenth century, as today, Massachusetts tried to designate itself a "free state." This meant that people who reached its borders would be sheltered from being returned to slavery. But a pro-slavery federal government sought to punish the state for this stance and force their compliance with federal "fugitive slave" policy. 

Eventually, Daniel Webster—the Senator from Massachusetts—notoriously caved to the pressure and embraced the Fugitive Slave Act—on the theory that the "compromise" would save the union. As a result—the "slave-catchers" descended on New England—and started abducting people like Thomas Simms who had lived their lives in freedom in Massachusetts. 

"It is piracy to steal a man in Guinea; what is it to do this in Boston?" Theodore Parker rhetorically asked at this time. Parker and other abolitionists held a worship service at the time. Parker's discourse at the service—from which I derive this quote—bore a name which seems eerily relevant to our time. 

"The Boston Kidnapping"—Parker titled his discourse. Subtitle: "A Discourse to Commemorate the Rendition of Thomas Simms."

As a result of Webster's "compromise"—innocent people like Simms started disappearing from the streets of Boston to be returned to the hands of their persecutors. "Massachusetts, God forgive her, / She's akneelin' with the rest," as James Russell Lowell put it. Or—as Emerson wrote of the New England of the "Fugitive Slave Act" period: 

Or who, with accent bolder,
Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer?
I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook!
And in thy valleys, Agiochook!
The jackals of the negro-holder.

The jackals are back again. Watch those videos again and tell me if that language is too strong. See them wearing black masks—punching out windows of cars to haul parents into squalid detention camps—or tackling people outside of schools or in the hallways of court houses. 

The face-masks are an especially grim touch. You don't send masked agents to terrorize and kidnap people in a normally-functioning democratic society. You see it only when the government has descended into tyranny and state terrorism. 

"I met Murder on the way," as Shelley wrote in the "Mask of Anarchy"—writing of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre—"He had a mask like Castlereagh." 

"But at least this time"—one might say—"the Boston kidnappers aren't sending people into slavery." But it's hard to know if this is true. 

Right now, after all, there are nine men in Ghana being detained in an open-air prison camp, after being abducted and deported from the United States. 

Several of them received Convention Against Torture protections from the U.S. government. But Ghana—apparently with the knowledge and approval of the Trump administration—is planning to send them to their home countries, where they face torture and persecution—in defiance of their rights under the Convention, which the U.S. government swore to uphold. 

So the "jackals" are at the very least abducting people to persecution or torture—why not slavery too? 

The worst slap of all is to give these raids names like "Operation Patriot." What cruder distortion of language could be imagined than to appropriate the rhetoric of Boston patriotism and use it to defend kidnapping? 

Massachusetts, after all, is the land where the first blow was struck in our country's revolutionary struggle against monarchical tyranny and for the rights of man. "It was in such a spirit that Boston met the Writs of Assistance and the Stamp Act. What came of the resistance?" as Parker asked in his discourse on Thomas Simms. 

Is this what Massachusetts has become?—as James Russell Lowell asked. Massachusetts? "She thet ough' to stand so fearless

      Wile the wracks are round her hurled,

    Holdin' up a beacon peerless

      To the oppressed of all the world!