The Fine Print

POLICY FOR THE PEOPLE

“

“Fascism is a new name for the terror

the Negro has always faced in America.”

—Langston Hughes

THE BIG PICTURE

View in Your Browser

Where’s the bottom?

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Embrace’s President and CEO, Imari Paris Jeffries, Ph.D., said the following in an article he penned for USA TODAY about the killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer in Minneapolis: “Public lynching will now be televised. And America has learned how to watch.”

Less than a week later, we witnessed another.

Alex Pretti, a registered nurse and legal observer, was publicly executed on camera on Saturday—the second person to die by the Department of Homeland Security’s hand in Minnesota this month. He was holding a phone in his hand, his legally carried firearm holstered at his side. His last act: rushing to the aid of a woman being beaten by federal agents, shielding her from their assault. He paid for his good deed with his life.

In the aftermath, a familiar refrain popped up again:

We’ve reached an “unprecedented” moment in American history.

Never before have agents of the state so brazenly assaulted United States citizens, indiscriminately snatching them off the streets or killing them in cold blood if they did not comply.

Not even Bull Connor, the villain of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, ever did something as cruel as those ICE agents.

This is something out of Nazi Germany, not the United States of America.

This isn’t the America we recognize.

But here’s the thing. To many of us, this moment isn’t unprecedented.

Many folks just don’t remember what America is and always has been.

That’s why there’s no last straw. No bottom. No magical button that will make us change our ways.

We’ve lived through Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Sandra Bland. Philando Castile. George Floyd. Breonna Taylor.

We saw the pictures of Black people being sprayed mercilessly with fire hoses, attacked by dogs and beaten with clubs on the road to Selma. We remember the open casket of Emmett Till, and the lifeless bodies of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Medgar Evers and Fred Hampton. And that doesn’t even cover the atrocities for which there were no cameras or photos.

Nor is this even a new development: federal agents have shot at least 12 people since September, and Pretti is at least the fifth to die.

The reason this moment feels unprecedented to some is because of who the violence is happening to now: the people the state is supposed to protect, not just those it was designed to oppress.

A memorial of Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by federal agents earlier in Minneapolis on January 25, 2026. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

As the aforementioned Snyder writes in On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century, “most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.” Individuals anticipate what a repressive government will want from them, then give themselves up without a fight to preserve themselves—teaching power what it can get away with.

Americans have done that since the country’s inception: tolerating and reinforcing slavery, enabling the abuse of Native populations and actively participating in de jure and de facto segregation. Because people were always willing to ignore, or even aid, in the demonization of Black and Brown people, immigrants and anyone deemed “other.”

For a long time, we as a country have ignored the slippery slope that this behavior discharges us from, rarely acknowledging that turning a blind eye to injustices done against others makes it easier for injustice to be done against you. Good and Pretti were called “domestic terrorists,” their deaths deemed deserved by conservative media, because they didn’t stand idly by and let the system do what Americans have given it power to do.

Though the administration has backtracked on its verbal onslaught against them and signaled changes to its operations, removing Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino from Minneapolis, ICE and Customs and Border Patrol’s (CBP) operations in the city will not stop.

Immigrants will still be hunted, regardless of their status, and treated inhumanely in captivity. Black, Brown, and otherwise non-white U.S. citizens will still be subject to harassment and humiliation. Perhaps not coincidentally, this administration is taking great pains to remove any mention of this country’s systemic abuse of its marginalized people, including making sure people don’t remember our first president was a slave owner.

The irony of this administration’s affinity for Nazi propaganda is that America doesn’t need to import tactics of erasure and oppression from overseas.

Comparing what we’re doing to Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, repressive regimes in Iran or any other foreign entity misses the point. America is, and always has been, its own purveyor of violence. And as Dr. King also once said, “Violence never brings permanent peace.”

America inspired the concentration camps used by the Europeans, and most famously by Hitler’s Third Reich.

Jim Crow provided the template for Nazi Germany’s racial caste system.

Our genocide and displacement of Natives gave them the blueprint for the Final Solution.

And it all happened because good people stayed silent and turned away as others suffered, content to let it happen as long as it wasn’t happening to them.

The slayings of Good and Pretti have cracked that illusion. But we haven’t shattered it. Not yet. Not as long as we hold on to our broken national memory and tear up whatever foundation of truth we have, ensuring we’re doomed to search for that last straw, that elusive “rock bottom,” for as long as this country lasts.

The key to America becoming that elusive best version of itself is to acknowledge we never were that version in the first place—at least, not for everyone.

Only by remembering who we really are can we become what we want to be.

LET'S EMBRACE THE WORK

Keep the pressure on DHS

If you want specific items you can act on to do your part against Homeland Security's dangerous agenda, here’s a good read to check out. As many of us have seen over the past few days, you can’t let the snow freeze overnight. Get your shovels out, throw your road salt down and get in touch with your senators right now to make sure they refuse to fund ICE and CBP past this week.

Make an action plan

Not sure how to make your voice heard in this moment? Worried about taking it to the street? Activist and writer Brittany Packnett Cunningham has been on the ground for a lot of movements, and she lists some tips here that anyone can use to make a difference.

Celebrate Boston’s true history

Our Black History Month and Everyone250 celebrations kick off this Sunday with the dedication of Union Church’s historical marker at 1 pm—the first of many commemorations honoring Boston’s vibrant communities of color and voices that have long been overlooked or erased. Join us in doing our part to remember what truly makes our city, and our country, great.

GOOD TROUBLE

Now’s as good a time as any to revisit this conversation with Nia K. Evans, Executive Director of the Boston Ujima Project, which brings together everyday consumers, businesses and investors to help create a community-based economy.

Click here for more Good Trouble, which is produced in partnership with NBC10 Boston.

THE READING ROOM

Laughing amid the tears

Because we all need to laugh a little: Teyana Taylor, Keenan Thompson and the rest of the Saturday Night Live crew nailed America’s racialized selective memory crisis in this skit from last weekend. Sometimes, humor is the most powerful form of critique.

The power of fiction

George Orwell’s 1984 isn’t the only novel that strikes at the heart of authoritarianism. This carousel has some other interesting works to read through as you try to process this regime’s assault on our freedoms.

Why “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”

Listen to this 1991 interview with master poet and artist Gil Scott-Heron explaining what his famously coined phrase really means—and why it’s as radically relevant today as it was when he released it in 1971. Because history isn’t just a flashpoint. It’s a warning.

Thank you for being part of The Fine Print community: readers like you move this work forward. Because the long moral arc of the universe doesn’t bend toward justice on its own—we bend it. Together.

If you like our work, please visit our website or support us with a donation. Be sure to follow us on all the socials.

Instagram | YouTube | LinkedIn | Substack

SUPPORT EMBRACE

🚨Forward The Fine Print to your friends. Build with us.

(Header photo by AP)