Kidnapping again!!

I thought of this poster last night as I read journalist Bill Shaner's account of the kidnapping of a woman from her neighborhood in Worcester, Mass. In video taken by Shaner and others, Worcester police hold back a crowd attempting to the stop the abduction by federal officers – men with faces covered, wearing a variety of agency IDs (ICE, CBP, ATF). The crowd – neighbors, community organizers, a city council member, family – shouted "Don't take the mother!" and demanded to see the warrant. According to Shaner, Worcester police officers responded "This is federal" and "They don't need a warrant." They also arrested two people, including the woman's distraught 16-year-old daughter.

Back to the poster. There are a lot of these posters in the Boston Public Library collection, this particular one was made in 1854 following the kidnapping of Anthony Burns. A 20-year-old clothing store clerk, Burns had self-emancipated from enslavement in Virginia and begun a new life in Boston when he was tricked by U.S. Marshals into going with them to the courthouse, whereupon he learned they were there to return him to slavery.

The marshals had to trick Burns into going quietly, because Boston's Committee of Vigilance was top tier. Made up of hundreds of residents of every race and class, they could assemble at a moment's notice and would do just about anything to protect their self-emancipated neighbors, including physically overpowering the authorities. They probably looked a lot like the group of regular people who tried to stop the Worcester abduction yesterday, but with fewer women.

The marshals tried to keep Burns' hearing the next day secret, too, but an abolitionist attorney found out about it anyway and sent out the alarm, hence the poster.

Did the woman yesterday even get a hearing, or has she been denied due process like Kilmar Abrego Garcia?

The attorney convinced Burns to let him defend him in court but after nine days throwing every legal wrench in the works, Burns was ordered to be returned to slavery. The judge said he didn't want to do it, but the Fugitive Slave Act was legal, and Anthony Burns's presence in the free commonwealth of Massachusetts was not.

Has the woman yesterday been able to speak to an attorney, or is she as alone before a judge as that 4-year-old in New York?

The Boston vigilance committee tried a last-minute rescue riot, but local police stepped in and quelled the attempt, arresting three people and ensuring Burns's return to Virginia, where he would be beaten and imprisoned in conditions so poor he would never fully regain his health, dying at age 28 – in freedom in Canada.

When federal agents found themselves "surrounded" yesterday mid-abduction, they called in Worcester cops, whose chief assured the city council in January they would not assist Trump's assault on immigrants. But, as Shaner wrote, "what he didn't say is that if you try to stop the civil arrest, the police will stop you from stopping it."  

I try to share original perspectives on history here, but sometimes there is nothing else to say besides: Goddammit, we are doing the exact same thing again?! I hate the glibness of the moral of the story being "history repeats itself" – because it doesn't have to! "History repeats itself" confers an undue sense of inevitability, which then confers undue resignation.

I had thought federal kidnappings were one part of history we had safely made it past. I was wrong. So, fine, if history is going to repeat itself, let the vigilance committees repeat themselves, too. Let them spread to every city and hamlet, grow in ranks, and win some battles alongside the heroic loss of yesterday.

And let them win the war. Just like they did the first time.