That Time Boston Was Occupied by Law Enforcement
Spoiler: liberty prevailed
The small, quirky city had seen long-running protests against abuse of authority. There was scattered violence and some property damage, but for most residents, daily life carried on as usual. Then, the outside law enforcement arrived.
The people of the city did not want them there. City leaders did not want them there. But the central government sent them anyway, armed with a charge to suppress protests and enforce law and order. From the moment they arrived, skirmishes with the city’s residents flared. Stories of abusive policing spread, inflaming resentment and quickly turning the city against the troops. The city was Boston, the year was 1768.
The Struggle for Just Law Enforcement
For more than two centuries, Americans have, imperfectly and not always inclusively, fought against unjust and disproportionate law enforcement. Today’s Black Lives Matter demonstrators and those protesting federal incursions into Portland are the latest bearers of a more true version of that torch.
Thomas Jefferson scrawled the grievance of abusive law enforcement directly into the Declaration of Independence, accusing King George of “[keeping] among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies” (the central law enforcement of the day) “without the Consent of our legislatures”.
To make matters worse, the King “[protected] them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on [Americans]”. That charge may sound familiar given the current reckoning over whether black lives matter if taken by police.
After winning independence, the framers of the Constitution filled that document with limitations and proscriptions, all meant to prevent unaccountable use of force by a head of state.
To be clear, the founders recognized the need for functional authority — that was why they wrote the Constitution in the first place, after their first attempt in the Articles of Confederation failed for being too weak. But they shuddered at the thought of unjust and abusive power, and they did everything they could think of to keep it in check.
The Problem of Accountability
Particularly important to the framers was ensuring that any central law enforcement must be held accountable to the people. In that era, armies were the main enforcement arm of the federal government, so Article I limited defense appropriations to 2 years at a time. That kept the army and its commander on a short leash, since they would always have to come back to Congress soon for more.
In Portland in 2020, this spirit of accountability cracked like a liberty bell. The federal agents seizing people from the streets wore no clear badges or name tags, which looked an awful lot like protection for any abuses they might commit.
Furthermore, the men commanding them into the streets had zero accountability to Congress. Neither the Secretary nor Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security was confirmed by the Senate, like they are legally supposed to be. The president never even bothered to nominate them, evidently preferring his federal police to be accountable only to him.
The Right to Protest
Even with safeguards for accountability, the original Constitution still did not feature enough guard rails for the Americans, whose memories of autocratic rule were still fresh. Demanding stronger limits on authority, they appended to the Constitution the first 10 amendments, the Bill of Rights.
The first of these amendments protected, among other things, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The fourth protected “the right of the people to be secure in their persons… against unreasonable searches and seizures”.
In Portland, federal agents violated these crucial rights, as they gassed, shot, beat, and seized peaceably assembled protesters, including moms, dads, and veterans. Yes, a few people have been violent, but the retributive violence meted out by federal agents has been indiscriminate, disproportionate, and often unprovoked. People hustled into unmarked vans were never given constitutionally mandated reasons for their seizure.
All this for small protests on a single city block, which before the federal forces’ arrival had been petering out. America’s founders would be appalled.
A Long, Unfinished Quest
The American Revolution set in motion a long and winding quest to achieve liberty for all. Our founders, along with many generations to follow, were too blinded by prejudice to achieve or even fully understand that vision, but they saw enough of the human spirit to at least begin the journey. They knew both that people would always demand liberty, and that once achieved, it must always be protected from those with power.
Today, we see both sides of of that dynamic playing out. In cities, suburbs, and rural towns across the US, people continue to demand a more true vision of liberty, one where black lives hold equal value to those covered with European skin.
Meanwhile, those holding power succumbed to its temptations, placing their personal authority over civil liberty. We should not underestimate the importance of what is happening on that one city block. This situation easily could have spiraled into a national constitutional crisis, with our liberty on the line.
Portland appeared to be a test case, an attempt to set a precedent. If the protest suppression tactics had worked there, the same strategy likely would have expanded to put down protests in other cities as well, or simply deployed to score political points at the expense of cities led by political opponents. This isn’t speculation — it was the stated plan.
“These are not protesters… these are people that hate our country, and we’re not gonna let it go forward.”
Administration apologists attempt to justify expansion into other other cities as simple crime-fighting assistance. But the words straight from the president’s mouth show that the plan was clearly connected to putting down protests that have been attended by 1 in 9 American adults.
Fortunately, Portlanders stood up for liberty. Masses of people, many new to the protests, came out to declare the paramilitary presence out of bounds. As of today, it appears that the federal agents, who were never meant or trained to be used this way, will be called back. If Portland had not stood up, it’s clear their orders would have been redeployment to another American city instead.
American history is riddled with flaws and guilt. The government has more than once used excessive and unjust force. Yet over history’s long arc, we have in most respects taken more steps forward than back. It is often difficult to recognize the important turning points while they happen, especially if years of fresh weekly outrages make it difficult to stay vigilant.
But we should be quite clear about what very nearly just happened in Portland. The American executive trialed suppression of vastly popular protests by force, using an ad hoc paramilitary force that is not supposed to exist in that form. The first amendment was not defended by an outcry from Congress; it was defended by the courage of Americans putting their lives on the line in the streets. If they had allowed the precedent to be set, its success at putting down protests would have sat ensconced in recent history, a fat, juicy temptation for a repeat.
