Three Democratic Congressmen Arrested at Trump Tower During Protest
Arrested for civil disobedience.
Officers arrested three Democratic congressmen outside of Trump Tower during a protest against President Donald Trump’s policies on immigration. From Fox News:
Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva, Illinois Rep. Luis Gutiérrez and New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat were taken into custody by police, according to Grijalva’s campaign Twitter account and a Gutiérrez aide.
Grijalva’s account tweeted that “Raúl was taken into custody in front of Trump Tower for civil disobedience along with Rep. Gutierrez and Rep. Espaillat.”
Douglas Rivlin, Gutiérrez’s communications director, confirmed that the congressman was arrested.
At Trump Tower today with a whole lot of DREAMers, immigrants & Americans to say enough to Trump & criminalization of immigrant communities pic.twitter.com/c2arAw3Lf8
— Rep. Raúl Grijalva (@standwithraul) September 19, 2017
Update: Raúl was taken into custody in front of Trump Tower for civil disobedience along with Rep. Gutierrez and Rep. Espaillat. pic.twitter.com/Mrh60C9aTT
— Rep. Raúl Grijalva (@standwithraul) September 19, 2017
Officers also arrested New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, a potential mayor candidate.
The protest was to show disdain for Trump decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), but he hasn’t technically ended it yet. He pushed it to Congress and gave them a six month period to make changes or keep it as is. Remember, DACA was never a law or executive order. It was just a memo sent out by the DHS under President Barack Obama.
From The Washington Post:
“We’re taking the necessary steps to make it clear to President Trump, the Republicans and the Democrats that we will continue this peaceful fight for DREAMers and immigrants as long as it takes to enact legislation and put DREAMers in a safe place,” Gutiérrez said in a statement provided by his spokesman after the arrest. “A few Congressmen and elected-officials gathering in front of Trump Tower doesn’t mean much if it is not backed up by the grassroots and allies and today we are standing with diverse allies to make sure Congress and the President do more than just talk about solutions, they actually follow through with action.”
This isn’t Gutiérrez’s first arrest. From The Hill:
Tuesday marked the second time in five weeks that Gutierrez was arrested as part of an immigration protest.
Gutierrez was also arrested in mid-August outside the White House during a rally commemorating the fifth anniversary of DACA.
He had been arrested outside the White House twice before that, in 2010 and 2011, during similar protests. Gutierrez was additionally arrested at a Chicago Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in March while protesting deportations of DACA recipients.
Gutiérrez recently caused an uproar when he attacked White House Chief of Staff John Kelly about Trump’s decision, “calling the retired Marine general ‘a hypocrite who is a disgrace to the uniform he used to wear'” and that he “has no honor and should be drummed out of the White House along with the white supremacists and those enabling the president’s actions by ‘just following orders.’”
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has called on Gutiérrez to apologize and reminded everyone that Kelly’s son died in Afghanistan in 2010. His son’s loss made Kelly “the highest ranking service member to lose a child in Afghanistan or Iraq.”
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Comments
Maybe the NYPD has the same instructions as those given to the Chicago PD. Always ask who wants to be arrested.
I think the way it usually works is that they are ‘arrested’ just long enough to be photographed and videotaped by all the present news teams, then dramatically hauled off to the hoosegow where they are promptly released.
Catch & release.
But you have to allow as how this is the way one does civil disobedience. If you break the law, you subject yourself to its consequences, per Thoreau.
you subject yourself to its consequences
the only consequence is furthering their SJW status.
if they were subject to ridicule and censure by the House, and loss of parking priveleges, that would be consequences
Just picking up a little street cred.
And as far as “criminalization of immigrant communities” goes, the only ones being “criminialized” are those who have broken the law. Criminal = law breaker. It’s a dictionary thing. Look it up.
Just getting a little video tape for use in their next elección ads…
Just a small style-book pick…
These are Democrats, certainly not “Democratic”. This is, after all, the party at war with our rights.
The House should expel members who deliberately flout the law.
Probably so.
This isn’t like Thoreau or Socrates being annoying because they can.
Those who are themselves part of the legislative/law enforcement/judicial apparatus have an extra obligation to comply meticulously with the laws they’re entrusted to make and enforce. Anything less is deliberate abuse of that trust.
Putting aside your hand-waving of Thoreau and Socrates (both men I doubt you even understand). let’s fisk your statement.
“Those who are themselves part of the legislative/law enforcement/judicial apparatus have an extra obligation to comply meticulously with the laws they’re entrusted to make and enforce.”
This is simply false as a matter of basic civics on several levels;
1. the legislative branch has NO enforcement role,
2. no judicial role, and,
3. nobody has a “meticulous duty” to obey any law (if we did, a law making us all slaves would make us all slaves).
I hold we have a very high duty to, in fact, DISOBEY laws at times and in places.
Your argument is the inverse of “all pigs are equal”. If a congressman could, with impunity, disobey laws, we’d all find that rightly deplorable. Here, they were arrested and the law will take its course.
But according to your logic, they are an elite who are to be held to a much higher standard than you or I. Bollocks.
Now, if you want, you should write your Congressman and demand they be unseated. That’s your right. You can make your argument to them.
Maybe it would help if you could provide some examples of the fines or punishments that congress critters or high profile liberal activists have incurred from their arrests for civil disobedience.
I can’t recall a single one ever being convicted of….anything
Maybe it wouldn’t make the slightest difference.
When was the last time you put yourself at risk of being fined or jailed over a principle (right or wrong)? Would it matter to you if that risk went unrealized later? Or would you do what you were convinced you should, knowing you exposed yourself to that set of risks.
Celebrities like Bill McKibben (wacko environmentalist) have gone to jail for short periods. You could find more.
Will any of these three Deemocrats go to jail, or be fined any huge amount? I doubt it.
Are you of the mindset that they should be stripped of their seats in Congress for misdemeanor trespass in a peaceful (and really stupid) demonstration?
Given that we are going to have protests (and we certainly WILL) do you want them to be this kind? Or another kind?
Rather long winded way of not addressing my comment.
I said nothing about kicking them out of congress.
I just wondered if and when Al or Jesse or Medea or any of the asshats in this article ever got the old “$50 and time served”.
Once again proving you don’t ask good-faith questions, don’t accept good-faith answers, and follow up in bad faith.
You’re just dishonest. And I busted you. Again.
So, if a sitting Congressman joined the march in Selma, your position is they should lose their seat, and their voters disenfranchised?
Interesting…
if they are not willing to be subject to these punishments, then what is their ‘bravery’ worth ?
a bucket of spit.
certainly no bravery of any sort involved.
just because YOU don’t like POTUS doesn’t mean that if you were to break the law as a consequence you should not be willing to be subject o its’ consequences , correct counselor?
You poor, stupid thang…
This has nothing whatsoever to do with T-rump.
It’s about free expression, the role of actual peaceful disobedience in our society (which is a VERY good thing), and some sense of equilibrium.
If you think these Deemocrat mooks should lose their seats in Congress over a simple trespass in a peaceful protest, what should we do to O’Keefe?
If you want to raised the ante as high as loss of a seat in Congress, what do you think the next logical step will be in the mind of people who we oppose?
You don’t think. You just emote.
Have Grijalva, Gutiérrez and Espaillat sent out their fundraising emails highlighting this stunt yet?
Earning merit badges in the Illegal alien scouts troop.
They should be put into Paddy Wagons(That is what we called them in NYC when I was a kid) which are making the long rounds to various precincts throughout the far reaches of the city to pick up other law breakers and then eventually to Central Booking.
Yep. No disagreement there.
It appears that NYC also called the prisoner transport vehicle “Black Maria”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Maria
Don’t let America’s universities continue to serve as incubators for this rampant epidemic of new McCarthyism.
But what can you do? How can anyone prevail against such pervasive social subjugation?
The answer’s been here all along.
I learned it 36 years ago, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., standing with Dr. Martin Luther King and two hundred thousand people.
You simply…disobey.
Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely.
But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don’t. We disobey social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom.
I learned the awesome power of disobedience from Dr. King…who learned it from Gandhi, and Thoreau, and Jesus, and every other great man who led those in the right against those with the might.
Disobedience is in our DNA. We feel innate kinship with that disobedient spirit that tossed tea into Boston Harbor, that sent Thoreau to jail, that refused to sit in the back of the bus, that protested a war in Vietnam.
In that same spirit, I am asking you to disavow cultural correctness with massive disobedience of rogue authority, social directives and onerous law that weaken personal freedom.
But be careful…it hurts.
Disobedience demands that you put yourself at risk. Dr. King stood on lots of balconies.
You must be willing to be humiliated…to endure the modern-day equivalent of the police dogs at Montgomery and the water cannons at Selma.
You must be willing to experience discomfort. I’m not complaining, but my own decades of social activism have taken their toll on me.
http://www.waitsel.com/america/Charlton_Heston.html
You should read the whole thing…
I love how people try to equate modern support for illegal immigration with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The civil rights movement was all about a group of American citizens being treated differently [discriminated against] than other citizens. The immigration amnesty and open borders movement is all about treating law abiding American citizens differently [discriminated against] than non-citizens who have violated American law to enter and/or remain within this country. Not much equivalency there, is there?
If that’s what you took out of Heston’s excellent speech, you are the idiot I take you for.
No, I understood exactly what Mr. Heston was saying. He was speaking about standing up to the discrimination of conservatives and conservative thought on college campuses. Personally, I think that he was wrong here. I think that it is foolish to spend one;s hard earned money to attend an institution of “higher” learning which is so philosophically skewed as to be hostile to you. Conservatives should do what they, and white students, are now doing to colleges which foster hostile environments for them, go somewhere else. When these institutions can not meet their payrolls, they will either change their ways or disappear.
You, on the other hand, were using this quote, taken out of context, to attempt to lend some support for civil disobedience to support people who are actively and knowingly violating the laws of the United States. And, even worse, these people are not even citizens, but illegal immigrants who are legally citizens of a foreign country. If you wish to face arrest to support people who are actively breaking perfectly reasonable laws made and supported by the CITIZENS of the US, go right ahead. Just don’t try to make it seem like a noble gesture to right a great wrong.
Nope. Now you’ve shown you’re a liar AND and idiot.
I support peaceful civil disobedience as an excellent tool for a civil society. So did Heston, and various others who you ignore.
Like free speech and freedom of assembly, you or I can have it as our monopoly.
And you know, or are too stupid to read, that I’m FOR deportiing DREAMERS, unlike Donald Ducks.
But nice try at a smear…
Then why even quote Heston?
Civil disobedience in support of unwarranted criminal activity [illegal immigration] is stupid. Civil disobedience in support of anything that is detrimental to society is stupid. Would you support illegal aliens, or any other criminal, simply disobeying the law? So, making any attempt to support civil disobedience, in this case, is stupid. Too deep for you?
Everybody wants to be a hero. Many people in the US want to be a revolutionary. Sometimes a cause arises which is worthy of disrupting a well ordered society in order to correct a grave injustice. This was the case during the Civil Rights Movement. That was a time when there was formalized, official government, and societal, discrimination against a portion of the citizenry of this nation. In the tradition espoused by the founders of this country, that could not be allowed to stand. Illegal immigration is not such a cause. Neither is the liberalization of colleges and universities. Conservative, or even neutral, conclaves of higher education can, and have been, established to provide propaganda free environments for education.
As to deporting the Dreamers, they have to be deported, whether anyone favors it or not. That is the law. And to make an exception for the Dreamers is to open the door to making exceptions for all illegal immigrants. However, I have no problem with fast-tracking their reentry into this country, as they are known quantities, to allow them to take the current path to citizenship. Is this discriminatory for those waiting to enter the US? Yes, it is. Does it reward those who have violated the laws of the US? Yes it does. Are there extenuating circumstances in the case of most DACA registrants? Unfortunately, there are. There are a number of work-arounds which would be acceptable to most American citizens. But, allowing the Dreamers to stay in the US, either legally or illegally, is not going to sit well with the bulk of the American people.
You;re, again, too stupid to read.
I quoted Heston on the subject of civil disobedience.
I’m against amnesty for DREAMERS. You little Yellow Goad is for it.
Then YOU launch into apologetics for DREAMERS.
What a moron.
It is interesting that any elected official would actively work against the interests of the citizens who elected him [or her]. If an elected government official wants to get arrested for supporting a group of foreign citizens at the expense of the citizens who elected him to office, that is up to he and his constituency.
Here are the facts about DACA.
1) DACA was illegal, as the President does not have the authority to ignore or change immigration law. President Trump knows this and so he has terminated the DACA program and directed Congress to legislatively adjust the law to authorize legal status for these young people. This is right and proper under our system of government.
2)DACA registrants are routinely identified as “children”. However, virtually all, if not all, of them are adults. Some have been adults for 18 years, while living in this country illegally.
3) It is routinely argued that DACA registrants were brought to this country as children and therefor did not violate the law upon entry. This may or may not be true, depending upon the age of the registrant at the time of entry. However, what most people ignore is the fact that these registrants are now adults, and, in some cases, have been adults since long before [17+ years] DACA was started. Therefor, they know that they are here in violation of the law and still willfully continue to violate it.
These people are all protesting to the wrong person. Trump has followed the law. If anyone wishes amnesty for violating immigration laws, then they need to have Congress change the laws and grant them amnesty. However, regardless of the recent polls, the bulk of the American electorate does not want the immigration laws changed. They work just fine, as long as they are enforced. It is only when the nation refuses to enforce the immigration laws that we have problems. So, it is unlikely that Congress will change the immigration laws.
I hope that sneering little pissant Gutierrez gets lots of involuntary sex in lock-up.