We Decide: America at the Crossroads with Jenna Flannagan
The murder by the US Border Patrol in Minneapolis of 37 year old Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a Veterans Administration ICU nurse on Saturday continues to spark international outrage. Pretti, a member of the American Federation of Government Employees, was coming to the aid of a woman being pushed to the ground by the Border Patrol. Pretti was a licensed gun owner and had a permit to carry his gun which multiple videos show remained holstered until he was tackled and swarmed by federal agents who took his gun and shot Pretti multiple times.
Initial claims by DHS that Pretti had threatened the federal agents with his handgun were debunked by multiple videos that show the victim was holding his phone.
Pretti's killing came a day after a massive one day general strike and union mobilization in Minneapolis called ICE OUT helped turnout 50,000 peaceful protestors. Support protests happened here and across the country,
Pretti's murder Sunday morning comes just weeks after the murder by federal agents of 37 year-old Renee Good, a mother of three, who supported community efforts to keep the Twin Cities immigrants safe.
The Trump administration is obstructing state and local law enforcement from investigating the murders and in both cases actually left the scene leaving local police to deal with the fallout.
The Trump administration has sent 3,000 ICE and Custom and Border Patrol into the Twin Cities, which only has about 1,000 local officers many of whom went through a major retraining after the May 2020 police murder of George Floyd by Officer Derek Chauvin.
In the A Block today on We Decide: America At The Crossroads, we will look at the fallout from Border Patrol’s killing of Alex Pretti along with Europe’s victory, at least for now, over President Trump’s aspirations of making Greenland part of the US by force, as the President called off planned tariffs against our European allies after he and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte agreed on a “framework” for a future deal involving Greenland and the Arctic region with our political panel, David Levinthal, Washington DC correspondent and Senior Editor at NOTUS, Egberto Willes, host of KPFT's Politics Done Right, and Laura Jedeed, a writer at FirewalledMedia.com and an Army veteran of two tours in the War in Afghanistan.
In the B Block, we’ll hear a recent interview from We Decide Pacifica Network contributing producer Ursula Ruedenberg with Oleksiy Sorokin, Deputy Chief Editor of the Kyiv Independent on the state of the Ukrainian government nearly four years into the war with Russia.
In the C Block, we turn to the latest in New York City’s largest nurses strike in history with registered nurse and member of the New York State Nurses Association Dania Munoz and Medical Epidemiologist Dr. Steven Auerbach, a former Public Health Advisor at the US Department of Health & Human Services and at the Centers for Disease Control.
Our healthcare panel looks at how even before the COVID pandemic that killed 1.1 million Americans and 3,600 nurses in the first wave, our for profit healthcare system was the world's most expensive even as America's average life expectancy ratings dropped dramatically.
Registered nurse Munoz and Dr. Auerbach discuss the significance of ICE murder of ICU Nurse Alex Pretti, who was a beloved member of the Minneapolis VA Hospital staff as well as member of the American Federation of Government Employees. Our healthcare panel explains how the Trump junta's violent mass deportation of immigrants actually puts public health at risk as those in targeted communities won't seek healthcare when they are sick in order to avoid apprehension and deportation.
In the D Block we examine the deepening Constitutional crisis set off by the two ICE summary executions in broad daylight of two civilians exercising their first amendment rights with co-founder of Eyes-on-Ice New Jersey Terri Suess, University of Massachusetts Amherst Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science Director of the Center for Justice, Law and Societies, Dr. Jamie Rowen, and civil liberties lawyer and former executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union Norman Siegel.
