Tom Santulli, MD, a retired pediatrician, lives in Portland.

Alex Pretti’s death horrified a fragile nation, one fractured and on edge. Each day, for months now, we are able to watch individuals and groups using their Constitution-granted right to speak out, to demonstrate, to protest. They are often met with intemperate force. However, beyond the growing brutality and lawlessness of our government one characteristic of protesters begins to stand out.

As disagreement and protest become increasingly volatile, as citizens become increasingly frustrated, dismayed, frightened, we participate in or watch the use of invective, slur and physical force directed toward government agents. It is intended to be insulting, demeaning, dehumanizing; it grows uglier as each day becomes more tense, more volatile.

Simultaneously a tactic to disrupt the lives and sleep of those whom we oppose —
perhaps begun after the death of Breonna Taylor — is being used. “NO JUSTICE!
NO SLEEP!” read the placards. On Jan. 23 in Portland six protesters among the approximately 75 at the AC Hotel were arrested. How effective is this?

What would Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela say to people on the streets of Minneapolis and beyond? To thousands across the country experiencing the flagrant abuse of our out of control government? To families forever scarred by the disappearance and death of loved ones?

Are our individual and collective reserves so diminished that we are past the point of resolution and reconciliation? I don’t know, but I suggest that harassment and demeaning those with whom we disagree may ultimately be destructive.

Ignore if you can for a moment the hideousness, the inhumanity, the recklessness and the growing illegality of ICE, CBP and others. Recognize that in many cases their training is marginal, the guidance they’re being given may be illegal and that the experience, intelligence and personal values of individual agents will vary greatly. And recognize that they are armed — like soldiers in battle for their lives.

Think for a moment: you want the surgeon operating on you to be well rested, feeling positive about himself, committed to your well-being. You trust that he has been extensively trained, and will react calmly and intelligently to a crisis.

Yet daily we confront masked individuals with lethal weapons who are demonstrably unafraid to use force even without clear provocation in highly explosive situations. Do we want them in life and death situations to feel humiliated, insulted and belittled, and to be exhausted?

Some reading this will question my commitment to the change that must come; some will even question my honor. “He’s a privileged white man after all; what could he possibly know?” Yes, I’m fortunate, comfortable and white. No, I can’t know what the average ICE or CBP agent is thinking as he or she confronts angry protesters.

I do, however, know that victims of brutality, even murder, overwhelmingly do not want revenge, do not seek retribution. (Trump’s Truth Social recently threatened “reckoning and retribution” for Minneapolis, by the way.) Witness the comments from the families of two recently murdered victims in Minneapolis.

To be very clear, I do not condone any of the violence that our government is doing. I want each of us to resist this ongoing tyranny as fiercely as possible in the ways we can. I want the increasingly repressive actions of our government — authoritarianism — to end. I want those responsible for ripping this country apart held to account. And I want no more deaths.

We are moving inexorably toward a revolution in this country. Will it be peaceful and ultimately welcoming to all who live and work here? Will we see a time when we “ain’t gonna study war no more”?