By JAN McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Frigid weather did not deter about 40 Bowling Green residents Sunday from joining communities across the nation outraged over an ICE agent’s killing of a woman in Minneapolis last week.
The citizens spread out along North Main Street, in front of the district office of U.S. Rep. Bob Latta, R-Bowling Green.
Jan Morse, of Bowling Green, came prepared for the cold, showing her thick mittens from the Vermont Mitten company – the same type of handwear U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders wore as he sat in the cold for Joe Biden’s inauguration. Morse said she and her husband had been given the mittens by their children.
Morse, who held a sign stating, “I want my democracy with no ICE,” said she could not stay in the warmth and comfort of home after the events of last week.
“It was shocking,” she said of the masked ICE agent shooting and killing a 37-year-old woman in her vehicle. That was followed soon after by ICE agents shooting two other people in Portland, Oregon.
“I’m very concerned about the increasing violence with the ICE deployments,” Morse said. “I fear for our democracy. There’s too much to list.”
But others at the protest Sunday afternoon had lists.
Logan Propst, of Bowling Green, came with three demands. First, a moratorium on more data centers in Ohio. Second, a free Palestine. And third, “we want ICE out of our communities.”
Rumors had circulated, Propst said, that ICE agents had picked up someone on Saturday at the Kroger store less than a block from the protest on Sunday.
“All of these issues are connected,” she said. “All are a result of the two-party system. We have the power to demand what’s right.”
Brittney Klockowski, of Weston, resurrected a sign she used last year at a protest against President Donald Trump’s policies. The sign read, “It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now? Rage against the regime.”
Christina Guenther, of Bowling Green, had dual reasons for joining the protest.
“I’m here to protest ICE and its overreach as we express our First Amendment rights,” Guenther said. And she voiced concern about the lack of sufficient transparency surrounding data centers in Ohio and their drain on the resources.
“This is the time to stand up,” she said.
Across the nation, many were feeling the same urgency to protest the excesses of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
The “Ice Out for Good” campaign held demonstrations in small towns and major cities, including some that have been central targets of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Almost immediately after Good’s death, conflicting interpretations of the killing — which was captured in video from several angles — divided the country along ideological lines. State leaders in Minnesota described the ICE agent’s action as an unjustifiable use of lethal force against a civilian who was trying to leave the scene. The Trump administration officials claimed that Good was a left-wing domestic terrorist who tried to run over the ICE agent, and that the agent acted in self-defense.
In light of the killing in Minneapolis and another shooting in Portland, Oregon, where Border Patrol agents shot and wounded two people in a car on Thursday, activist groups, including the organizers of the “No Kings” and “Hands Off” demonstrations last year, called for a weekend of “nationwide mobilization.”
While Bowling Green’s protest on Sunday paled in comparison to the massive rallies held in the downtown during warm months last year, Propst said she was pleased with Sunday’s turnout.
“It’s freezing out. It’s biting. Considering the weather, this is a great turnout,” she said.
