The pace of events these past weeks has been dizzying. We have been pushed from horror to horror with little time to process, let alone grieve: killings in the Caribbean, land grabs in Palestine, the attack on Venezuela, the threatened strike on Iran, the posturing around the invasion of Greenland, and of course, the gruesome state violence in Minnesota including the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and of Victor Manuel Diaz who died in ICE custody hidden from public gaze.
As a political educator, researcher, and community organizer, I identify intersections of struggles that are often treated as separate, and I trace connections between acts of violence that are framed as isolated or inevitable. Understanding this authoritarian playbook, its many authors, and the entrenched culture of impunity that sustains it, is not an academic exercise. It is a necessary step in building a popular, multi-front movement capable of resisting what is unfolding and, ultimately, of building something better.
As the new Associate Director of Political Education and Research at the Center for Constitutional Rightts, I offer this piece as part of that collective effort: an attempt to look beyond headlines and talking points, and to situate the violence of this moment within the deeper structures that enable it. I’m hoping to create spaces where we can discuss these issues in person and online, but in the meantime, please email me your thoughts, concerns, disagreements, and suggestions as we navigate these dark times with our collective guidance and light.
The Caribbean Boat Strikes are Both Product of and Gateway to US Imperial Expansionism
We are living through a period where the promise of an enforceable international order is rapidly disintegrating in real time, but the foundations have been progressively weakened over decades. The national security state that emerged after 9/11 used the pretext of “terrorism” to drastically expand the scope of its violence. Following the Bush presidency’s legacy of war crimes, torture, and extraordinary renditions, President Obama’s illegal campaign of drone strikes, as well as targeted killings of suspected terrorists without due process and far from any field of armed conflict, paved the way for the Trump administration to follow suit in the Caribbean.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and U.S. willingness to enable it, fund it, arm it, and shield it diplomatically, has also drastically accelerated this breakdown of international law. The message to the world is that “might makes right,” and that law itself is negotiable if the perpetrator advances the interests of the current U.S. administration. When an empire learns that it can enact violence and suffer no consequence, it inevitably becomes more reckless over time. The threshold for “acceptable” brutality rises. The ability to imagine consequences diminishes. Escalation becomes increasingly inevitable.
We are seeing the consequences of this escalation today on the streets of Minnesota, where widespread surveillance and unchecked state violence have been similarly justified by ephemeral proclamations of “fighting terrorism.” In Minnesota, as in Venezuela, Sudan, Gaza, and countless other sites of struggle, flimsy narrative justifications are being used to drastically expand military reach to steal land and resources and impose systems of domination to force compliance through raw, unchecked violence. These actions must be resisted by all means available to us, including the courts, to reverse the ever-expanding authoritarian culture of impunity at the heart of the Trump administration.
Demanding Accountability
The case for accountability comes at a critical juncture in U.S. foreign policy. After dozens of similar U.S. airstrikes and drone strikes in the Caribbean last year, killing over 100 people with little public scrutiny, these actions reached their logical conclusion this month with a direct assault on the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, the killing of dozens more civilians, and the unprecedented abduction of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Emboldened by the absence of material consequences, the United States is now openly threatening further unlawful airstrikes, regime change campaigns in Iran and Cuba, the annexation of Greenland, and expanded impunity for foreign interventions across the globe. If left unchecked, this trajectory accelerates the collapse of the international legal order and normalizes a world in which brute force replaces law as the primary arbiter of global relations.
Rewriting the rules to suit the moment opens the floodgates to assassinations, kidnappings, seizures of leaders, regime change campaigns, and “counterterror” operations that treat entire populations as collateral. Venezuela is not an exception, but a warning: a country transformed into a hostage of U.S. policy, with its sovereignty conditioned on compliance with U.S. national security priorities and corporate interests.
Accountability is therefore not only about justice for the victims of U.S. violence in the Caribbean. It is about drawing a line before escalation becomes irreversible, defending what remains of an international system capable of restraining imperial violence rather than enabling it, and beginning the imaginings of international structures that can support the will of dignity of the global majority.
We Must Act Together to Stop the Slide into Authoritarianism
The boat strikes in the Caribbean crystallize this trajectory, and reveal why this erosion of accountability must be reversed. This week, along with the ACLU we filed a lawsuit on behalf of the families of two Trinidians murdered in a boat strike. They are suing the Trump administration for wrongful death and extrajudicial killing. Accountability for the murders of Chad and Rishi has broad implications of the Trump Administration’s actions in the Caribbean, far beyond the profound injustice and human tragedy the two families are enduring. Every action we take to denounce the violence and demand a different world matters now. Join us in resisting with everything you can!
Here’s how you can reverse the tide and support the goals of our case:
- Push for Congressional constraints on warmaking and militarized violence, including the signing of proposed War Powers Resolutions, the rejection of any Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), the termination of ICE’s mandate, and the restriction of all state funding fueling Trump’s war machine.
- Join campaigns to fight for the abolition of ICE! We were proud to sign-on to BAJI’s brilliant Break the ICE Machine campaign and celebrate the direct actions across the country calling for a boycott of Hilton Hotels based on their agreement to house ICE. We’ll also be participating in the national walk out tomorrow, January 30 - join us!
- Hit the streets, make some noise, and tell the world that the U.S. government’s dehumanization of communities and activists, its continued use of military force in the U.S. and around the world, the endless threats and assaults on our sovereignty, and our collective sacrifice for the greed of empire will no longer be tolerated.
Samer Araabi is the Associate Director of Political Education and Research at the Center for Constitutional Rights.
