I want to add a few thoughts this morning. #Minneapolis #police followed through on this framing of “urban warfare” last night. They approached protesters as “enemies” and treated them accordingly. It’s tempting to fall into the rhetoric of war 1/
Based on the images/videos/testimonies, it would be easy to describe the police as waging war on the protesters. But I want to resist that - because it just feeds into this false narrative. Describing police attacks as “war” still implies protesters are a threat and insurgents 2/
It implies a parity in the potential for deadly violence btw the police and the protesters - one that is not grounded in fact. Even in an asymmetric war, the smaller side poses a deadly threat to the larger or “regular” military force. Obviously the police are NOT the military 3/
But there’s a bigger problem. The protesters aren’t armed. In stark contrast to the #WhiteSupremacy protests against wearing a mask, where white people showed up armed to the teeth and in body armor, protesters noticibly have NOT been taking to the streets armed. 4/
And if protesters are categorically NOT a military force of a regular or irregular nature, that leaves them as civilians. And you can’t wage a war against your own civilians. 5/
Instead of war, I’d encourage us to understand what the #police are doing in #Minneapolis and cities across the country as state terrorism. Basically state terrorism is when the state uses terror tactics against their own population to achieve political objectives 6/
Though today we’re used to thinking about terrorism in terms of non-state actors, G. Wardlaw (Cambridge University Press, 1982), defined terrorism this way: 7/ 
Right now, the perpetrators are the police. Who are using tear gas, beatings, rubber bullets, arbitrary arrests, and othe forms of intimidation and violence to instill fear within the target group - protesters and the larger African American community 8/
The fear is to coerce the target group into accepting the status quo - where police can kill and target African Americans with near immunity and continue exercising their power. This state terrorism is meant to make debate impossible & reinforce racist power hierarchies. 9/
If foreign state security orgs were behaving like the Minneapolis police are, media coverage & foreign policy wonks would be using the language of state terrorism to describe it. But we don’t want to admit state terrorism could happen in America. 10/
But America has used state terrorism against her own citizens in the past. And what we’re seeing right now is the use of state terrorism in the form of police violence. This reality should make us all afraid. And it makes us all responsible for what happens next. 11/11
