Members of the United States National Guard are “citizen-soldiers.” Most of the year they are humble civilians living average American lives — working full-time jobs, struggling to afford life, doing all the same things we do to survive and occasionally enjoy our crumbling society.
When called upon by the state they serve (and live in, and likely grew up in), these unique local troops are meant to feel like next-level firefighters. The National Guard’s website speaks often of its members being deployed to help their community members during natural disasters or, in extreme cases like WWII, being sent to fight foreign enemies. But from New York to Los Angeles, recent National Guard deployments have pitted these citizen-soldiers against the people they are meant to protect.
New York National Guard Used To Police Mentally-Ill Civilians
March 6, 2024 saw New York Governor Kathy Hochul deploy 750 armed National Guard troops along with 250 MTA and NY State cops to assist in conducting subway bag checks in response to a number of high-profile attacks in the subway system.
While Hochul made it a point to highlight how these heavily-armed citizen-soldiers were “moms and dads from our communities,” the targets of the enhanced law enforcement were mainly “people with severe mental illness.” Aside from this measure, Hochul’s greatest push to address severe mental illness has been a proposal to make it easier to commit someone to a mental health facility against their will.
The National Guard enlistment was met with bipartisan criticism and remained unpopular for the duration of the deployment. By March 16, less than two weeks after the initial deployment, Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams had done the following:
- Hochul revised the plan to reduce the number of armed troops in response to backlash
- Hochul claimed the plan was “working as expected” to calm civilian anxiety despite a high-profile subway shooting during the National Guard deployment
- Adams declares New York City “the safest big city in America”
Claims about the month-over-month impact of the National Guard’s presence on subway crime (along with NYPD’s increased presence around the same time) were tenuous to begin with. The continued violent crime plus detached storytelling from Hochul and Adams turned the deployment into a farce.
Minnesota National Guard Used To Deter George Floyd-Related Protests in Minneapolis
Beginning April 12, 2021, Governor Tim Walz deployed more than 3,000 Minnesota National Guard troops to Minneapolis ahead of the Derek Chauvin trial verdict being delivered. A year prior, more than 7,000 National Guard members were deployed to quell the protests immediately following the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department.
In the 2020 deployment, troops stormed up and down residential avenues in Minneapolis shooting paintball rounds at people standing on their porches. Minneapolis residents are still sensitive about the National Guard due to memories of the “moms and dads in [their] communities,” to use NY Governor Hochul’s words, policing civilians rather than protecting them.
Considering the heavy military occupation of the city in back-to-back years, it is shocking yet unsurprising to know Minneapolis violently pushed back. In the early morning on April 18, 2021, National Guard members stationed in Minneapolis’s predominantly Black north side were shot at by a civilian in an SUV. Two troops sustained minor injuries and the shooter was inevitably arrested and sentenced to eight years in prison on various counts.
In the case of Minneapolis, history repeated itself: a similar National Guard occupation of North Minneapolis to quell Black protestors occurred in 1967 in connection with a nationwide racial reckoning similar to what the USA once again experienced in 2020.
Preceding Minneapolis’ Plymouth Ave riots and the “Long, Hot Summer of 1967” were the notorious Watts riots of 1965 in Los Angeles. Decades later, it is social unrest in Minneapolis that seems to be influencing civilian pushback in Los Angeles and other large cities across the country.
California National Guard Used To Stifle ICE Protests in Los Angeles
At the time of this writing, 2,000 California National Guard troops and 700 US Marines have been deployed to Los Angeles by President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth without consent from CA Governor Gavin Newsom.
The combined force has been enlisted to quell protests of aggressive ICE raids last week across Los Angeles which saw dozens arrested in a trend of swift, controversial operations that routinely consist of federal agents apprehending people without clear legal reason or identification and holding them in custody for long periods of time.
Curfews have been instituted in Los Angeles, Governor Newsom is suing President Trump, and similar clashes between local law enforcement and civilian protestors are resulting in arrests and charges being levied against said protestors.
Unlike the last time National Guard troops were deployed in Los Angeles by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, President Trump’s deployment goes against the wishes of local elected officials and has clearly exacerbated the unrest.
Trump’s intensified federal law enforcement activities are reminiscent of the 1960s when tensions boiled over year after year and city after city. From Detroit race riots to Black grief after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the United States was literally and figuratively being torn apart with no clear end in sight. Less than a year into Trump’s second term, the USA appears to be in that place once more.
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It is a shame to see any military personnel being turned against their own people. It cuts a little deeper to see National Guard members so readily used to confront and control citizens since they are those citizens in a way Marines and other full-time military members are not. It cuts a little deeper because local officials portray the National Guard as familiar and harmless while they surveil, assault, and arrest their neighbors with their temporary authority. It hurts because the moral dilemma weighing on our troops can only be solved by our troops. Until then, more pain.
This is a developing story