Adding on, it's important for younger comrades to know that shit like the TSA, DHS, and all those fusion centers (which somehow seem to be used against every major protest movement from Occupy to Pro-Palestine) did NOT exist before 2001. Also shit like the FISA bill which, after the PATRIOT Act, allows the security state to monitor anyone's communications in the US despite security state officials perjuring themselves to claim the opposite for years and was JUST renewed.

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 5 points 6 months ago

I spent, literally, twenty years refusing to go through Chertoff's milimeter scanners hoping that a tall white guy getting frisked might, idk, make someone wonder why this was all happening, how it became normal. Spent a decade with people looking at me like I was a crank as I ranted about how the TSA was a massive expansion of federal power, the first time most people came in to regular contact with a federal law enforcement agency. How it was all completely useless security theater that amounted to little more than a jobs program wrapped around an extension of the police state. It's all so goddamn frustrating, and now there's a whole generation of kids who don't remember anything else. We used to be able to go to the gate, greet our families as they got off the plane. It all sucks so much.