1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

I've been watching the live streams. I've been reading the news. And what I've seen is calm groups of people walking through a few streets of LA, holding signs and chanting. There's people singing, playing music, and dancing and chatting with each other and eating hot dogs (https://prospect.org/justice/cries-defiance-songs-joy-los-angeles-ice-protests-immigration-raids/). The protest in LA is clearly peaceful. This is just another of the innumerable non-violent rallies that Americans across the country have been holding since February, choosing to exercise their Constitutional right to protest injustice. The President of the United States is deploying our troops against these Americans anyway. He has activated the National Guard and is threatening to send in the U.S. Marines to stop protests against his policies – protests which even local law enforcement described as largely peaceful. Now our men and women in uniform are shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at people who are exercising their fundamental rights as protected by the First Amendment. This is the stuff of tinpot dictatorships. One of the crucial protections that has kept America free and democratic has been our insistence that the military never be used as a political weapon against our own. That safeguard is being destroyed. It’s an affront to our most sacred values, and it’s dangerous as hell. You need to condemn this in clear and unambiguous terms. And you need to treat this as the emergency for our nation that it is. Use whatever legislative or political tools you have available to take concrete and meaningful action. This mobilization of the National Guard and Marines to California against the governor's will is unprecedented and likely illegal, after all. The president must follow the law and it is your responsibility as part of the legislature to check his overreaches. Do your job or get voted out.