I have lived long enough to know that when power feels cornered, it searches for a mirror to break. The Insurrection Act is that mirror — a 19th-century law resurrected whenever those in charge want to see their reflection in someone else’s fear. Written in 1807, it allows a president to deploy the U.S. military on American soil, supposedly to restore order. But each time it’s been invoked — from Little Rock to Los Angeles — the order being restored was never for Black people. It was imposed on us.
Today, as violent crime trends downward nationwide, the Trump administration tells the country that chaos is rising.
Their words echo through headlines and press conferences: cities out of control, immigrants invading, protesters turning violent. Yet FBI data tells another story — homicide rates have dropped, shootings have declined and communities are, in many ways, safer than they’ve been in years. Still, the president insists America needs soldiers in its streets. He claims protection, but what he’s really after is obedience.
Silence and control
The Insurrection Act is not a safety measure. It’s a stage. And the script always begins the same way — paint dissent as disorder, truth as threat and protest as terrorism. It’s an old American story with a new marketing campaign. The goal isn’t law and order; it’s silence and control.
For Black communities, the danger is clear. Every inch of expanded police or military power eventually presses hardest on Black skin. The act gives a president unilateral authority to override governors, activate troops and bypass Congress. It turns cities into potential war zones with no clear rules of engagement and no guarantee of accountability. It transforms the streets where we live and love into “theaters of operation.”
When they tell us we need soldiers to make us safe, we must ask: safe for whom?
We know how this plays out. From the slave patrols that hunted Black men and women who were freedom seekers to the National Guard deployed against civil rights marchers, every instrument of state violence has, at some point, been justified by “keeping order.” We’ve seen soldiers on American streets before. The rifles pointed at our grandparents in Selma, the tanks that rolled through Watts, the armored vehicles facing unarmed youth in Ferguson — all backed by laws written to contain rebellion, not protect democracy.
So, I ask: Where are the courts? Where is Congress? The Constitution gives no blank check to tyranny. Yet silence hangs heavy.
Some lawmakers whisper about restraint, others call for oversight hearings, but few act with urgency. The judiciary, stacked with loyalists, moves cautiously — too cautious for the pace of injustice. Every day without challenge normalizes the idea that the military can be used to police the American people.
We’ve seen soldiers on American streets before. And the people? We must remember that fear is the currency of authoritarianism. Every headline filled with intentional misinformation that inflates crime statistics, every viral video cropped to show only chaos, is meant to make us surrender our own discernment. We are told to trade freedom for security, truth for spectacle, humanity for “safety.” That is the real insurrection — not of citizens, but of lies.
The activation of the Insurrection Act is not a response to rising violence; it is a preemptive strike against rising awareness. It’s about those in the federal government with power and privilege suppressing the voices who dare to say “enough.” Black communities organizing for fair housing, environmental justice, voting rights and police accountability are being recast as “threats.” The movement for justice is being reframed as a rebellion that must be crushed. It’s the oldest trick in the book: call the oppressed the aggressor, then deploy force in the name of peace.
But peace built on submission is not peace — it is paralysis.
We must show up for one another
If the military comes to our neighborhoods, it will not come to protect our elders from gunfire or our children from hunger. It will come to protect power from accountability. And we will be told, again, that this is for our safety.
Everyday people cannot afford to be bystanders in this moment.
We must learn the law, question the narrative and refuse to be manipulated by fear. We must call our representatives, demand hearings, flood city councils, organize teach-ins, and protect the truth in every conversation we have. We must show up for one another — the way our ancestors did when the stakes were life itself.
Democracy is not defended in courtrooms alone; it is defended in living rooms, classrooms, barbershops and on the corner where neighbors gather to tell the truth.
History does not repeat itself by accident — it repeats when we forget. And what’s unfolding now demands memory. It demands courage. It requires a refusal to let the language of law become the weapon of oppression again.
So, when they tell us we need soldiers to make us safe, we must ask: safe for whom?
When they speak of “order,” we must ask: whose order, whose peace, whose streets?
And when they point their fingers toward us and call it rebellion, we must look back — calm, unafraid — and say:
No, this is not rebellion. This is remembrance. This is resistance. This is America, defending her promise once more.
Dr. Mustafa Ali is a poet, thought leader, strategist, policymaker and activist committed to justice and equity.
