Lily Benavides to Mikie Sherrill: Help Pressure OAG to Forbid NSPM-7 Collaboration by NJ Police
Dear Rep. Mikie Sherrill,
While I am challenging your candidacy from my own Write – In Candidacy, I write to you today as a constituent of your Congressional District 11. For the purpose of this letter I pause my campaign and expression of disagreement with you on multiple issues to appeal to you on what right now is the THE MOST URGENT ISSUE facing NJ – action must be taken immediately to protect the 100s of 1000s, maybe over one million NJ citizens and residents lives from potential lethal, physical, legal, professional, reputational and other social harms. The action needed is immediate – not something that can wait until after elections.
The action you must take is to immediately urge Attorney General Matthew Platkin to issue a direction to NJ police to provide NO DATA or SUPPORT to USAG Pam Bondi and the Trump Administration in regard to any requests or directives requesting or demanding data and support to the US Justice Department and the Trump Administration regarding the illegal, fascistic and mass murder enabling NSPM-7 order signed by President Trump.
I recognize your role as an attorney of law and as having been an Attorney General that you should be able to appreciate the illegality of NSPM7, the enormity of the danger and the need for NJ AG Matthew Platkin to act immediately to protect your NJ constituents. This is a true test for both of us to do everything we can and even to leverage our roles as candidates to protect NJ from false smearing, life threatening, harmful attacks on the citizenry and residency of NJ’s people.
What would NJ cooperation with fascist NSPM7 measure look like?
You no doubt are aware that a function of policing includes monitoring of social media of our communities including political content. Legally to First Amendment advocates such monitoring is questionable but the theory is that the police are only looking for potential threats of illegal and/or violent activity and not using this information to crack down on free speech. The theory is that police monitor all such activity from a neutral position only going deeper if illegality potential surfaces.
But if this data trove ever was turned over to the NSPM7 effort – its purpose is not to look for illegal potential indicators but to assess us over our opinions on 10 things that wrongfully are being used to illegally accuse us of crime of involvement in terrorism which is a crime with a legal definition that requires evidence before police agencies can charge or accuse. Having opinions that differ from MAGA extremism on one or more of 10 topics does not make one a terrorist by any stretch of rational thought. Trump’s DoJ intends to process the data troves through AI to develop the repression lists. NJ police complicity in any of it is legally participation in a criminal conspiracy to commit mass murder.
The intentions of the Trump Administration in this regard have been amply demonstrated. The rantings of Trump and Hegseth at the Quantico meeting should – in this candidate’s opinion – have caused a complete shift in the focus of everyone – both of us included – to protecting our constituents from mass slaughter. The president literally called for practicing war operations in our cities and using the military to attack with “full force” (which means lethal) a fictitious internal enemy – what Trump alternatively refers to as “The Radical Left” or “ANTIFA” or some other such boogy man label.
More evidence that they are considering lethal attacks are comments that have been made by Pam Bondi stating that the intention is to come for those in the NSPM7 categories with the full force it is using to attack international drug cartels. Right now that pretense is being used to blow up fishing boats off the Venezuelan coast – 5 boats destroyed and crews murdered so far without evidence or trial or proof of wrongdoing.
According to the recent Ken Klippentstein article on this topic, US Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) specifically asked if the NSPM7 lists would be used in determining military attacks. Slotkin raised the question in a confirmation hearing for Trump’s nominee for general counsel of the Army, Charles Young. During the hearing, Slotkin asked if a list of domestic terrorist organizations would authorize the military to take action within the United States — a possible way that the administration could get around posse comitatus restrictions on the use of the active military to enforce the law. Young’s reply: “Not to my knowledge”
Sen. Slotkin’s concern expressed shows that the fears I am outlining are real – it is not me the radical write-in challenger conjuring up the idea of this danger – it is esteemed Sen. Slotkin sounding the alarm and at this point nobody is hearing the bell except me and some other concerned citizens and hopefully now you Rep. Mikie Sherrill.
I have appealed to Matthew Platkin with this public statement: https://fightbackbetter.com/lilyb-platkin-nspm7
The statement links to the Ken Klippenstein article where he quoted Democratic Sen. Slotkin who states that the Trump administration is making a secret list of what he considers terrorist organizations and that the “full force” (that could likely include lethal) measures will be taken. She believes the list will be kept secret based upon Trump’s refusal to share a similar list of supposed drug involved gangs that are also illegally classified as “terrorist” by a separate illegal executive order.
There is already precedent in NJ that directs NJ police departments not to assist ICE activities. That is sound policy and the demand to also not cooperate with the patently illegal and unconstitutional NSPM7 order is as or possibly even more clearly sound. In the case of ICE there is a whole system authorized by congress – this candidate disagrees with that system. But in this case there is no congressional authorization for any NSPM7 thought control crackdown.
NSPM7 defines 10 categories of opinions that Trump has ordered Americans be evaluated and his order determines objectionable views on the 10 opinions to put us in a terrorist category.
Your campaign has articulated support for free speech as an important value. I have disagreed with you on the IHRA matter but for the purpose of this discussion I am confident that you would agree and I also believe that Matthew Platkin would agree that NSPM7 is patently illegal and a total thought control preposterous endeavor. The idea that the Trump administration is openly touting military action based upon NSPM7 should frighten you as much as me.
So right now I am appealing to you as a constituent of CD 11 and of NJ. You have the legal experience and the AG experience to understand these issues and you probably have some sort of a relationship (professional) with Matthew Platkin – you are in a much better position to get an audience and to achieve the objective of blocking NJ cooperation with a criminal conspiracy to mass murder which NSPM7 amounts to.
Please take this action IMMEDIATELY because the data could already have been transferred or could be in the process right now – once the data is transferred the ship has sailed. The Trump administration intends to run AI over the data to come up with the list of suspects – possibly over a million New Jerseyans, maybe multiple millions are affected. I know I will be on the list and maybe even you, Rep. Sherrill.
There is nothing more important than protecting this portion of NJ constituency from potential lethal, physical, legal, professional and reputational harm and we both need to use our candidacy positions to stop this tremendous potential harm. These times call for us to do everything to protect our constituency – as much as we disagree – our collaboration to stop this harm requires us to hit the pause button and get it done.
Thank you for reading my letter and your consideration of this action proposal.
Lily Benavides, Green Party of NJ, Write in Candidate
Contact NJ OAG and demand that Matthew Platkin forbid any and all NJ police support for NSMP-7 requests from the Trump Administration:
State of New Jersey, Attorney General’s Office, Dept. of Law and Public Safety, PO Box 080, Trenton, NJ 08625-0080
Online form (currently not working at NJ OAG)
Contact the Office of Constituent Services by phone at (609) 984-5828.
Via e-mail: <OCS@njoag.gov>, <constituent.relations@nj.gov>
