The following essay is and edited version of the original article which appears in my journal Roamings: A Retrospective in Black and White, with several more photographs.
Armed Forces Day
Several movies and books have plots that involve the military (of another country, such as Russia) taking control and occupying an American city and even take over the United States as a whole. It is the ultimate authoritarian nightmare, an invasion that inspires Americans to take matters into their own hands. Young and old citizens rebel against the occupying forces and oppressors.
In the past some people (there's always some people), fortunately small in number with no actual power, have always fantasized about this as not only possible but looming on the horizon and actually inevitable. It would be a chance for them finally use their personal guns and assault weapons to fight those who want to eliminate their freedoms, constitutional rights and the United States entirely.
Tanks and Troops
This comes to mind when I look at some of the pictures I took in May 1982. What would it look like if any military (foreign or not) was suddenly in the center of an American city displaying their dominance with weapons and troops?
I had been living in New York City only since August 1978, just under four years, but I was in the midst of my freelance photography career, supplying hundreds to thousands of images for use in higher education textbooks involving Sociology, Psychology, American Government and many other topics. There were always many subjects to capture in New York, including holidays and celebrations, ethnic and religious gatherings, protests and demonstrations and much more. It was part of my ongoing work when I photographed members of the U.S. military, with tanks and troops, parading up Fifth Avenue, the most iconic street in New York.
It may not have been as grandiose a parade as in some other countries where love of and participation in the military is compulsory and considered a patriotic duty as well as a high honor. But Americans are still very much into defending the United States from foreign countries they consider hostile, even when the possibility of war on the ground with most of the world's far less armed countries is somewhat imaginary in the age of nuclear weapons. Americans still support the U.S. Armed Forces — as long as the government (police, military and politicians) don't confiscate their guns or draft them against their will. The Armed Forces Day parade in Midtown Manhattan, watched by thousands of Americans on the street decades ago, was a symbol of the U.S. military and it had been occurring for many years in different cities and states.
In the United States, Armed Forces Day is celebrated on the third Saturday in May near the end of Armed Forces Week. It resulted from the consolidation of the military services in the U.S. Department of Defense. The day was created on August 31, 1949 and first observed on May 20, 1950 to honor Americans serving in the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Air Force and U.S. Coast Guard. President Harry S. Truman led the effort to establish a single holiday for citizens to come together and thank military members for their patriotic service. The first Armed Forces Day was celebrated by parades, open houses, receptions and air shows. It allowed the military to show "state-of-the-art" equipment to the civilian population they were protecting. The Armed Forces Day parade has in some ways been superseded by the Veterans Day Parade which takes place in November.
In 1982, it was both an impressive and a jarring experience to see tanks rolling by on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, a street normally concerned with shopping in stores by tourists and the wealthy, amidst office workers hurrying to and from subways and train stations. For some time, I had also been an office worker in a publishing company located on that very same street.
I wondered, if only for a second, whether it could really happen here. Could the city ever be occupied by a domestic or foreign military? It has happened to European and Asian cities. Several times, the American military has been the occupier of another country for months and years.
The Armed Forces Day parade I photographed was not meant at all to be a preview of a special effects movie in which the world has so drastically changed that New York was under control of our or any other military. Nevertheless, it did give a hint of what it could look like, even if I thought such an event would always be just a plot in a popcorn movie.
The Insurrection Act
Fast forward to 2025 and 2026. We now have Trump, a president who openly threatens to use the military to occupy, control and police American cities, to shut down any form of dissent and to even remove the right to vote by monitoring and intimidating polling places in search of nonexistent voting by illegal immigrants who would be identified, presumably, solely by their skin color and accent...only in Democratic run cities and states that didn't vote for him in the past.
The president has indicated that he wants (any excuse) to invoke the the Insurrection Act of 1807, a landmark United States federal law that empowers the President to deploy the U.S. military and federalize National Guard units within the country to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion (as this president defines it). It serves as a key exception to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which generally prohibits the use of the federal military for law enforcement purposes.
It involves the following:
— The President may use the military to enforce federal law or suppress rebellion when "unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages" make it "impracticable" to enforce federal law through regular judicial proceedings.
— The President can deploy troops at the request of a state’s governor or legislature.
— The President can intervene without the consent of state authorities if the civil unrest is hindering the execution of federal law or depriving citizens of constitutional rights (e.g., during the Civil Rights movement).
— Before deploying troops, the President must first issue a proclamation ordering the "insurgents" to disperse within a limited time.
The Act has been used roughly 30 times in U.S. history, with usage becoming rare in the late 20th century.
Early Usage: Used by Thomas Jefferson (1808) to enforce the Embargo Act and by Andrew Jackson (1831) to suppress Nat Turner's rebellion.
Civil War & Reconstruction: Abraham Lincoln extensively used it to begin the Civil War, and Ulysses S. Grant used it to fight the Ku Klux Klan.
Civil Rights Era: Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson used it to enforce desegregation in the South against the wishes of state governors.
Last Invocation (1992): President George H.W. Bush invoked the act during the Los Angeles riots at the request of California Governor Pete Wilson.
2020 Threats: Former President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the act during the George Floyd protests.
2025–2026 Threats: In his second term, Trump repeatedly threatened to use the Act to deploy military forces to Democratic-led cities (such as Minneapolis, Portland, and Chicago) to address crime and anti-ICE protests, even without the consent of governors.
Legal Challenges: Critics argue the law is outdated and dangerously overbroad, potentially allowing for the suppression of lawful, nonviolent protests.
The Insurrection Act does not authorize martial law, which implies the total suspension of civil government. Under the Act, the military operates in support of civilian authority, not as a replacement for it.
But the Insurrection Act, and the use of the military against U.S. citizens, is now explicitly on the table as an option that appeals to Trump who is seeking an excuse to invoke it.
Anyone in Democratic-run locations who vocally objects and refuses to obey him would be arrested, prosecuted, convicted and jailed...if not shot first as has already happened. Imprisonment would not necessarily occur within the United States and instead such a citizen could be (currently illegally) sent to a foreign country in which they have never lived, to remove them from the protection of the laws of the U.S.
In the end, we may not need to make movies about Russia or another country conquering the United States and subjecting its population to the total control of an authoritarian. That possibility, once considered unthinkable, is now already here. Americans in political power would overrule all other Americans who are not in power.
The 1982 Armed Forces Day parade offered a preview of what it would look like.