We Live Under an Oppressive Occupation
Oh, we don't see the militarized police wandering around the streets in full body armor with their tanks and assault weapons and wearing full body armor most of the time, but when we choose to exercise our first amendment rights to peaceably assemble, this is what happens all too often:
This woman, Ieshia Evans, who apparently posed such a threat to the Baton Rouge Police force by standing in the street that they appeared in overwhelming force to arrest her and her fellow demonstrators for the Black Live Matters Movement, is a nurse from Pennsylvania. When she learned of the murder of Alton Sterling by police, she drove all the way to Baton Rouge, LA, "because she wanted to look her son in the eyes to tell him she fought for his freedom and rights,” according to R. Alex Haynes, who said on Facebook he has known Evans since childhood."
The crime for which she was arrested and which required three heavily armed and armored police officers with guns at the ready to shoot her down, had she made the slightest wrong move, was a misdemeanor: blocking traffic. She was one of roughly 180 protestors arrested by the Baton Rouge police. And they were far from the only city to display an extreme show of force when people in other cities held similar protests.
My own city of Rochester, NY, which has an African American woman mayor, and a large African American community, also chose to arrest 74 peaceful BLM demonstrators on , hours after the protest began, two of them African American reporters. They did so, not because they feared the marchers were about to commit acts of violence, but as a demonstration, pure and simple of their willingness to use excessive and brutal force to suppress dissent.
Welp, that was interesting. Cuffed by RPD while cover protest in downtown ROC. Was never told I wasn't supposed to be on sidewalk -
— Carlet Cleare (@ccleare) July 9, 2016
RAW VIDEO: Reporters @Jus2ice & @ccleare being detained by RPD while covering protest pic.twitter.com/TVN39x1CD7
— 13WHAM (@13WHAM) July 9, 2016
One hundred and twelve (112) law enforcement officers, from the RPD and "state police and members of town police departments" (including SWAT teams) were out in a show of force, to protect the citizens from - what exactly?
No officers were injured and there was no property damage. [...]
"The SWAT team and police came and everybody took a seat on the ground because we didn't want any of our movements to be misinterpreted as violence or trying to get aggressive or resisting arrest," said Ashley Gantt, one of the protest's organizers,
"There shouldn't have been any arrests because there wasn't anything wrong," said Aiesha Coleman of Rochester, who was part of the protest from the start. "We were peacefully protesting and sitting when (the officers) came ... We sat and stood our ground. They just started snatching people who refused to move to the side." [...]
Groups of officers collapsed into various pockets and made arrests multiples times. Two women were brought to the ground and handcuffed. One of the women screamed at officers as they pushed her against a squad car. Ashley Gantt tried to calm those being detained. Gantt spoke to the women with a megaphone, instructing the detainees not to resist.
"Don't say nothing," Gantt instructed the women. "Sweetheart, you've got to calm down. We've been out here all day. Don't resist."
If you believe that such arrests were necessary as a matter of public safety to protect us from "terrorist thugs" threatening imminent danger to our society, in Rochester, in Baton Rouge, and other cities, you are sadly mistaken. The police in each case forced these confrontations.
The police were the ones using violent force to subdue peaceful demonstrators. These arrests occurred because the police, with their massive, militarized shows of force, acted in each instance to inflame the situation, and trample on the first amendment rights of the demonstrators. They were there, with their guns and batons and tasers and other "riot gear" (though no riots were occurring) solely to send a message: no dissent in America is allowed. No peaceable assembly of the people to exercise their first amendment rights will be permitted if the message of those who choose to exercise their rights is not one that our elected officials - local, state and federal - find acceptable.
And if you think this "oppression" is limited to "those people" and not to you, the law abiding white person, you forget what happened during the Occupy Movement protests, when anyone, whether a participant or merely an innocent bystander, was liable to be assaulted viciously by the police in attendance. All for one purpose: to deny us the rights the Constitution guarantees in the Bill of Rights. It didn't matter that the people involved in Occupy were non-violent and posed little threat to anyone. It didn't matter that they included among their number, veterans of our Middle eastern wars, who supposedly fought for "our freedoms" "over there," only to return home and discover what little freedom an ordinary citizen of the United States of America is truly permitted to have.
Now, if you are a member of the elite political and economic classes, you have all the freedom for which anyone could ask. You can commit crimes, and not be indicted. You can be responsible for the torture, wrongful imprisonment and deaths of millions and no one will charge you with any crimes against humanity. You will bask in the glow of the many rewards your exalted status brings. For you have the freedom to do almost anything - launder billions of dollars of drug cartel money, for example - and never fear you will be called to account for your crimes, even though you aided and abetted some of the worst and most violent criminals on the planet. Must be a nice life.
For the rest of us, if we choose, as so many are doing, to put our bodies and lives at risk by going to Philadelphia and Cleveland to register our opposition to the the policies and corruption rampant among elected officials who belong to said parties, neither of which represents the interests of anyone other than their wealthy individual and corporate donors, any talk of our freedoms, or of our inalienable right to dissent and present our grievances to the government, without risking potentially severe and bloody consequences at the hands of "law enforcement," is laughable.
For we are a nation under occupation. We are fed propaganda on a daily basis that offers us the illusion of freedom, liberty and justice for all. But the hard reality is that we lost those liberties, those rights, and our democracy long ago. And to win them back will be the most arduous task in our nation's history. But what other choice do we have if we are unwilling to turn our eyes away from the tyrants and oligarchs who treat as both labor to be exploited and commodities from which to to earn profits?
We can close our eyes, we can deny reality, we can numb ourselves with drugs, alcohol and indulge in the only right that seems to matter, the "right" to buy and carry around guns and endanger our fellow Americans, or we can fight back against a tyranny that lurks in the shadows, that evades exposure and is never held accountable.
The last option, difficult as it may seem, hopeless at times as it may appear to em, is the one I choose. Like Ieshia Evans, I don't want it said about me that I didn't fight for my children's freedom and rights, either.
Comments
Has there been any MSM coverage of these protests?
I have seen vids of people somewhere walking up on-ramps to an interstate. Cops in a front blocking line. Law enforcers have become enforcers for not-us?
It's going to be another bad week. Stay safe.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
There's a ton of local coverage in Atlanta.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
Local/regional MSM are covering the protests.
I've been following some pretty darn good coverage of the Alton Sterling protests in Baton Rouge at nola.com. (NOLA is an abbreviation for New Orleans, LA; nola.com was the online site of the New Orleans Times-Picayune now owned by the regional The Advocate.)
Police report that large chunks of concrete were dropped on their heads but no one was hurt, because they were wearimg helmets:
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/07/police_arrest_dozens_in_s...
Video of the arrest of the woman who faced off the BRPD "storm troopers" (22 seconds - yes, it was that quick):
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/07/watch_video_of_womans_arr...
After the police snatch demonstrators from private propery onto which they had been invited . . . :
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/07/louisiana_house_protest.h...
For lagniappe - an editorial explicating James Baldwin's 1966 essay "A Report from Occupied Territory" and its significance 50 years later:
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2016/07/james_baldwin_police.html
(Edited to add time length of video of woman's arrest and, later, to clarify the content of the listed articles.)
Only connect. - E.M. Forster
Initial shot reminds me a little of that guy in Tiananmen Square
all those years ago, holding up a line of tanks.
The world is seriously messed up.
Edit: I can only hope those policemen felt a modicum of pathetic ridiculousness.......... All that for a woman in a summer dress?
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
This photo is indeed just like Tiananmen Square photo
It may become the iconic photo which will galvanize opposition to the extreme militarization of our "peace officers". Kudos to the brave woman who demonstrated how absurdly disproportionate the police response has been to peaceful protesters.
While there is still time, could some intrepid reporter gather information about this woman, this event, and the outcome? I think this is powerful stuff.
Be a Friend of the Earth, cherish it and protect it.
this is not Baton Rouge
Here's an article by the woman in the picture.
https://feminewbie.wordpress.com/2016/07/10/i-just-saw-this-picture-and-...
Although the confrontation happened in Germany and not in the United States, the point she makes is that this is Western policing, Western culture.
In solidarity,
blaze
There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you.
--Amiri Baraka
The feminewbie author is not the gal in the pic.
She just (eloquently) sees herself in that picture, having lives through something in Germany that echoes the Baton Rouge protest this past weekend.
thanks, Martini
I was confused, and misread what she was saying.
I'm going to leave my original reply, however, so that yours makes sense.
I appreciate the correction.
There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you.
--Amiri Baraka
The history of PDs is not pretty either
Certainly we have a militarization of police going on but clearly, over the decades, PDs have acted as enforcers of whatever the ruling elites want. Whether it was Jim Crow laws in the ex-slavery states and territories or anti-labor organizers in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
I have 3 ex-cop friends and they agree with me. Nobody polices the police.
The political revolution continues
Indeed, Police Forces have largely become the new Pinkertons...
Anyone familiar with the early history of the labor movement can point to a lot of parallels between them and what our modern police forces have become.
Hmmm, I may have just given myself an Idea for another Essay, I am pretty familiar with the history of the labor movement in the US as well....
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
GO FOR IT, alpha-dude --
and be sure you include reference to the Ludlow "incident" -- just one of many instances of the nascent labor movement being crushed by the "forces of lawn order", in response to the commands of the plutocrats (in that case, the Rockefellers) --
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre
When Cicero had finished speaking, the people said “How well he spoke”.
When Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said “Let us march”.
Here is how policing should be
Officer Norman posts his interactions with the community on his facebook.
"I'm a police officer in NLR Arkansas who's committed to changing the world! I serve a fantastic community in North Little Rock Arkansas with residents who will win your heart. "If you can just take two minutes out of the day to go out and make a difference, whether checking on your neighbor if they're elderly, cutting someone's grass, or hold the door for someone. It's really just act of kindness and I think acts of kindness coming from a police officer means that much more to people because that's not something you're used to seeing." - Officer Tommy Norman
https://www.facebook.com/OfficerTommyNorman/
https://www.facebook.com/OfficerTommyNorman/videos/1174320445981314/
From the Light House.
Officer Tommy Norman
I predict, sadly, that if Officer Norman really believes that, then he will find himself collecting unemployment in the next twelvemonth.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Please check his videos
Please do check his videos. They actually make me feel good. He has been at it for over ten years.
From the Light House.
So let's imagine
So let's imagine that someone was proposing to create a new government institution - to be funded by millions upon millions in civic fines, civil forfeiture, and a whole lot of tax money, mind you! - for the sole purpose of paying people middle-class wages to do ad hoc good deeds for strangers.
Well, the thought of all that niceness may well warm your heart, but a rational examination of the costs and benefits must admit that no, we do not need to pay what it would cost to create and maintain such an institution, along with its militarized equipment and its unions and all its other institutional bureaucracy. That money could be better spent on improving infrastructure, or providing better housing, food, education, and medicine to the poor, and so forth - and we could do away with the regressive fines and opportunistic forfeiture while we're at it.
In this light, then, we have to ask: if we would not pay for this, then why does Officer Norman have a job? What on earth are we employing him for? And the answer, quite simply, is this: to do all the nasty things that he doesn't talk about when he talks about neighborhood engagement. Come next protest, Officer Norman will strap on his armor and weapons and go to battle with some peaceful, unarmed protesters, just as he's told, because he serves an institution that exists to maintain an oppressive status quo in the face of popular resistance to that oppression. And perhaps, after a long night of marching around and arresting people who don't really need to be taken off the public streets and sidewalks for the public's safety, this is what he tells himself that allows him to continue doing his job: that he's really a nice person, that he's the good guy in all this, and that it's okay that he freely allowed his partner, Officer Whoever, to end someone's Constitutionally-guaranteed petition for a redress of grievances by roughly shoving them to the ground, restraining them with zipties, and kidnapping them for, say, no more than 48 hours - because he, Officer Norman, once rescued a kitty from a tree and checked to see if an old person was okay.
Don't be fooled.
As (alphalop) or someone said,
make them into peace officers, not law officers.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
how did it come to this? I blame Dems too
who allowed this disintegration of society to happen by being too "pragmatic" to speak up. By being too "reality based" to say no. By allowing themselves to think that they were safe and part of the ruling class.
What? Blame Dems?
Don't you remember when Bill Clinton put 100,000 cops on the beat to "protect us"
From those animals.....
For sure a snark
Listening to Thom Hartmann again how starting in 1968, Nixon used the drug wars against blacks & activists ( & also popular culture - the CIA was in the business of distributing LSD to musicians and blacks and activists)
and how these politicians rode the attack on "the other" & dismantled the social system
I am wound up with little time, so "stuff" will follow
Thom also talked about the claim that drugs were the problem, when the problem is social. Experiements with rats & cocaine & the big issue was social - when the rats had a rat disney land and other rats, they didn't go for the drugged water. When they were in a cage alone, they sucked up the drugs. A cage alone is like solitary confinenent
just saw on twitter that Chelsea Manning attempted suicide. That is how we treat people, one of the many millions over the years who have had security classifications and come forth for our democracy. And Hillary gets off scott free.
Back to Thom Hartmann. Drug war destroys people and societies and a very important way to deal with it is to improve conditions for people. Single payer health care. Wages.
And cut back the military. A fairly new book, don't know the exact name, but I think it has "deep state" in the title (a term from Turkey to indicate where the real power lies in the country) - book by a man who was a staff member in house and senate for years and an expert in finance. Military spending when all parts are added up is over 1 trillion dollars per year. And the military gear is sent out to police depts to provide a job for ex military goons ...
And, notice the tactics. Israel is a leading supplier of IT gear, military gear and training. Israel has used the Palestinians as a test bed to develop their systems that are sold around the world to control the population. The second largest external supplier to China of military stuff is Israel.
Here is a Jewish American with dual Israel citizenship who has been an activist there for decades. This is another book with name in bold
That is what we see going on in the US and around the world.
Jeff spoke in Columbus a couple months ago
Last year another man spoke in Columbus who wrote
This was many years ago and Timothy Leary was a CIA distributor or LSD.
This stuff has been going on for decades.
And this from Juan Cole's web site this morningWhite House Admits Prison spending has grown 3x as fast as Education for Decades
I am starting to sound like One Pissed Off Liberal
I thought of him the other day and sent him a Kosmail. When he last posted he said that he was dealing with health problems. He said he is OK and really pissed off at DKos
good night
Excellent comment, don
You do sound a little like OPOL and that's a compliment. I miss his posts and wish he'd post here. Hopefully we didn't piss him off, but I've been following him on Facebook a little.
You're right about the CIA has funded our drug wars and it was them that started the crack epidemic here in this country.
I remember reading stories about how they flew planes loaded with drugs out of Vietnam. And it hasn't stopped.
Before we invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban had almost wiped out the poppy fields, but the CIA couldn't have that, now could they? They need it to fund their secret regime change and other nefarious activities.
Here's an article with pictures of our troops protecting the poppy fields in Afghanistan and at the bottom of the article, there's a CEO of an oil company testifying to congress about what needs to be done by our military to make it safe for them to build an oil pipeline.
None of the ears on terror has anything to do with making us safe or protecting our freedoms. Besides, the patriot act took most of them away.
Look at the pictures of our troops guarding the fields. And we are paying for it.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/dyinginafghanistan.php
Just like we are paying for the cops to beat up our citizens.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
One photo
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Ok, I posted how it should be and...
...that being said the police have been the enemy almost my entire life in all countries. The USA was the worst. In 1965 I came across the border legally in Brownsville, TX. I had $75 and was hitchhiking to California where I have family. I walked through town to the freeway on-ramp and within minutes had a squad car pull up, got slammed against the car, handcuffed and dragged off to jail where I spent the night charged with vagrancy. The judge fined me $50 of my $75 and the goons hauled me back to the same on-ramp. It never got any better in the USA... I have been arrested for all kinds of bullshit, hauled off a bus bench and interrogated for murder on the evidence I had an odd color of shoe, traffic stops OMG can't count. All fulminating in my attendance at the police riots in Chicago convention, 1968.
Decades later, as a single dad, I was hauled in for hanging out at the playground with my Spanish speaking (before she became bilingual), legally in the USA daughter, who is a different color.
Also in 1965 the Mexican border cops tried to rape my wife. In Bolivia (and Peru) I have been tear gassed, shot at, surveillanced by secret police (as an leftist academic) and interrogated for kidnapping my own niece, not once, but twice because we are different colors. In Peru I spent a week helping the families of 20 plus street vendor kids bail them out of jail for the crime of selling Golpe candy bars and handcrafted bracelets. That was under military and neo-liberal regimes. That stopped after the revolution.
Police have never helped me with anything, even when I have been the victim of felonies. In fact, I would rather not report a crime than report it. Likely as not I would end up in jail for robbing myself at knife-point. I am terrified of these goons.
So... I wish I could fly into the USA (I can't) and block Interstates and make a huge mess of Clinton's convention.
Note: I don't use or have anything to do with drugs in case that stereotype occurred to you.
From the Light House.
Shah, you ask how it's come to this.
A good book to start with is Ray Balko's book The Rise of the Warrior Cop.
He details how Nixon needed a platform to run on so he chose drugs.
Little by little, congress allowed the police to take away more and more of our liberties and rights.
The Castle doctrine has been shattered by no knock warrants in the middle of the night when the newly formed SWAT teams can break into people's homes if the police think there's any drugs or illegal activities happening. And there are no repercussions if the cops get the address wrong and shoot the families that live there and think that it's a possible home invasion. The cops can shoot anyone who is defending their homes. And their little dogs too.
And of course this is how assets seizures started. Anyone profiting from illegal activities can have their assets seized
Even a farmer who has hundreds of acres of land can have his farm seized if a person uses a small part of it to grow MJ. Even if he wasn't aware of it.
Biden has done a lot of damage to our rights, but the best way to understand how it came to this is to read the book.
Another thing I have noticed is that when blacks are killed, many people say that they would be alive if they had just done what the cops tell them to do. Those people will never get it.
And when anyone from BLM is arrested, half the people in this country cheer.
It was the same thing when OWS was brutally taken down. People cheered.
But notice what happened when a bunch of white tea party activists came to gatherings with weapons. Nothing.
That's tptb way of dividing us.
One more thing.
After the Boston bombings, a city was put on lockdown and people willingly let the cops go into their homes without a warrant.
I think that was a trial run to see how people would react.
They militarized the police to get around Posse Comitatus, IMO.
As long as the cops don't harass upper white neighborhoods, people will cheer what cops do to lesser people.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
And then there's this fact from a comment on made on LOF
The information here comes from this article after I searched for Israel training our police departments.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-police-routinely-travel-to-israel-to-le...
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Awareness of the role Israel has played in U.S. developments
Now there's a topic — how many people are ready to ask how deep the rabbit hole really goes?
Listen to Hillary, Cuomo, and de Blasio on Israel. They boast of their determination to punish critics, beginning with anyone advocating BDS. With that kind of political philosophy, these are not people who are going to stand up for your rights if you get in their way.
SCA don't wear that much armor
Not even in heavy list melee combat. The Society for Creative Anachronism doesn't go anything like as far as Your Friendly(?) Neighborhood Police.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
The state response to public demonstrations is obscene.
The denial of first amendment rights coupled with the protection of the second amendment rights floods the US with guns at the same time the police act like fascists. It looks to me like the US is doing everything in its power to foment a blood bath. And then they say the shooter in Dallas acted alone.
"If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back" - Regina Brett
While talking amendments how about Article VI?
http://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment6.html
Instead there is BLAM! goodbye. First they came for the foreign terrorist, then they came for the domestic terrorist a.k.a the soldiers. Then the homeless, the poor, etc.. LOL DNC plank against the death penalty, fucking neo-liberal hypocrites.
Extrajudicial killing
Good for thee, not for me. Clinton family motto.
OPOLs Flickr photostream speaks for me. Barbara Lee does not.
Peace
"My own city of Rochester, NY
And what have we learned from this demonstration?
Did we learn that nonaggressive, nonviolent protest is effective? Did we learn that offering no violence or even resistance to the state protects us from state violence? Did we learn that the kind of tactics that police are able to use to control nonresisting protesters - efficient, non-lethal, with the victims whisked out of sight and let go a couple hours or days later, only somewhat the worse for wear and whining about how jail sucks (no shit, Sherlock) - generate a large public backlash?
Because I don't see any of that. What I see is that the police can and will violate your rights as a protester, more or less at will, regardless of how peaceful or nonthreatening you are, and almost nobody will care. It happened in Seattle with the WTO thing, it happened with anti-Iraq War protests, it happened with Occupy, it happened with Democracy Spring, and with countless other protests. The police commit the same abuses, they use the same methods (albeit continually refined) to minimize and contain dissent, and the public largely doesn't care - and, most important, it doesn't even matter because nothing really changes! We're being arrested for nothing. That woman, in the photo, was arrested for nothing. Her conscience may be satisfied but her struggles remain.
Precisely. That is entirely correct. Our "rights" no longer exist except as ideals subject to the whim and approval of our rulers.
But this hard task will be more than merely arduous. We must rid ourselves of the notion that simply nagging the 1% to distraction, like a child who wants a new toy, will produce results. The 1% does not need to bargain with us. It does not need to satisfy us. It does not need our approval. The object of power is power. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of control is control.
We can't simply ask the 1% for our country back, because they will always say the only thing they need to say: No.
No, we need to take it back. To do that we will have to violate every law that says we're not allowed to take it back, and when the 1%'s agents come to brutalize us for doing so, we must act in self defense - violently, if need be. And we have been told this, over and over again, in the bluntest possible terms.
Thomas Jefferson: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
JFK: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."
MLK: Was summarily executed for opposing poverty and militarism. Can you really ask for a louder, clearer statement than that?
The revolution will be violent, because it will not succeed until it is violent. The elite will not give us what we want for the asking, no matter how often we ask; they will not even come to the table until they are frightened (for their assets or control, if not their safety) and looking to cut a deal. The police are never, ever going to realize that we're right and have a sick-in on the day of a protest, because no one who has a problem doing a cop's job stays a cop. We have seen that every democratic institution that ostensibly exists for our benefit - the rule of law, electoral politics, the press - is controlled from the top and turned against us. Every day that we plan resistance actions with no consequence, every time that we reject even talking about tactics that might actually be effective, we extend the oppression for one more day. How long can we continue to do nothing to defend the American public against the oppression we all see before the blood and suffering begins to stain our own hands? How much violence will we permit the 1%-owned state to do to our brothers and neighbors in the name of promoting nonviolence, and what good is peace and justice to the dead?
Mine is not a popular message among the left - particularly among the young, white, idealistic, milquetoast left raised on an intellectual diet of peace on earth and brotherly love, the ones who are blind to the way that their white, middle-class privilege provides them with a relatively comfortable life that they're afraid to lose. (I feel the same way, but at least I know it.) Instead, they want so badly to believe that they can have a revolution that costs them nothing that they are only capable of considering tactics that risk nothing - and they viciously suppress any talk of self-defense or sabotage or even something like a general strike or a tax strike or a rent strike, anything that could have significant consequences for the protesters, with censorship and haughty autocratic declarations: "WE will not talk about that HERE, and YOU are in the wrong place!" This is don't-rock-the-boat activism, which is really a form of anti-activism: wave a sign, but don't act too hard! Change is dangerous and scary!
(Our black activists, at least, have fewer illusions. Afforded more oppression and less comfort, their activism is more militant, more uncompromising. Those who choose nonviolence often do so in a spirit much closer to the real philosophy of Gandhi and MLK which called for righteous action. The woman who's being arrested in that photo, I believe, understands what they meant by nonviolence. And when I see her alone and outnumbered, I wonder if this is just a photographic trick that makes events seem other than what they were... or if not, why was no one at her side?)
I am curious to see if this site has the same dedication to don't-rock-the-boatism, or if wiser heads prevail here.
I do not know the answer. Boat-rocking works well as wakeup
Seeing the (completely ignored by MSM) road blockages (cell phones are a blessing there) has caused some to grouse and whine about traffic tie-ups, I find those really exciting. The demonstrations, not the whines.
I live under 2 hours from a long-term site of civil disobedience on Seneca Lake. Every day there are people blocking the entrance to a proposed underground gas storage facility. There are arrests almost every day, perhaps some hours in jail and a later court appearance to be let off. Repeat "offenders". Widespread support, including financial.
This is still building. Tactics are important.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
I've lost count of the number
I've lost count of the number of times activists have said a thing they supported was building or growing, only to see nothing come of whatever-it-was. I think people see the trends they want to see.
Of course, having said that, I think something is building. I think many of us, if not most of us, know that unregulated capitalism is self-terminating and that the Monopoly game we all live in is in the end stage, where one player owns the majority of the property and the others are just waiting their turn to go bankrupt (to say nothing of the injury already done to democracy, the rule of law, and trust/integrity in established institutions generally) - and we are seeing the effects of that reflected both in real wealth distribution and growing civil unrest. Greece elevated Syriza (for all the good it did them), Iceland did somewhat better, Britain Brexited, Arabia Sprung (though their issues are somewhat different), we Occupied, and now there's a fair chance that voters tired of few opportunities, falling standards of living, and Clintonesque politics could elect Trump, if he doesn't withdraw first. Which serves as a kind of object lesson for the left, as well: if there is not a left populist response, a REAL left populist response that decisively and effectively tackles class and vigorously rejects neoliberalism, empty identity politics, and toxic wedge issues, then the poor and oppressed will certainly run right for solutions, because the right has a very well-polished ideology on offer, even if it's wrong. It is not and will not be enough for the left to point and yell "racist, racist, racist!" or whine about the NRA.
Bit of a digression. My point is, we MUST do better. And if we can't, then we will lose.
A fine post. Yes, there must be plans.
A, B, C, D, E, however many it takes. Flip cards, like 911
respondersoperators use. Option option. Widely promulgated, not kept in a back room safe. Not in a completely battle city, I assume that much organizing is done by tweet. Don't know. Problem with that.Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Not sure if this is what you
Not sure if this is what you're alluding to, but...
Supposing that the people eventually turn to, shall we say, tough nonviolence - strikes of all kinds, occupations, sabotage, things that may not be strictly legal - or actual violence, they're going to need to be able to create plans out of sight of police, FBI, etc. but available to their co-conspirators.
A very tall order, that. Encryption and tight trust networks, definitely.
But that's not quite the point I'm trying to make, and I'm doing a bad job of making it so far, so let me get back to it.
Safety lies in autonomy - both for these networks, and for plans/tactics/activists generally. If you already know what to do and why, then you need no networks, no encryption, no contacts. There's no way to trace something to you, no way to get to you. You are nobody, unimpeachable, until you act. Like a flash mob that nobody had to plan.
That's a tall order, too. But the way we approach that ideal is twofold: first, by having a robust public debate about what needs to be done, and what tactics people will support, what they understand, etc. In short, as much as possible (HA!), we need everyone on the same page, or at least in the same book. And second, widespread education - about tactics, but also goals, philosophy, history.
Let me try to put this another way. It's late and I'm incoherent.
Remember how Occupy idealized autonomous, horizontal organization? No leaders, people would just do things? You know what the problem with that was? Most of the people there didn't know what to do. They couldn't lead themselves. And they couldn't lead anyone else either. And the people who could perhaps lead saw an opportunity and jumped in blind. There was no serious conversation before that, no strategic overview.
Of course, as soon as we try to have that conversation, it's going to be a shitshow, like it always is on the left. Moderates will warn against radicalism and sheepdog people into the Democratic Party or electoral politics generally, the far left will demand the total destruction of capitalism and its replacement with (insert one of a thousand mutually incompatible variants on socialism/communism/anarchy), etc. This is what was great about Bernie Sanders' candidacy: he created a platform strong enough and palatable enough to most (particularly given the other options) to convince most of the left to sign on.
Meh. I stop writing now.
I hear you.
I don't know what I would do in that situation, but isn't that much like all Underground movements have operated? Some were successful, with help.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
I disagree with violence tactically and ethically
I certainly would not like to see the heavily armed teapots unleashed on the population on the side of the militarized police in organized gun battles.
I completely disagree tactically and ethically, and I am no young milquetoast liberal. As we have seen in South Africa and I saw in Bolivia, strikes, serious road blockades ( I prefer the moving blockades. Police come, protesters move, regroup behind their lines etc.), constant protests, alternative "news and commentary" on the street and social media, and domestic and international boycotts can and does cripple and bring"all-powerful" corporate regimes to their knees. The goal is to cripple them and their profit.
The asymmetry of state violence against non-violent action. combined with a boycott of anything which makes corporate/state profit set on a platform of specific goals ('breaking up the banks', an end to racism in all its forms, and end to perpetual war in all its forms, and end to destroying the Earth...) can and does bring in a critical mass of support domestically and internationally, to topple the regime.
The police have unions and, as someone noted, 15% are "good guys", 25% are asshole racist porkers, and the rest go along with whatever the police culture coerces. The police have unions and it is essential that we support the 15% "good guys" convince their comrades and to take over the police union. To change the police culture. That ain't gonna happen if they are getting shot at. It is going to happen if the revolution treats the good guys in the PD with respect. Only with the support of a great many of the police can the revolution succeed. The majority of police, at least if there are any sane ones left, would rather sit in their squad cars and eat donuts than shoot projectiles at peaceful protesters and beat heads. Especially if the state ordered violence is asymmetric.
There is also a great importance to electing revolutionaries or even "progressives" into sheriff, district attorney, judgeships, city, school boards and county councils. I think (not sure) that is doable in the next couple of years. Not going to do that by shooting at cops or burning down neighborhoods. Forget national politics for now. Voting for President is about as effective as gazing into the toilet.
From the Light House.
Absolutely
The whole point is sanity and compassion. The objective is to make the other sides insanity and lack of compassion and reason crystal clear. To force it into the open. To refuse to be blind to it. To demonstrate sanity and compassion and be slammed for it works even when it "loses".
Violence is never the solution.
"If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back" - Regina Brett
I certainly would not like to
Future history may not care what you like.
You are talking about preferences, as though you had options. "We're going to win in the near future, the question is how we want to win. Hmmm, yes."
When I say that the revolution will be violent, I do not mean that I think it should be violent, or that I would like it to be violent. What I mean is that it MUST be violent. I can no more choose the form a successful revolution must take than I can choose whether or not we have hurricanes.
This is not South Africa or Bolivia. Those are mere colonies for corporate power, with limited infrastructure that doesn't support the sort of population control we have in the US. What works there will not work here.
But let's say you're right, for the sake of argument:
So where is it?
Where are the blockades, the strikes, the constant protests? Why aren't there thousands on the streets? Occupy showed us that we can, potentially, get thousands on the streets for weeks at a time. Why aren't we doing it right now, if it works so well and the corporate state is so helpless against it?
It can't and doesn't. A critical mass of support would mean unprecedented numbers of protesters (say 1% of the population, though some say you need 10% to really get anything done). It would mean an outpouring of donations, services, offers to share space with protesters, etc. (Occupy actually had a little of this.) It would mean that foreign countries begin diplomatic action against the US (of course, they don't dare rattle any sabers, because our military is ridiculous - although dealing with foreign aggression at the same time as an internal uprising would certainly strain the state's resources). NGOs would start observing, providing lawyers, etc. THAT is what a critical mass of support would look like.
What we have is a small (but vocal) number of people on the internet arguing over whether or not a black woman in a dress is like Tank Man.
Not. Going. To. Happen.
Police recruitment and training is a filtering process. It specifically selects for people who are fine with doing police work. As I said before, people who don't want to be the bullies of the state and the corporations don't become cops, or else they don't stay cops, because their consciences won't allow them to. Your imaginary 15% "good cops" are still willing bullies for the state and the corporations. And they are sure as hell not going to stick their necks out and cross police culture to try to convert the majority fraction of cops who are evil or don't care either way (and they can't be converted anyway, because either they're evil, or they don't care).
So, as respectfully as I can say to someone who is 100% wrong on this, you are 100% wrong on this. Ultimately there are NO good cops and no amount of respect/hugs/flower power will ever change that. The only way to force the "good cops" out is to scare them out or make them do new things they can't stomach.
You don't seriously think the police are going to complain to the elites that we're getting too uppity and the elites need to back off so the cops can go back to peacefully eating donuts??
No, police LIKE asymmetric violence. It means they definitely make it home safe at the end of the night (and usually with a fat wad of overtime and bonus pay). Their families like it too, for the same reason. Symmetric violence, or even the potential for it, frightens cops and everyone connected to them.
Cops, as a rule, are bullies and cowards. Even the vicious bastards prefer their victims helpless, or at least outnumbered and outgunned. None of them actually want to get into anything like a fair fight.
I have seen a number of activists run for local and state offices. It generally goes very poorly due to glaring deficiencies in qualifications, "experience", name recognition, big-donor funding, media recognition, competent campaign staff, election transparency, etc. Furthermore there are never enough elected activists at any time to generate a critical mass that can substantially affect policy; they just spend their political careers being outvoted and beating their heads against walls. Exceptions are so rare that they are frankly astonishing. So good luck with that.
Well, then, people would need to "go underground"
and offline to discuss any details because obviously, openly discussing violent revolution in anything but the most hypothetical terms will call down upon oneself the wrath and malice of the militarized surveillance state.
You're confusing plans with
You're confusing plans with strategy.
Yes, people would need to go underground to discuss plans. If you're going to occupy a location or block a street or cut a power connection or intimidate a police chief, obviously you're going to need to plan that with as much secrecy as you can, both for operational security and to avoid the law.
But the conversations we can all have in the open will be about strategy: what kinds of action we are willing to engage in or support, what kinds of action will be effective, what kinds of action we actually have support for. If y'all are actually serious about pursuing change outside of electoral politics through protest and civil disobedience, then you should be psyching yourself up for that fight and trying to push that protest mindset out into public discourse to build awareness and support for protest actions.
If the left just wants to affect a revolutionary posture without actually doing much of anything, then never mind me; you're dong a fantastic job, and the right is ready and willing to accept desperate people looking for solutions after they find out that you're all bark and no bite.
(duplicate post)
None of this is new, unfortunately.
They've been killing us since Kent State and secretly before that; along with the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, journalists, etc. All of this is no accident and it violates probability as coincidence. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I can recognize an unlikely sequence of events when I see it. Most people, including liberals, just didn't want to believe it before.
It's not the Republicans, it's not the Democrats, it's the uber-wealthy and powerful controlling their puppets in the government and controlling the media's reporting of it all. It's been going on for decades and they've gotten sloppy lately because they just don't think we can do a damned thing about it anymore except eat our shit sandwiches and go back to sleep.
A PERFECT CIRCLE
"Pet"
"Don't fret precious I'm here, step away from the window
Go back to sleep
Lay your head down child
I won't let the boogeyman come
Counting bodies like sheep
To the rhythm of the war drums
Pay no mind to the rabble
Pay no mind to the rabble
Head down, go to sleep
To the rhythm of the war drums
Pay no mind what other voices say
They don't care about you, like I do, like I do
Safe from pain and truth and choice and other poison devils,
See, they don't give a fuck about you, like I do.
Just stay with me, safe and ignorant,
Go back to sleep
Go back to sleep
Lay your head down child
I won't let the boogeyman come
Count the bodies like sheep
To the rhythm of the war drums
Pay no mind to the rabble
Pay no mind to the rabble
Head down, go to sleep to the rhythm of the war drums
I'll be the one to protect you from
Your enemies and all your demons
I'll be the one to protect you from
A will to survive and a voice of reason
I'll be the one to protect you from
Your enemies and your choices son
They're one in the same
I must isolate you
Isolate and save you from yourself
Swayin to the rhythm of the new world order and
Count the bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the war drums
The boogeymen are coming
The boogeymen are coming
Keep your head down, go to sleep, to the rhythm of a war drums
Stay with me
Safe and ignorant
Just stay with me
Hold you and protect you from the other ones
The evil ones
Don't love you son,
Go back to sleep"
It's the voters
Roughly speaking, there are millions of clueless idiots and assholes who vote for people who promote these policies. They are ultimately the reason these things happen. Do you really think if, say, 80% of the people had voted for Bernie, Clinton would be the nominee? Or what about all those people who would apparently vote for Her even when indicted?
The voters are the core issue. Not enough people make an effort to either think critically, or they just hate other people and thus condone or support what government does. Politicians are merely a reflection of this.
at least
we now know what it is like to live in fascist Germany in 1938
this is not Baton Rouge, pls. correct the essay
I'm duplicating a post above, which I made in reply to someone asking for the story behind this photo.
Here's an article by the woman in the picture.
https://feminewbie.wordpress.com/2016/07/10/i-just-saw-this-picture-and-...
Although the confrontation happened in Germany and not in the United States, the point she makes is that this is Western policing, Western culture.
In solidarity,
blaze
There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you.
--Amiri Baraka
The woman in the pic is Ieshia Evans
and the picture is from Baton Rouge:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/woman-stunning-baton-rouge-prot...
The feminewbie article has a picture of the author of that article, far down -- different gal, similar battle, but in Germany.
thanks, Martini
I was confused, and I was mistaken. I'm going to leave my original reply, however, otherwise yours will not make sense.
I appreciate your correction.
There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you.
--Amiri Baraka
Western Culture...
who needs it, really? We need more guys like Che; good wholesome leaders of death squads and the right hands of totalitarian regimes. That would solve our problems.
Steven,
Thanks so much for writing this very powerful diary! I just published a piece about America at war, and then I noticed your diary! Thanks for helping me face and deal with this sad truth of our country!
My reaction to the photo...
Three little chickenshits...One brave and glorius woman.