“From Oakland, California to New York City, the police, ordered by politicians, have smashed through Occupy encampments.” Ralph Nader
“Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer.” Christopher Hedges
“Astoundingly clueless” best describes the efforts of our nation’s political leaders, at all levels, to address widespread protests. The problems we are mired in are grossly threatening, while the solutions presented by our leaders are not only ineffective, but are aimed elsewhere than at what ails us. America’s overseers seem to be intent on killing the messengers (the Occupiers), as if that will make our troubles disappear. These ham-handed police actions are more than cruel and unfair. They actually demonstrate, forthrightly, the political elites’ total lack of ideas.
Police state tactics used against the Occupiers have been unpopular among most regular folks. That the political and media elites are surprised at this outcome clearly shows how out-of-touch they now are, expecting, it seems, another reaction similar to what happened in 1968, when millions cheered the police brutality in Chicago. But the protesters of 2011 have learned the lessons of 1968, and are careful to avoid provocative harassment against the police. Besides, the times, they are a’changing, and watching police in riot gear brutalize mostly peaceful crowds has become a horrifying experience. If we give any credence to the concept of American exceptionalism, it is that we do not do that here in the U.S.A.
The scramble afterward is enlightening—not the scramble of whipped and hassled protesters to save themselves, but the scramble of elected and appointed officials to save their political hides. They claim to be shocked—shocked—to witness what we are all seeing. But they are poor actors, and some officials have admitted that there is a coordinated effort to end these Occupy episodes everywhere at once. Furthermore, the arrogance apparent on the part of the police tells us these officers are acting not on threats from their victims, but on orders from above. New videos do show some taunting and jeering from the protesters aimed at the police. But most Americans remain unconvinced that verbal jibes merit the brutal responses we also witnessed. To commit violence under orders brings out an extremely ugly and immature part of human nature, one that we all harbour. Mature people strive to avoid letting juvenile nastiness direct public policy.
People do not go into law enforcement because they want to make policy. They go into that line to do a job, and that means following instructions. They show up in riot gear and beat, spray, and otherwise harm protesters for one reason: they are ordered to do it. And now we watch the people who gave the orders run for cover at the first hint of public disapproval. This should give the police officers something to think about: they could wind up as politicians’ sacrificial lambs, if the current campaign against the Occupiers turns out to be ineffective, which appears likely.
Socially and economically, the police belong to the ninety-nine percent. Some of them always knew this, and more are steadily turning to this reality. The trend seems sure to continue, as violence is evidently the only solution the establishment has. The plan, apparently, is to deal with society’s difficulties by causing the Occupiers so much pain that they give up and go home. This tactic might work in a relatively stable, prosperous, and equal society. Or it could be effective in a culture where the general public can be kept unaware of reality. Neither of these situations is to be found in the United States right now.
Police arrest protesters for trespassing. Laws against overnight camping seemingly trump any real grievances the Occupiers might have. At the same time the authorities complain that the protesters have failed to itemize their grievances, thus they are mere public nuisances. The system allows for protest, complaint, and suggested changes, but only through proper channels. The leaders will be glad to listen to any concerns people might have, but these concerns must be voiced in the traditional ways, open to all. Until such time, officialdom is not to be bothered. What officialdom fails to realize is that the majority is aware that a small group of wealthy individuals has managed to manipulate leaders into doing their bidding, at the expense of everyone else. Occupiers are occupying because the proper channels have been effectively closed to them. Protest is the only means remaining to draw attention to America’s pressing troubles.
Our country’s founders were painfully familiar with being ignored by government officials. Constant frustration with the agents of King George on this continent and across the Atlantic, left them no options but Revolutionary War. Determined to avoid having to go through the same horrors again, determined to allow for peaceful revolution, they wrote the Bill of Rights into the new Law of the Land. Foremost of these rights is “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” They intended for officialdom to be disturbed and inconvenienced, whenever established means of communication should fail. People have the right to assemble. Their government is not authorized to pick a fight with them when they do.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Friday, December 2, 2011
#28 -- GETTING CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
“Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.”
Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience”
Sometime back, a co-worker noticed I was reading Walden. Though I did not ask him what he thought, he told me anyway: “Thoreau. I’d know how to take care of him.” He was a nice, hardworking, retired career military man. Of course he was referring to Thoreau’s treatise on civil disobedience, which had inspired the anti-war protests of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, which had ultimately gotten us out of the Vietnam War. He felt that Henry David Thoreau, and all the malcontents following in his footsteps, had fouled the world with their complaining, and that swift and thorough violence was needed to put them away so the rest of us could go on with our legitimate business. After all, what had worked so well for fascists ought to work just as well in the Land of Liberty. My co-worker made the same mistake regarding civil disobedience that authorities have always made: thinking ruthless coercion would get rid of the troublemakers and warn others to mind their own business. Now in 2011 we are again situated so that many citizens feel the need to protest the status quo by purposely breaking laws and accepting the consequences. And those in authority are again making the same mistakes as always, thus assuring the success of civil disobedience once again.
What authoritarians fail to comprehend (perhaps because they cannot) is that civil disobedience works because it bestirs a slumbering universal conscience. This conscience, once awakened, will not rest until major issues, which normally have scant relevance to whatever minor laws the protesters momentarily disobey, are addressed. In Thoreau’s famous case, he went to jail for not paying his poll tax. But his argument was with slavery, not poll taxes. So it went with Gandhi in India, whose point was not the salt tax, but that a hundred thousand British had conquered, exploited, and enslaved three-hundred millions in India. The civil rights protesters in the Southern United States were not so much trying to ride buses or cross bridges—their goal was to end a reality in which millions of human beings, freed from slavery a century earlier, were still being treated like slaves. In episode after episode, the intent of civil disobedience is to violate small laws, provoking the authorities to over-react, so that others must wonder what other laws might be viciously unfair.
Movements based on the principle of non-violent resistance create their own supportive energy. Violent reactions on the part of authorities feed that energy. The more violent the reactions, the less sane the authorities appear to people awakened to the reality of social and economic injustice. Practitioners of civil disobedience play by the rules, breaking the laws, submitting to arrest and incarceration, letting the drama play out for the general public, which sees its leaders acting insanely. Ultimately even the authorities (all but the true sociopaths), come to realize and to question injustices they are committing and perpetuating. Then punishment stops and progress can begin.
We know civil disobedience is not a cure-all. Human beings, having problems, will always create problems for each other. Our awareness of this fact accounts for the slow growth of protest movements. As our own Declaration admits, small injustices are better endured than confronted, so long as they remain small. We all know life is never very fair, and we readily adapt to that reality, each in our own way.
But when a situation becomes intolerable, when misery reaches epidemic levels, when even those not personally experiencing that misery realize that they could be next, humans will act in concert to make changes. Change is hard to bring about, because those who profit from inequalities are invariably those in charge. Incapable of foregoing profits by ending injustices on their own, they must be made to do so. But change can happen when enough regular citizens, watching people just like them, withhold support for the law, risking the law’s wrath. Non-violence is the key, because it gives the authorities something of an out at the same time it sets a moral example for the citizens. People who commit civil disobedience accept arrest and incarceration. They expect to be tried in court. Law enforcement will be burdened, the courts jammed, the jails filled. Prosecutors will have to decide whether to use scarce resources fighting real crime, or punishing minor crimes committed by protesters. Either the establishment must admit weakness, or the public will witness a desperate State trying to hold power by brutalizing harmless citizens.
Once it is seen as petty and tyrannical, the State can no longer maintain the respect of its subjects. It must change or become more brutal, as it feebly attempts to maintain its authority. The axiom holds true whether the State is democratic or dictatorial. Civil disobedience does not work overnight. But even seemingly invincible dictatorships are susceptible to the battering-ram of public opinion. Witness the apartheid regime in South Africa. Witness the Soviet Union. America’s government structure was created to change peaceably, before injustice becomes so intolerable that violence is the only choice. This is one more reason why the authorities cannot succeed in their attempt to maintain an unjust and unworkable status quo.
In fact they have already lost.
Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience”
Sometime back, a co-worker noticed I was reading Walden. Though I did not ask him what he thought, he told me anyway: “Thoreau. I’d know how to take care of him.” He was a nice, hardworking, retired career military man. Of course he was referring to Thoreau’s treatise on civil disobedience, which had inspired the anti-war protests of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, which had ultimately gotten us out of the Vietnam War. He felt that Henry David Thoreau, and all the malcontents following in his footsteps, had fouled the world with their complaining, and that swift and thorough violence was needed to put them away so the rest of us could go on with our legitimate business. After all, what had worked so well for fascists ought to work just as well in the Land of Liberty. My co-worker made the same mistake regarding civil disobedience that authorities have always made: thinking ruthless coercion would get rid of the troublemakers and warn others to mind their own business. Now in 2011 we are again situated so that many citizens feel the need to protest the status quo by purposely breaking laws and accepting the consequences. And those in authority are again making the same mistakes as always, thus assuring the success of civil disobedience once again.
What authoritarians fail to comprehend (perhaps because they cannot) is that civil disobedience works because it bestirs a slumbering universal conscience. This conscience, once awakened, will not rest until major issues, which normally have scant relevance to whatever minor laws the protesters momentarily disobey, are addressed. In Thoreau’s famous case, he went to jail for not paying his poll tax. But his argument was with slavery, not poll taxes. So it went with Gandhi in India, whose point was not the salt tax, but that a hundred thousand British had conquered, exploited, and enslaved three-hundred millions in India. The civil rights protesters in the Southern United States were not so much trying to ride buses or cross bridges—their goal was to end a reality in which millions of human beings, freed from slavery a century earlier, were still being treated like slaves. In episode after episode, the intent of civil disobedience is to violate small laws, provoking the authorities to over-react, so that others must wonder what other laws might be viciously unfair.
Movements based on the principle of non-violent resistance create their own supportive energy. Violent reactions on the part of authorities feed that energy. The more violent the reactions, the less sane the authorities appear to people awakened to the reality of social and economic injustice. Practitioners of civil disobedience play by the rules, breaking the laws, submitting to arrest and incarceration, letting the drama play out for the general public, which sees its leaders acting insanely. Ultimately even the authorities (all but the true sociopaths), come to realize and to question injustices they are committing and perpetuating. Then punishment stops and progress can begin.
We know civil disobedience is not a cure-all. Human beings, having problems, will always create problems for each other. Our awareness of this fact accounts for the slow growth of protest movements. As our own Declaration admits, small injustices are better endured than confronted, so long as they remain small. We all know life is never very fair, and we readily adapt to that reality, each in our own way.
But when a situation becomes intolerable, when misery reaches epidemic levels, when even those not personally experiencing that misery realize that they could be next, humans will act in concert to make changes. Change is hard to bring about, because those who profit from inequalities are invariably those in charge. Incapable of foregoing profits by ending injustices on their own, they must be made to do so. But change can happen when enough regular citizens, watching people just like them, withhold support for the law, risking the law’s wrath. Non-violence is the key, because it gives the authorities something of an out at the same time it sets a moral example for the citizens. People who commit civil disobedience accept arrest and incarceration. They expect to be tried in court. Law enforcement will be burdened, the courts jammed, the jails filled. Prosecutors will have to decide whether to use scarce resources fighting real crime, or punishing minor crimes committed by protesters. Either the establishment must admit weakness, or the public will witness a desperate State trying to hold power by brutalizing harmless citizens.
Once it is seen as petty and tyrannical, the State can no longer maintain the respect of its subjects. It must change or become more brutal, as it feebly attempts to maintain its authority. The axiom holds true whether the State is democratic or dictatorial. Civil disobedience does not work overnight. But even seemingly invincible dictatorships are susceptible to the battering-ram of public opinion. Witness the apartheid regime in South Africa. Witness the Soviet Union. America’s government structure was created to change peaceably, before injustice becomes so intolerable that violence is the only choice. This is one more reason why the authorities cannot succeed in their attempt to maintain an unjust and unworkable status quo.
In fact they have already lost.
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