I never realized just how bad the situation was until I got involved more seriously in activism. Two and a half years into being politically active enough to never go more than a week or two without some form of protest (which could take the form of a march or rally, or an Overpass Light Brigade, or helping organize a cryptoparty, hosting documentary movie nights, helping with direct action training, etc.), I now have literally dozens of friends who have been charged with felonies.
These are among the sweetest, and gentlest, people I know. Some are barely older than children (the youngest person I know charged with a felony was 19 when she was charged with "Use of a criminal instrument" for locking her arm to a fellow protesters arm using a device suggested and made for them by a team of undercover Austin Police Department officers).
It is completely transparent, to me, that these laws and these tactics, are tools of oppression. They are not "to keep us safe", and never were. They are designed to make dissent as dangerous as possible through every means they can get away with. It includes violent, or at least threatening, police presence at any protest of significance (which means many populations cannot safely express dissent; anyone with warrants, regardless of what they are for, has no free speech because they will be snatched from a protest, anyone who is an undocumented immigrant has no free speech because they will be snatched, etc.). It includes violent arrest tactics; police are trained in "pain compliance" techniques, which include spraying pepper spray into protesters eyes, and forcing their eyes open to do so. It includes widespread spying at the local, state, and federal level, as well as spying by corporations like Stratfor. It includes charging activists with laws intended for violent terrorists, so that arrest is no longer a minor inconvenience, but a life-altering event. When non-violent activists are facing years in prison, for causing nothing more than minor temporary inconvenience, something is horribly broken.
I suspect most Americans would be disgusted by all of this, if they were really aware of it. But, it's not very frequently reported in mainstream media. I only know about it because I know some of the people involved and follow activist-oriented news sources.
>It is completely transparent, to me, that these laws and these tactics, are tools of oppression. They are not "to keep us safe", and never were. They are designed to make dissent as dangerous as possible through every means they can get away with.
It is disheartening that you realized this only after getting involved in activism. I think that in itself is a more significant indication of how hopeless the situation in America is. It underlines the main reason why serious social change is so difficult.
Put it simply: the government exists to protect the interests of corporations and wealthy people. Dissent of any kind challenges the status quo and therefore must be discouraged and quelled by any means necessary. The rights of "The People" (i.e. the poor) mean jack shit, because The People only exist to make the rich richer. This has been the case since the country's founding.
This is not to say that change is impossible. But, historically, the only time meaningful change has happened is when there was overwhelming social pressure. We aren't talking about petty (and for the most part meaningless) activism here and there. We're talking about social dissent of such magnitude that it threatens to become a revolution. Only in such times has the establishment allowed any sort of concession.
"It is disheartening that you realized this only after getting involved in activism."
I had an inkling, as I think most people do, even the people who most benefit from the status quo. But, being born white and male into a middle class household granted me a tremendous amount of privilege to avoid ever having to see it too closely, without even trying very hard. Having been exposed to technology at a young age, and encouraged in that pursuit, granted me a near complete lack of need to actually work all that hard to survive. It's easy to believe in a meritocratic society when you believe you're meritorious enough to deserve all the good things that happen to you and to avoid all the bad things being inflicted on others.
Let's just say I've grown as a person over the past few years.
Have you written more at length about this? I often find it incredibly hard to convey these points, and having stories or at least anecdotes that are relatable to people is usually the best tactic.
It's easy to blame the government but the majority of Americans vote for the government they have or none at all. That means they are either happy with it or they're incompetent and should not be allowed to vote. It's easy to blame politicians but really it's the short-sighted self-interested voters who are at fault. If you vote for a party with a history of doing terrible things then you are asking them to do more terrible things.
It's a corrupt system. Both parties have the same attitudes towards fundamental state issues and they collude to prevent any other parties from entering their contest for lobbyist dollars (note the lack of third parties in the televised debates on network television).
You blame me for this fucked up system? Yeah, I'm not carrying that weight.
I worked for years for third party politics. I was a card-carrying member of the LP. Worked for ballot access for both LP and the Green Party. If that's how you want to activate, go do it. I'm done with it. I see the system for what it is: Corrupt.
As long as we have first-past-the-post voting, laws stacked against any third party or independent candidates, and a complicit media, third parties are a pit into which people throw their passions and their energy and their money, with no resulting change.
You do what you gotta do, and I'm gonna do what I gotta do. What I gotta do is help build communities of resistance, and make it as expensive and inconvenient as possible for this shit to keep happening.
That might be true of a Direct Democracy. But an Indirect Democracy insulates politicians from the will of the voters. Votes do little more than bludgeon politicians out of office as a last resort. As long as politicians don't upset voters too much, the two incumbent parties retain power and continue doing as they please (which isn't all that different from each other, since the optimal behavioral strategy is to hug the center of the spectrum). So to some extant, I blame the structure of the government.
But given this situation, I also blame the voters. Polarization is pretty high. Voters readily pledge loyalty to the party line rather than individually consider the pros and cons of each platform's ideas. Voters don't realize that the less precommitted they are to their party, the more pressure they exert over congress. I.e. the less confident politicians are that the same demographics will reelect them, the more likely politicians will actually pay attention to the voters. pg has noticed this, among others.
Unfortunately, zealotry is a tough nut to crack. It's hardwired into human psychology. One can find it in politics, religion, sports, warfare, the dynamics of any group in general. And consciously or not, the parties encourage it (since each party's optimal signalling strategy is to differentiate themselves as much as possible). The media encourages this too, definitely consciously since it feeds their bottom line.
Given Indirect Democracy is here to stay, I think the worst problem is the lobby system. Not only has the power of the voters been diluted, but it's taken a backseat to that of the lobbyists. I'm not saying corporations are conspiratorially colluding to directly control congress, but each corporation's individual bribes certainly incentivizes the government's behavior, and arguably more so than the people's votes.
Not really. The fact that people are individuals who always make decisions at the margins means you can fall into a sort of network effect hysteresis trap. If you have Party X who gives you 20% of what you want and is polling at 49%, Party Y gives you 22% of what you want and is polling at 49%, and Party Z gives you 80% of what you want and is polling at 2%, if you believe the polls are accurate, you have a much larger expected gain from voting for Party Y instead of Party Z.
This is true even if the voter preferences are universal -- if e.g. everyone would get 15%-30% of what they want from X and Y, and 70-90% of what they want from Z.
This is not to say that change is impossible. But, historically, the only time meaningful change has happened is when there was overwhelming social pressure. We aren't talking about petty (and for the most part meaningless) activism here and there. We're talking about social dissent of such magnitude that it threatens to become a revolution. Only in such times has the establishment allowed any sort of concession.
I believe the odds of activism like this stopping fracking companies is actually very good. Which is why they are being met with police brutality. Suppose fracking protestors can reduce the likelihood of fracking companies to get local land exploitation permits from 95% to 90%, then that is a huge win and will save many wildlife areas.
It may not be "meaningful change" in the large scheme of things, but wins in many small fights compound and leads to bigger changes. Convincing people that they can't make a difference is the most efficient method for suppressing dissent.
Where did you learn this nonsense? I'll grant that calling something like this "terrorism" is over the top but the rest of this rant had me checking for a full moon.
It is quite easy to learn this. Someone with your intellect could do it in a short time:
It is called opening your eyes, cleaning them of the propaganda-rheum and seeing, wide awake the real structure of the world we live in.
I am a white male, totally privileged. Absolutely lucky to be that way by chance. And you know what - I know of this privilege, I did nothing for to earn.
I know, that the system is rigged like in a mobsters casino. And you know what - I believe it sucks real bad.
And people like you make it harder for everyone fighting for change. Or for people turning their backs on this system, robbing it of its support.
So please, do me a favor: Go home and play with your new shiny toys - what ever keeps you asleep in a world, that needs more people being awake and seeing for real.
but how do you know if all those Zeitgeist, Russia TV, and other revelations (Greenpeace) aren't just paid and orchestrated by Russia to destabilize US. I know they are.
How is RT or Zeitgeist (bleurgh) a primary source for any of this? If they aren't, why bring them up? And what does Greenpeace have to do with anything?
Sponsored/funded by KGB/FSB to destabilize US by creating an army of useful idiots.
Zeitgeist is a name to Marxism that doesn't suck. Anything green is left by definition. RT is official Russian Government propaganda channel. All the journalists you see there are FSB agents are have to cooperate with FSB.
At the same time US backed NGO in Russia are banned from receiving any money from the outside world and the Russian media are tightly controlled by Kremlin. There is no "voice of America" in Russia.
Why to fire bullets when soft skills of youth and intelligentsia indoctrination will do? It woke out great for them, hasn't it? We have a president Marxist, perfect product of the same forces in the educational system in the USA.
Just look how US becomes more and more like Russia as the years pass. I.e. oligarchs (the 1%), poor getting poorer, the police state, lack of democracy. The country is being russiaficated and nobody even notices what is the root of the evil. Genius!
I asked why you brought it up in context of the post you replied to, yes.
Are you meaning to say that any and all outrage about totalitarianism is, like anything "left", planted by the KGB, and just a means to subvert the US, so it can be overtaken by totalitarianism? So what is your solution? A better police state to defend liberty?
These are all features of a system described by political philosopher Sheldon Wolin as Inverted Totalitarianism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism -- that is, while it's a totalitarian system, unlike traditional fascist/totalitarian states it's driven by the pursuit of cost-effectiveness rather than some abstract ideology.
Welcome to one of the failure modes of representative democracy.
This reminds me of the book Where the Dog Is Buried by Czech dissident and activist Pavel Kohout. It is basically a book about various tactics that the police in communist Czechoslovakia used to harass and intimidate him and his fellow activists.
Some of those tactics were surprisingly creative and twisted... from using 'flexible laws' to justify arrests and constant surveillance to tricking him into emigration - he was a playwright and when police gave him a permission to travel to Austria to see the opening night of one of his plays he thought it was maybe a peace offering after years of troubles with the police. He went there with his wife but while they were there the police invalidated their passports and when they wanted to return home they were not allowed to cross the border and they were both forced to emigrate.
Sounds like a documentary that needs to be made. Take every single protest issue that has broad public support and document the abuses perpetuated against protestors. Ideally the protestors in the film should represent the entire range of the political spectrum (right wing to left wing. gun rights to animal rights. pro-life to pro-choice. etc). The highlight needs to be on the forcefully violent oppression of peaceful dissent.
While I think such a documentary is a great idea, I think this will never happen:
"Ideally the protestors in the film should represent the entire range of the political spectrum (right wing to left wing. gun rights to animal rights. pro-life to pro-choice. etc)."
Ideal is hard to find in the real world. This is a very one-sided battle, and pretty much always has been in the US. The powerful and rich are aligned against the powerless, and have the police, courts, and lawmakers, on their side.
You'd be very hard pressed to find right wing protesters being abused in the same way as environmental protesters (or, at all, for that matter). Because the right wing protesters aren't fighting for anything that oil companies, for example, would find threatening. It takes a combination of vast wealth and state/corporate collusion to get the kind of violence we've seen in the environmental activist community.
I've been amused to note that Alex Jones-sponsored gun rights rallies are vastly less likely to be harassed by cops than anything I would be involved in.
The kind of dissent that is most likely to be quashed is that of the powerless against the very powerful. White guys who support the death penalty don't fall into the category of "powerless" and their opponents are not the powerful (the powerful like having more tools to keep poor people in line and to give teeth to their threats, so are unlikely to worry about someone supporting the death penalty).
Pro-life vs. pro-choice? This one I'm really familiar with. Take Texas as an example...during the recent battle over womens reproductive rights here, the surprisingly peaceful pro-choice side had their heads smashed in (http://www.dallasvoice.com/watch-12-arrested-tx-senate-oks-s...), were aggressively searched , had tampons removed from their purses (http://www.thedailybeast.com/witw/cheats/2013/07/12/texas-co...), were falsely accused of trying to bring feces and urine into chambers (http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_23960175/el-paso-times), were spied on by DPS officers. No pro-life proponents were arrested, or detained, or harassed, despite the occasional actual assault on pro-choice protesters. All of this, despite the fact that pro-life supporters have literally murdered people in support of their cause...I'm not suggesting that DPS should have been harassing pro-life folks the way they were harassing pro-choice folks; just that it's clear which side the power was aligned on, and to what end.
Most right-wing "dissent" is manufactured outrage over imagined slights (or wealthy white people being pissed off that poor brown people could possibly want to be treated equally). I lean libertarian, some days, and so I'm sympathetic to some "right" causes...but, it's clear that when business and the poor go to war, it is a one-sided battle and nearly all the violence is being initiated by police. If we have to find examples of right wing protesters being abused in the ways that those on the left are being abused, we'll never see anything resembling the documentary you've imagined.
Anyway, I went looking to see if such a documentary existed, since I'd like to show such a thing at one of the Revolution in the Park movie nights I host in Austin. Couldn't find anything exactly along those lines, though it looks like someone was planning to make one last year, but seems to have stopped updating: http://examplesprotestdoc.wordpress.com/
But, most documentaries about protest cover the outsized response of police, because that's always a big part of the story. Of recent films, We Are Legion, 99%: The Occupy Walls Street Collaborative Film, Blockadia Rising (which is about an earlier stage of the Keystone XL fight, and includes some of the folks I know who've been charged with felonies), all cover how government responds to peaceful dissent.
I've been amused to note that Alex Jones-sponsored gun rights rallies are vastly less likely to be harassed by cops than anything I would be involved in.
I've never been to anything remotely related to Alex Jones, but having organized and attended a number of civil rights rallies, it's probably just an issue of demographics. Cops, Sheriffs and deputies tend to be more staunch second amendment advocates, except in larger cities. Also, and bear in mind this is anecdotal, but second amendment supporters tend to be the most respectful of the police tasked with keeping the peace at the rallies, and go far out of their way to keep from making those cops' jobs more difficult. Conversely (and again, anecdotally, but with lots of experience), anti-second amendment protestors seem to be far more unruly, with a contingent (at least in Maryland) that seem intent on trying to make the cops feel bad for their ambivalence.
With regards to fourth amendment rallies I've attended, the cops are decidedly more hostile, because they likely feel like they're the target of some of the protest. Also, in my experience, most of the cops justify their own fourth amendment violations as justified, or rationalized in some other way. Surely, they trust their own instincts, and they likely don't have any problems violating the fourth amendment rights of someone __if it leads to their arrest__ for some other crime that they initially suspected them of. On top of that, as the fourth amendment is typically violated by those in power, and the cops tend to be in power, the protestors there tend to harbor animosity.
I could go on forever, but I don't think you're far off the mark, except that you drew the line between left wing and right wing, and I think you're undervaluing how much a factor police bias plays in the issue.
I'm an avid civil rights supporter, and unlike the ACLU, for me, that includes the second amendment. I've studied the second amendment extensively, and you're completely right. Gun control has primarily been a tool for oppression, in this country and before.
Maybe (being neither Democrat nor Republican) I just don't think in terms of left vs. right, but I definitely see your point. Having been involved with both left and right-wing protests though, at least a part of it is how the officers are treated. I've been at fourth amendment rallies and had pleasant conversation with cops, despite being there for a 'left-wing' purpose, and without giving any secret Republican handshakes or anything.
I suspect most Americans would be disgusted by all of this, if they were really aware of it
I don't think that's true. I think Americans actually like it this way. It gives a soccer mom a deep sense of contentment that if anyone so much as looks at her precious little darling she can summon a SWAT team to punish them. It just so happens that right now you have a President who is more than happy to deliver on this. There is an old saying: a country gets the government it deserves.
It's more than just the current president. last I checked the patriot act wasn't a presidential decree. It would be nice if it were only a matter of getting new president and all are governmental woes went away. Problem is until the middle class stops believing sound bites and starts making all parties accountable to the middle class corporate interests will provail.
because there was no easy/centralized way to spread propaganda. One had to use terror/fear to stay in power. The truth was obvious, so somebody had to keep population scared, so they don't revolt. Nowadays, subtle propaganda works. You air day and night stuff explaining people that white is black and black is white and this works. People see the truth, want to revolt, but then "the experts" from the silver box explain that the opposite is actually true. Everybody happy thinking they are free while they are slaves to the banks and constantly monitored by the Government.
In the same way, government could ignore the law, fake election results, and whatever - and no one would be wiser, because the only form of mass information distribution, newspapers, are government control.
I suspect the situation had been as bad or worse before radio and television; that throughout history with very minor exceptions, there has not been a functioning democracy anywhere (in the common meaning of the term). I don't find your argument there was one convincing.
I have to agree to this because I feel that there is a serious disdain for protesters in this country. Many people I know seem to feel that hurting or arresting peaceful protesters is okay.
The amount of apathy in this country is staggering.
Guess its not fun to find out how bad it is to express a point of view. Go look at all the hoops abortion protestors have to jump through. They wouldn't even dare cross the threshold of the business because by law most can't even come within shouting distance of their targets.
So yeah, welcome to the club. Business and government use the power of the later to enforce their will. The sad part is, people will cheer this type of behavior on provided its exercised against people they don't like but suddenly they are all aghast of when it hits them.
As with all other forms of freedom of speech, asking the government to silence people you do not like is akin to allowing government to silence you when someone else does not like your speech.
Anti-choice protesters have assaulted women trying to get low cost health care, have murdered doctors, and have aligned themselves against the poorest, least powerful people in this country (poor women of color). Recently, a pro-life group distributed a message suggesting pretending to provide rides to women needing health care, but actually kidnapping them and taking them to a church. This is crazy shit, and some of them are terrifying people.
I also believe you're misrepresenting the state of affairs. Anti-choice protesters can protest right outside of clinics on sidewalks, streets, etc. At least in my state, they can. And, I've not seen much in the way of police violence against anti-choice protesters. I haven't seen police setting up anti-choice protesters and encouraging them to commit violent acts. Maybe this is happening, and I just don't know it, because I'm not in those circles (I think it's assumed here in this thread that I'm left wing, but that's not really accurate; though I am firmly pro-choice). I know it isn't happening in my state, however, as I saw it with my own eyes. Pro-choice groups were stalked by police, while pro-life groups were ignored even when they became aggressive and got physical.
Anyway, I've never asked for pro-life activists to be silenced. I do think that if they physically prevent someone from getting medical care, they are violating that person's basic rights. I also find it particularly reprehensible that they target the poorest and least powerful people. Wealthy white women get abortions all the time at places other than Planned Parenthood or other free and low cost clinics; but, pro-life groups would rather harass the weak and poor, who are often just needing birth control or medical services unrelated to abortion.
Freedom of speech as it's written in the 1st amendment is NOT a blanket of protection against everything you say.
"In America, you’re simply guaranteed the right to speak without the government taking action against you. However, that doesn’t mean your employer can’t fire you for bad-mouthing him on Facebook, and it certainly doesn’t mean you can say whatever you want whenever you want with full impunity"
Guess its not fun to find out how bad it is to express a point of view. Go look at all the hoops abortion protestors have to jump through. They wouldn't even dare cross the threshold of the business because by law most can't even come within shouting distance of their targets.
Abortion protestors don't merely express a point of view, they deliberately attempt to prevent people from accessing health services at places where an abortion may be provided. A protestor that disrupts a business or barricades themselves to a door can reasonably be expected to be detained or arrested, but not charged with terrorism or charged with major felonies.
anyone who is an undocumented immigrant has no free speech because they will be snatched
Why would you think your free speech rights should give you immunity from deportation if you're not actually here legally? Protesting while obviously out of compliance with the law is quite a bit different from being suppressed by a completely fabricated charge.
Because freedom of speech is more important than immigration bullshit, and because arresting people on unrelated charges is one of many tools in the toolchest of those who wish to silence dissent.
It is one of many chilling effects that makes large scale movements all but impossible in the US. Police simply wander around spotting people they think might have something in their past that allows them to arrest them. I'm a middle class white guy, and I've been detained and had my ID run at least a dozen times in the past two years, merely for having the gall to show up at a protest. I've never been arrested, and never had a warrant, so I don't fear being detained the way many would...but knowing that you will very likely be targeted just for being present, even if you aren't breaking any laws, insures a whole lot of people simply don't show up.
So, by saying this is OK, as long as it is not a "completely fabricated charge" you're insuring that there is no such thing as a large scale movement to change anything in the US. Most people cannot afford to be targeted by police in the way that a lot of activists I know have been.
I believe that undocumented workers have the right to free speech. I believe that people with warrants have the right to free speech. They don't have that free speech because they know they are likely to be targeted by police if they exercise that speech for dissent (just like anyone expressing dissent becomes a target). It's just that the cost of being targeted by police is so much higher than it is for someone like me.
I think understand your position a little better now, that as you said checking people's status has a chilling effect. I was thinking of the undocumented thing in the context of an actual protest with people holding signs saying they are undocumented. I believe this is basically daring the police to do something about you. There is basically no way for an undocumented immigrant to protest without crossing over into civil disobedience, which has obvious costs. I still don't think it's totally the same, but I see where you're coming from.
Actually, I think there's interesting discussion to be had around where you're coming from, and where I'm coming from. And, also with regard to the actual law.
Local police departments actually are not supposed to enforce immigration laws. It's even likely unconstitutional in some cases for local police officers to target people for searches and ID checks based on the assumption that they are here illegally. It's not even about my beliefs on the issue. It's about local police policy and ordinances.
The reasons that local police departments aren't tasked with immigration enforcement are many.
For example, imagine a domestic dispute between a person who is in the US without documentation and a partner who is here legally. Let's imagine the partner who is here legally is violent, and beats the crap out of the person who is here without documentation. How do you want this to play out? Do you want the person being abused to not call for help for fear of being deported? Or, do you want the cops to come do their job, help someone who is being hurt, and haul the abuser away leaving the victim of the abuse safe? Most jurisdictions in the US have chosen the latter. Cops have a lot of leeway to be assholes in this circumstance, but they're under policy guidance to help the victim and not make the situation worse.
Another example, say an undocumented immigrant witnesses a violent crime. Do you want them to be deported if they come forward and identify the assailant? Or, do you want them to be able to report the crime, give their testimony (even in court), and help put a dangerous person away?
I believe being part of the civic discourse, up to and including participating in a protest, march, rally, etc. is of a piece with these other examples. If a local police officer catches an armed robber, and that robber turns out to be an undocumented immigrant, I won't argue about immigration getting involved. But, if someone wants to speak to encourage more kind immigration law that effects them and their family? Yeah, I think they should be able to do that, without fear of being targeted.
Civil disobedience is great, and I support it. But, it is also an action that requires privilege. Many undocumented immigrants have families to support (often including children who are legal US citizens, having been born here); if they are arrested and deported for speaking out, their whole family suffers.
Admittedly, I fall very far on the side of being opposed to our immigration laws as they currently stand. I believe state borders are immoral, in and of themselves, regardless of how they are enforced. Even so, the reality is that local law enforcement shouldn't be using the threat of deportation to stifle dissent. Not because I say so, but because people all over the country have said so, and it is reflected in local laws and police department policies. But, when it comes to protests...the rules get tossed out the window. Protesters are nearly always considered second class citizens, and subject to more aggressive tactics; constitutional protections are considered much lower during a protest action, especially if some protesters are breaking the law.
Given that undercover cops often (so often that it is to be expected, and activist trainers have to cover it as though it will happen) incite law breaking in order to allow uniformed officers to engage more aggressively, I think it's time to turn that tide way the fuck back.
In short, I hear you. I might have even agreed with you at some point in the past. I understand where your position comes from. But, somewhere along the way, my allegiance flipped. I simply don't trust my government to have good intentions.
I think there's a useful discussion to be had about what private property looks like. Should a corporation be allowed to hold a monopoly over millions of acres of land over a span of hundreds of years, for instance? I think most folks, anarchists and extreme leftists included, would consider a home and a family garden a perfectly legitimate piece of "private property". But, somewhere, as the stakes get higher, and the abstractions for the entity that "owns" the property (and who is responsible for what happens on that property, such as pollution, violence, etc.) becomes more diffuse, there is useful discussion to be had about whether that is legitimate private property or not.
I believe it is a stretch to say that an entity as diffuse as the United States (or any nation state) should be able to prevent billions of people from traveling freely from Mexico to Canada.
In short, I think "private property" is a good and useful fiction that we can probably all agree on, when we are speaking of individual humans who live and work on a piece of property. When you begin to make up fictional entities to "own" the property, I am less confident of the rightness of the theory.
Yes, well done. My one-acre homestead is indeed exactly the same as a sovereign state, it in fact changes nothing when the scale is millions of times that large. Also access to private property and state immigration are in fact the exact same concept as well.
Why would you think your free speech rights should give you immunity from deportation if you're not actually here legally?
You are implying that only people who follow the laws in the US have the right of free speech. That's a very, very sad way to look at things, as it means anyone trying to actually change anything has no basic rights.
i.e. same sex couples, people smoking weed, etc. etc. These people are breaking the law (in most of the country) but they absolutely must be allowed free speech to talk about it. If not, how can anything ever change or get better?
Taking away free speech from people that don't follow the current laws of the US means a very bleak future.
Your right to free speech begins and ends with speech. You have a right to call for marijuana legalization, but if marijuana is illegal and you light up a joint in front of a cop, then yes he can arrest you and this is no violation of your free speech rights. Correspondingly, your right to free speech, right here and right now, is naturally pre-empted when you have no legal right to even be in the country. From the perspective of the US government, you are perfectly free to exercise your opinion about immigration reform from outside of the borders of the USA. The fact that this is obviously less desirable from the point of view of the illegal alien is basically irrelevant to what they have a "right" to do.
What you are talking about is civil disobedience, but you don't seem to understand how that works either. Civil disobedience is knowing something is against the law, and doing it anyway as an act of political resistance to motivate change in the system. Even then, you accept that an act is illegal and that you are breaking that law, rather than just blanket argument that anybody who is actively protesting a law should be allowed to break it without legal consequences because they disagree with it. I get it, you're for immigration reform so you think it's a stupid law and you don't care if they break it. But I'm arguing from the standpoint of a general legal principle.
I get it, you're for immigration reform so you think it's a stupid law and you don't care if they break it.
Not at all.
I'm for allowing people to assemble, peacefully protest and have their voice heard.
I'm for not escalating unrelated charges to people trying to do so.
Once you let that happen, you'll very quickly find every single person is breaking some obscure law or other, and every single person will be arrested when they even talk about voting for the other party.
Because that's standard practice for breaking up protests. See: false flag NYPD starting altercations with police at OWS in order to give police justification for violently putting down the protest.
"If it was considered illegal i think the officers should be punished at least to some extent."
I think they should be, too. The judge had some harsh words for the APD, and the charges were reduced to misdemeanors and the sentence (which was originally looking like years in prison) to time served. Though, one of the protesters in this case ended up spending about 2 years in jail because he had a past warrant (he missed his court date for that old warrant in Dallas because he was in jail on a felony charge in Houston, so they punished him for missing that date). He was just released a few weeks ago.
It's also worth mentioning that APD did not reveal their officers had made the devices or suggested their use in the action, and fought to not reveal their involvement in court. The Houston police department, who were prosecuting the case, didn't even know APD was involved in the protest, until a few lucky breaks led to three of the six undercover officers being outed. It is, frankly, miraculous that those seven kids aren't still in jail and shackled with felony convictions. Dumb luck revealed that they'd been setup, and the prosecutors were forced to fold.
But, it's happening every day. This is standard operating procedure when dealing with protesters; and, not just at the national level. And, as far as we can tell, the chain of command on this particular operation went all the way up to the chief of police. It was not rogue cops going beyond their assigned duties to set kids up for felony charges.
Some references, so this doesn't end up being dismissed as a paranoid fantasy (I know it's pretty unbelievable stuff):
More came out later based on open records requests, but my google fu is failing me at the moment. In short, it was actually worse than we knew during the early stages of the trial when these three articles were written.
"Why are Police officers encouraging crime to begin with?"
You tell me.
Why would police officers encourage crime, encourage violence, encourage escalation in tactics, etc.?
There is no excuse to be dumber in action than the people/company/administration you oppose. Business is ritualized warfare. It's not about playing fair.
I am suggesting that doing direct action, when you are few in number and susceptible to arbitrary brutality, makes the movement weaker. If they really care about success then they would do it differently. It doesn't take great genius to get arrested.
To win you need to be strong, skillful or lucky. When you are none of these things you are wasting your time seeking confrontation.
David won against goliath because he was skillful.
I think that following your advice would lead to no one, ever, fighting against oppression. Because the oppressor is always more powerful and better equipped. But, without a few people having the courage to fight in the beginning, those who are afraid will never feel empowered to join.
It is also useful to know that this kind of action isn't generally subject to arrest. This is a simple "make a little noise, get asked to leave, leave" kinda of thing. It is clear that even this minor act of disobedience is being punished in this absurdly over the top way in order to keep people thinking like you: It's too risky, it's too confrontational.
So, I have to repeat: What would you suggest? You are saying this is foolish, you are saying it should be done differently. But, you don't offer any suggestions for what would indicate skill (and no one will ever be "strong" against a foe as powerful as the fossil fuels industry).
And, maybe these folks are just hoping for luck, in the face of overwhelming odds. If enough people take a spin, maybe somebody will hit the jackpot that turns this tide. Given the circumstances, and our seeming inevitable slide into the madness that is global climate change (which, I'll assume, you're familiar with and not one of the nutty right wing climate change deniers), I'd say we need more people taking that chance, not fewer.
Comments
I never realized just how bad the situation was until I got involved more seriously in activism. Two and a half years into being politically active enough to never go more than a week or two without some form of protest (which could take the form of a march or rally, or an Overpass Light Brigade, or helping organize a cryptoparty, hosting documentary movie nights, helping with direct action training, etc.), I now have literally dozens of friends who have been charged with felonies.
These are among the sweetest, and gentlest, people I know. Some are barely older than children (the youngest person I know charged with a felony was 19 when she was charged with "Use of a criminal instrument" for locking her arm to a fellow protesters arm using a device suggested and made for them by a team of undercover Austin Police Department officers).
It is completely transparent, to me, that these laws and these tactics, are tools of oppression. They are not "to keep us safe", and never were. They are designed to make dissent as dangerous as possible through every means they can get away with. It includes violent, or at least threatening, police presence at any protest of significance (which means many populations cannot safely express dissent; anyone with warrants, regardless of what they are for, has no free speech because they will be snatched from a protest, anyone who is an undocumented immigrant has no free speech because they will be snatched, etc.). It includes violent arrest tactics; police are trained in "pain compliance" techniques, which include spraying pepper spray into protesters eyes, and forcing their eyes open to do so. It includes widespread spying at the local, state, and federal level, as well as spying by corporations like Stratfor. It includes charging activists with laws intended for violent terrorists, so that arrest is no longer a minor inconvenience, but a life-altering event. When non-violent activists are facing years in prison, for causing nothing more than minor temporary inconvenience, something is horribly broken.
I suspect most Americans would be disgusted by all of this, if they were really aware of it. But, it's not very frequently reported in mainstream media. I only know about it because I know some of the people involved and follow activist-oriented news sources.
It is disheartening that you realized this only after getting involved in activism. I think that in itself is a more significant indication of how hopeless the situation in America is. It underlines the main reason why serious social change is so difficult.
Put it simply: the government exists to protect the interests of corporations and wealthy people. Dissent of any kind challenges the status quo and therefore must be discouraged and quelled by any means necessary. The rights of "The People" (i.e. the poor) mean jack shit, because The People only exist to make the rich richer. This has been the case since the country's founding.
This is not to say that change is impossible. But, historically, the only time meaningful change has happened is when there was overwhelming social pressure. We aren't talking about petty (and for the most part meaningless) activism here and there. We're talking about social dissent of such magnitude that it threatens to become a revolution. Only in such times has the establishment allowed any sort of concession.
"It is disheartening that you realized this only after getting involved in activism."
I had an inkling, as I think most people do, even the people who most benefit from the status quo. But, being born white and male into a middle class household granted me a tremendous amount of privilege to avoid ever having to see it too closely, without even trying very hard. Having been exposed to technology at a young age, and encouraged in that pursuit, granted me a near complete lack of need to actually work all that hard to survive. It's easy to believe in a meritocratic society when you believe you're meritorious enough to deserve all the good things that happen to you and to avoid all the bad things being inflicted on others.
Let's just say I've grown as a person over the past few years.
Have you written more at length about this? I often find it incredibly hard to convey these points, and having stories or at least anecdotes that are relatable to people is usually the best tactic.
"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread."
It's easy to blame the government but the majority of Americans vote for the government they have or none at all. That means they are either happy with it or they're incompetent and should not be allowed to vote. It's easy to blame politicians but really it's the short-sighted self-interested voters who are at fault. If you vote for a party with a history of doing terrible things then you are asking them to do more terrible things.
It's a corrupt system. Both parties have the same attitudes towards fundamental state issues and they collude to prevent any other parties from entering their contest for lobbyist dollars (note the lack of third parties in the televised debates on network television).
"If you vote for a party with a history of doing terrible things then you are asking them to do more terrible things."
Which of the two parties that can plausibly win elections do you believe does not do terrible things?
The two-party system (backed the winner-take-all vote) has become the ultimate form of regulatory capture.
Their plausibility is a gift from you and everyone like you. Thanks so much for fucking the rest of us over.
You blame me for this fucked up system? Yeah, I'm not carrying that weight.
I worked for years for third party politics. I was a card-carrying member of the LP. Worked for ballot access for both LP and the Green Party. If that's how you want to activate, go do it. I'm done with it. I see the system for what it is: Corrupt.
As long as we have first-past-the-post voting, laws stacked against any third party or independent candidates, and a complicit media, third parties are a pit into which people throw their passions and their energy and their money, with no resulting change.
You do what you gotta do, and I'm gonna do what I gotta do. What I gotta do is help build communities of resistance, and make it as expensive and inconvenient as possible for this shit to keep happening.
Well that's me told :) For what it's worth, I vote every time, never for one of the big two, and I tell people why.
That might be true of a Direct Democracy. But an Indirect Democracy insulates politicians from the will of the voters. Votes do little more than bludgeon politicians out of office as a last resort. As long as politicians don't upset voters too much, the two incumbent parties retain power and continue doing as they please (which isn't all that different from each other, since the optimal behavioral strategy is to hug the center of the spectrum). So to some extant, I blame the structure of the government.
But given this situation, I also blame the voters. Polarization is pretty high. Voters readily pledge loyalty to the party line rather than individually consider the pros and cons of each platform's ideas. Voters don't realize that the less precommitted they are to their party, the more pressure they exert over congress. I.e. the less confident politicians are that the same demographics will reelect them, the more likely politicians will actually pay attention to the voters. pg has noticed this, among others.
Unfortunately, zealotry is a tough nut to crack. It's hardwired into human psychology. One can find it in politics, religion, sports, warfare, the dynamics of any group in general. And consciously or not, the parties encourage it (since each party's optimal signalling strategy is to differentiate themselves as much as possible). The media encourages this too, definitely consciously since it feeds their bottom line.
Given Indirect Democracy is here to stay, I think the worst problem is the lobby system. Not only has the power of the voters been diluted, but it's taken a backseat to that of the lobbyists. I'm not saying corporations are conspiratorially colluding to directly control congress, but each corporation's individual bribes certainly incentivizes the government's behavior, and arguably more so than the people's votes.
Not really. The fact that people are individuals who always make decisions at the margins means you can fall into a sort of network effect hysteresis trap. If you have Party X who gives you 20% of what you want and is polling at 49%, Party Y gives you 22% of what you want and is polling at 49%, and Party Z gives you 80% of what you want and is polling at 2%, if you believe the polls are accurate, you have a much larger expected gain from voting for Party Y instead of Party Z.
This is true even if the voter preferences are universal -- if e.g. everyone would get 15%-30% of what they want from X and Y, and 70-90% of what they want from Z.
I believe the odds of activism like this stopping fracking companies is actually very good. Which is why they are being met with police brutality. Suppose fracking protestors can reduce the likelihood of fracking companies to get local land exploitation permits from 95% to 90%, then that is a huge win and will save many wildlife areas.
It may not be "meaningful change" in the large scheme of things, but wins in many small fights compound and leads to bigger changes. Convincing people that they can't make a difference is the most efficient method for suppressing dissent.
Where did you learn this nonsense? I'll grant that calling something like this "terrorism" is over the top but the rest of this rant had me checking for a full moon.
It is quite easy to learn this. Someone with your intellect could do it in a short time:
It is called opening your eyes, cleaning them of the propaganda-rheum and seeing, wide awake the real structure of the world we live in.
I am a white male, totally privileged. Absolutely lucky to be that way by chance. And you know what - I know of this privilege, I did nothing for to earn.
I know, that the system is rigged like in a mobsters casino. And you know what - I believe it sucks real bad.
And people like you make it harder for everyone fighting for change. Or for people turning their backs on this system, robbing it of its support.
So please, do me a favor: Go home and play with your new shiny toys - what ever keeps you asleep in a world, that needs more people being awake and seeing for real.
Telling someone to wake up and smell the oppression is not going to convince anyone of anything.
but how do you know if all those Zeitgeist, Russia TV, and other revelations (Greenpeace) aren't just paid and orchestrated by Russia to destabilize US. I know they are.
How is RT or Zeitgeist (bleurgh) a primary source for any of this? If they aren't, why bring them up? And what does Greenpeace have to do with anything?
Sponsored/funded by KGB/FSB to destabilize US by creating an army of useful idiots.
Zeitgeist is a name to Marxism that doesn't suck. Anything green is left by definition. RT is official Russian Government propaganda channel. All the journalists you see there are FSB agents are have to cooperate with FSB.
At the same time US backed NGO in Russia are banned from receiving any money from the outside world and the Russian media are tightly controlled by Kremlin. There is no "voice of America" in Russia.
Why to fire bullets when soft skills of youth and intelligentsia indoctrination will do? It woke out great for them, hasn't it? We have a president Marxist, perfect product of the same forces in the educational system in the USA.
Just look how US becomes more and more like Russia as the years pass. I.e. oligarchs (the 1%), poor getting poorer, the police state, lack of democracy. The country is being russiaficated and nobody even notices what is the root of the evil. Genius!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_doqvkC-jYk
It's a simple question. The post you replied to didn't even mention Zeitgeist or RT, it's you who equates "opening your eyes" with those.
You asked about RT and Zeitgeist and the reply was about RT and Zeitgeist. Not sure what are you unhappy about now.
I asked why you brought it up in context of the post you replied to, yes.
Are you meaning to say that any and all outrage about totalitarianism is, like anything "left", planted by the KGB, and just a means to subvert the US, so it can be overtaken by totalitarianism? So what is your solution? A better police state to defend liberty?
These are all features of a system described by political philosopher Sheldon Wolin as Inverted Totalitarianism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism -- that is, while it's a totalitarian system, unlike traditional fascist/totalitarian states it's driven by the pursuit of cost-effectiveness rather than some abstract ideology.
Welcome to one of the failure modes of representative democracy.
This reminds me of the book Where the Dog Is Buried by Czech dissident and activist Pavel Kohout. It is basically a book about various tactics that the police in communist Czechoslovakia used to harass and intimidate him and his fellow activists.
Some of those tactics were surprisingly creative and twisted... from using 'flexible laws' to justify arrests and constant surveillance to tricking him into emigration - he was a playwright and when police gave him a permission to travel to Austria to see the opening night of one of his plays he thought it was maybe a peace offering after years of troubles with the police. He went there with his wife but while they were there the police invalidated their passports and when they wanted to return home they were not allowed to cross the border and they were both forced to emigrate.
Sounds like a documentary that needs to be made. Take every single protest issue that has broad public support and document the abuses perpetuated against protestors. Ideally the protestors in the film should represent the entire range of the political spectrum (right wing to left wing. gun rights to animal rights. pro-life to pro-choice. etc). The highlight needs to be on the forcefully violent oppression of peaceful dissent.
While I think such a documentary is a great idea, I think this will never happen:
"Ideally the protestors in the film should represent the entire range of the political spectrum (right wing to left wing. gun rights to animal rights. pro-life to pro-choice. etc)."
Ideal is hard to find in the real world. This is a very one-sided battle, and pretty much always has been in the US. The powerful and rich are aligned against the powerless, and have the police, courts, and lawmakers, on their side.
You'd be very hard pressed to find right wing protesters being abused in the same way as environmental protesters (or, at all, for that matter). Because the right wing protesters aren't fighting for anything that oil companies, for example, would find threatening. It takes a combination of vast wealth and state/corporate collusion to get the kind of violence we've seen in the environmental activist community.
I've been amused to note that Alex Jones-sponsored gun rights rallies are vastly less likely to be harassed by cops than anything I would be involved in.
The kind of dissent that is most likely to be quashed is that of the powerless against the very powerful. White guys who support the death penalty don't fall into the category of "powerless" and their opponents are not the powerful (the powerful like having more tools to keep poor people in line and to give teeth to their threats, so are unlikely to worry about someone supporting the death penalty).
Pro-life vs. pro-choice? This one I'm really familiar with. Take Texas as an example...during the recent battle over womens reproductive rights here, the surprisingly peaceful pro-choice side had their heads smashed in (http://www.dallasvoice.com/watch-12-arrested-tx-senate-oks-s...), were aggressively searched , had tampons removed from their purses (http://www.thedailybeast.com/witw/cheats/2013/07/12/texas-co...), were falsely accused of trying to bring feces and urine into chambers (http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_23960175/el-paso-times), were spied on by DPS officers. No pro-life proponents were arrested, or detained, or harassed, despite the occasional actual assault on pro-choice protesters. All of this, despite the fact that pro-life supporters have literally murdered people in support of their cause...I'm not suggesting that DPS should have been harassing pro-life folks the way they were harassing pro-choice folks; just that it's clear which side the power was aligned on, and to what end.
Most right-wing "dissent" is manufactured outrage over imagined slights (or wealthy white people being pissed off that poor brown people could possibly want to be treated equally). I lean libertarian, some days, and so I'm sympathetic to some "right" causes...but, it's clear that when business and the poor go to war, it is a one-sided battle and nearly all the violence is being initiated by police. If we have to find examples of right wing protesters being abused in the ways that those on the left are being abused, we'll never see anything resembling the documentary you've imagined.
Anyway, I went looking to see if such a documentary existed, since I'd like to show such a thing at one of the Revolution in the Park movie nights I host in Austin. Couldn't find anything exactly along those lines, though it looks like someone was planning to make one last year, but seems to have stopped updating: http://examplesprotestdoc.wordpress.com/
But, most documentaries about protest cover the outsized response of police, because that's always a big part of the story. Of recent films, We Are Legion, 99%: The Occupy Walls Street Collaborative Film, Blockadia Rising (which is about an earlier stage of the Keystone XL fight, and includes some of the folks I know who've been charged with felonies), all cover how government responds to peaceful dissent.
I've never been to anything remotely related to Alex Jones, but having organized and attended a number of civil rights rallies, it's probably just an issue of demographics. Cops, Sheriffs and deputies tend to be more staunch second amendment advocates, except in larger cities. Also, and bear in mind this is anecdotal, but second amendment supporters tend to be the most respectful of the police tasked with keeping the peace at the rallies, and go far out of their way to keep from making those cops' jobs more difficult. Conversely (and again, anecdotally, but with lots of experience), anti-second amendment protestors seem to be far more unruly, with a contingent (at least in Maryland) that seem intent on trying to make the cops feel bad for their ambivalence.
With regards to fourth amendment rallies I've attended, the cops are decidedly more hostile, because they likely feel like they're the target of some of the protest. Also, in my experience, most of the cops justify their own fourth amendment violations as justified, or rationalized in some other way. Surely, they trust their own instincts, and they likely don't have any problems violating the fourth amendment rights of someone __if it leads to their arrest__ for some other crime that they initially suspected them of. On top of that, as the fourth amendment is typically violated by those in power, and the cops tend to be in power, the protestors there tend to harbor animosity.
I could go on forever, but I don't think you're far off the mark, except that you drew the line between left wing and right wing, and I think you're undervaluing how much a factor police bias plays in the issue.
The bias of the police against leftwing issues is part and parcel of the power structure that makes life pretty sweet for mildly affluent white males.
Look into the history of gun control. When the Black Panthers were talking about the second amendment, Ronald Reagan, et al, were for control.
I'm an avid civil rights supporter, and unlike the ACLU, for me, that includes the second amendment. I've studied the second amendment extensively, and you're completely right. Gun control has primarily been a tool for oppression, in this country and before.
Maybe (being neither Democrat nor Republican) I just don't think in terms of left vs. right, but I definitely see your point. Having been involved with both left and right-wing protests though, at least a part of it is how the officers are treated. I've been at fourth amendment rallies and had pleasant conversation with cops, despite being there for a 'left-wing' purpose, and without giving any secret Republican handshakes or anything.
There's quite a few of those. Here you are: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLABzhv4GLfjTaageSnR3U...
I suspect most Americans would be disgusted by all of this, if they were really aware of it
I don't think that's true. I think Americans actually like it this way. It gives a soccer mom a deep sense of contentment that if anyone so much as looks at her precious little darling she can summon a SWAT team to punish them. It just so happens that right now you have a President who is more than happy to deliver on this. There is an old saying: a country gets the government it deserves.
It's more than just the current president. last I checked the patriot act wasn't a presidential decree. It would be nice if it were only a matter of getting new president and all are governmental woes went away. Problem is until the middle class stops believing sound bites and starts making all parties accountable to the middle class corporate interests will provail.
There is an old saying: a country gets the government it deserves.
Especially in a democracy.
Since the inception of radio and TV the democracy is gone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Honest question: why do you believe it was there before television or radio ?
because there was no easy/centralized way to spread propaganda. One had to use terror/fear to stay in power. The truth was obvious, so somebody had to keep population scared, so they don't revolt. Nowadays, subtle propaganda works. You air day and night stuff explaining people that white is black and black is white and this works. People see the truth, want to revolt, but then "the experts" from the silver box explain that the opposite is actually true. Everybody happy thinking they are free while they are slaves to the banks and constantly monitored by the Government.
In the same way, government could ignore the law, fake election results, and whatever - and no one would be wiser, because the only form of mass information distribution, newspapers, are government control.
I suspect the situation had been as bad or worse before radio and television; that throughout history with very minor exceptions, there has not been a functioning democracy anywhere (in the common meaning of the term). I don't find your argument there was one convincing.
But there was: the church.
I have to agree to this because I feel that there is a serious disdain for protesters in this country. Many people I know seem to feel that hurting or arresting peaceful protesters is okay.
The amount of apathy in this country is staggering.
Guess its not fun to find out how bad it is to express a point of view. Go look at all the hoops abortion protestors have to jump through. They wouldn't even dare cross the threshold of the business because by law most can't even come within shouting distance of their targets.
So yeah, welcome to the club. Business and government use the power of the later to enforce their will. The sad part is, people will cheer this type of behavior on provided its exercised against people they don't like but suddenly they are all aghast of when it hits them.
As with all other forms of freedom of speech, asking the government to silence people you do not like is akin to allowing government to silence you when someone else does not like your speech.
Do you really believe the two are comparable?
Anti-choice protesters have assaulted women trying to get low cost health care, have murdered doctors, and have aligned themselves against the poorest, least powerful people in this country (poor women of color). Recently, a pro-life group distributed a message suggesting pretending to provide rides to women needing health care, but actually kidnapping them and taking them to a church. This is crazy shit, and some of them are terrifying people.
I also believe you're misrepresenting the state of affairs. Anti-choice protesters can protest right outside of clinics on sidewalks, streets, etc. At least in my state, they can. And, I've not seen much in the way of police violence against anti-choice protesters. I haven't seen police setting up anti-choice protesters and encouraging them to commit violent acts. Maybe this is happening, and I just don't know it, because I'm not in those circles (I think it's assumed here in this thread that I'm left wing, but that's not really accurate; though I am firmly pro-choice). I know it isn't happening in my state, however, as I saw it with my own eyes. Pro-choice groups were stalked by police, while pro-life groups were ignored even when they became aggressive and got physical.
Anyway, I've never asked for pro-life activists to be silenced. I do think that if they physically prevent someone from getting medical care, they are violating that person's basic rights. I also find it particularly reprehensible that they target the poorest and least powerful people. Wealthy white women get abortions all the time at places other than Planned Parenthood or other free and low cost clinics; but, pro-life groups would rather harass the weak and poor, who are often just needing birth control or medical services unrelated to abortion.
Freedom of speech as it's written in the 1st amendment is NOT a blanket of protection against everything you say.
"In America, you’re simply guaranteed the right to speak without the government taking action against you. However, that doesn’t mean your employer can’t fire you for bad-mouthing him on Facebook, and it certainly doesn’t mean you can say whatever you want whenever you want with full impunity"
http://www.nogalesinternational.com/opinion/guest_opinion/fr...
Abortion protestors don't merely express a point of view, they deliberately attempt to prevent people from accessing health services at places where an abortion may be provided. A protestor that disrupts a business or barricades themselves to a door can reasonably be expected to be detained or arrested, but not charged with terrorism or charged with major felonies.
Why would you think your free speech rights should give you immunity from deportation if you're not actually here legally? Protesting while obviously out of compliance with the law is quite a bit different from being suppressed by a completely fabricated charge.
Because freedom of speech is more important than immigration bullshit, and because arresting people on unrelated charges is one of many tools in the toolchest of those who wish to silence dissent.
It is one of many chilling effects that makes large scale movements all but impossible in the US. Police simply wander around spotting people they think might have something in their past that allows them to arrest them. I'm a middle class white guy, and I've been detained and had my ID run at least a dozen times in the past two years, merely for having the gall to show up at a protest. I've never been arrested, and never had a warrant, so I don't fear being detained the way many would...but knowing that you will very likely be targeted just for being present, even if you aren't breaking any laws, insures a whole lot of people simply don't show up.
So, by saying this is OK, as long as it is not a "completely fabricated charge" you're insuring that there is no such thing as a large scale movement to change anything in the US. Most people cannot afford to be targeted by police in the way that a lot of activists I know have been.
I believe that undocumented workers have the right to free speech. I believe that people with warrants have the right to free speech. They don't have that free speech because they know they are likely to be targeted by police if they exercise that speech for dissent (just like anyone expressing dissent becomes a target). It's just that the cost of being targeted by police is so much higher than it is for someone like me.
I think understand your position a little better now, that as you said checking people's status has a chilling effect. I was thinking of the undocumented thing in the context of an actual protest with people holding signs saying they are undocumented. I believe this is basically daring the police to do something about you. There is basically no way for an undocumented immigrant to protest without crossing over into civil disobedience, which has obvious costs. I still don't think it's totally the same, but I see where you're coming from.
Actually, I think there's interesting discussion to be had around where you're coming from, and where I'm coming from. And, also with regard to the actual law.
Local police departments actually are not supposed to enforce immigration laws. It's even likely unconstitutional in some cases for local police officers to target people for searches and ID checks based on the assumption that they are here illegally. It's not even about my beliefs on the issue. It's about local police policy and ordinances.
The reasons that local police departments aren't tasked with immigration enforcement are many.
For example, imagine a domestic dispute between a person who is in the US without documentation and a partner who is here legally. Let's imagine the partner who is here legally is violent, and beats the crap out of the person who is here without documentation. How do you want this to play out? Do you want the person being abused to not call for help for fear of being deported? Or, do you want the cops to come do their job, help someone who is being hurt, and haul the abuser away leaving the victim of the abuse safe? Most jurisdictions in the US have chosen the latter. Cops have a lot of leeway to be assholes in this circumstance, but they're under policy guidance to help the victim and not make the situation worse.
Another example, say an undocumented immigrant witnesses a violent crime. Do you want them to be deported if they come forward and identify the assailant? Or, do you want them to be able to report the crime, give their testimony (even in court), and help put a dangerous person away?
I believe being part of the civic discourse, up to and including participating in a protest, march, rally, etc. is of a piece with these other examples. If a local police officer catches an armed robber, and that robber turns out to be an undocumented immigrant, I won't argue about immigration getting involved. But, if someone wants to speak to encourage more kind immigration law that effects them and their family? Yeah, I think they should be able to do that, without fear of being targeted.
Civil disobedience is great, and I support it. But, it is also an action that requires privilege. Many undocumented immigrants have families to support (often including children who are legal US citizens, having been born here); if they are arrested and deported for speaking out, their whole family suffers.
Admittedly, I fall very far on the side of being opposed to our immigration laws as they currently stand. I believe state borders are immoral, in and of themselves, regardless of how they are enforced. Even so, the reality is that local law enforcement shouldn't be using the threat of deportation to stifle dissent. Not because I say so, but because people all over the country have said so, and it is reflected in local laws and police department policies. But, when it comes to protests...the rules get tossed out the window. Protesters are nearly always considered second class citizens, and subject to more aggressive tactics; constitutional protections are considered much lower during a protest action, especially if some protesters are breaking the law.
Given that undercover cops often (so often that it is to be expected, and activist trainers have to cover it as though it will happen) incite law breaking in order to allow uniformed officers to engage more aggressively, I think it's time to turn that tide way the fuck back.
In short, I hear you. I might have even agreed with you at some point in the past. I understand where your position comes from. But, somewhere along the way, my allegiance flipped. I simply don't trust my government to have good intentions.
Shouldn't this extend to private property as well? Who are you to say who can and can't be in your home?
I think there's a useful discussion to be had about what private property looks like. Should a corporation be allowed to hold a monopoly over millions of acres of land over a span of hundreds of years, for instance? I think most folks, anarchists and extreme leftists included, would consider a home and a family garden a perfectly legitimate piece of "private property". But, somewhere, as the stakes get higher, and the abstractions for the entity that "owns" the property (and who is responsible for what happens on that property, such as pollution, violence, etc.) becomes more diffuse, there is useful discussion to be had about whether that is legitimate private property or not.
I believe it is a stretch to say that an entity as diffuse as the United States (or any nation state) should be able to prevent billions of people from traveling freely from Mexico to Canada.
In short, I think "private property" is a good and useful fiction that we can probably all agree on, when we are speaking of individual humans who live and work on a piece of property. When you begin to make up fictional entities to "own" the property, I am less confident of the rightness of the theory.
Yes, well done. My one-acre homestead is indeed exactly the same as a sovereign state, it in fact changes nothing when the scale is millions of times that large. Also access to private property and state immigration are in fact the exact same concept as well.
You are implying that only people who follow the laws in the US have the right of free speech. That's a very, very sad way to look at things, as it means anyone trying to actually change anything has no basic rights.
i.e. same sex couples, people smoking weed, etc. etc. These people are breaking the law (in most of the country) but they absolutely must be allowed free speech to talk about it. If not, how can anything ever change or get better?
Taking away free speech from people that don't follow the current laws of the US means a very bleak future.
Your right to free speech begins and ends with speech. You have a right to call for marijuana legalization, but if marijuana is illegal and you light up a joint in front of a cop, then yes he can arrest you and this is no violation of your free speech rights. Correspondingly, your right to free speech, right here and right now, is naturally pre-empted when you have no legal right to even be in the country. From the perspective of the US government, you are perfectly free to exercise your opinion about immigration reform from outside of the borders of the USA. The fact that this is obviously less desirable from the point of view of the illegal alien is basically irrelevant to what they have a "right" to do.
What you are talking about is civil disobedience, but you don't seem to understand how that works either. Civil disobedience is knowing something is against the law, and doing it anyway as an act of political resistance to motivate change in the system. Even then, you accept that an act is illegal and that you are breaking that law, rather than just blanket argument that anybody who is actively protesting a law should be allowed to break it without legal consequences because they disagree with it. I get it, you're for immigration reform so you think it's a stupid law and you don't care if they break it. But I'm arguing from the standpoint of a general legal principle.
Not at all.
I'm for allowing people to assemble, peacefully protest and have their voice heard.
I'm for not escalating unrelated charges to people trying to do so.
Once you let that happen, you'll very quickly find every single person is breaking some obscure law or other, and every single person will be arrested when they even talk about voting for the other party.
If it was considered illegal i think the officers should be punished at least to some extent. Why are Police officers encouraging crime to begin with?
Because that's standard practice for breaking up protests. See: false flag NYPD starting altercations with police at OWS in order to give police justification for violently putting down the protest.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/may/10/g20-policing...
"If it was considered illegal i think the officers should be punished at least to some extent."
I think they should be, too. The judge had some harsh words for the APD, and the charges were reduced to misdemeanors and the sentence (which was originally looking like years in prison) to time served. Though, one of the protesters in this case ended up spending about 2 years in jail because he had a past warrant (he missed his court date for that old warrant in Dallas because he was in jail on a felony charge in Houston, so they punished him for missing that date). He was just released a few weeks ago.
It's also worth mentioning that APD did not reveal their officers had made the devices or suggested their use in the action, and fought to not reveal their involvement in court. The Houston police department, who were prosecuting the case, didn't even know APD was involved in the protest, until a few lucky breaks led to three of the six undercover officers being outed. It is, frankly, miraculous that those seven kids aren't still in jail and shackled with felony convictions. Dumb luck revealed that they'd been setup, and the prosecutors were forced to fold.
But, it's happening every day. This is standard operating procedure when dealing with protesters; and, not just at the national level. And, as far as we can tell, the chain of command on this particular operation went all the way up to the chief of police. It was not rogue cops going beyond their assigned duties to set kids up for felony charges.
Some references, so this doesn't end up being dismissed as a paranoid fantasy (I know it's pretty unbelievable stuff):
http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/austin-police-infil...
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Undercover-A...
http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2012-09-07/apd-infiltrat...
More came out later based on open records requests, but my google fu is failing me at the moment. In short, it was actually worse than we knew during the early stages of the trial when these three articles were written.
"Why are Police officers encouraging crime to begin with?"
You tell me.
Why would police officers encourage crime, encourage violence, encourage escalation in tactics, etc.?
so the only option that will leave people at the end will be in fact (oh irony!) terrorism.
There is no excuse to be dumber in action than the people/company/administration you oppose. Business is ritualized warfare. It's not about playing fair.
What are you suggesting?
I am suggesting that doing direct action, when you are few in number and susceptible to arbitrary brutality, makes the movement weaker. If they really care about success then they would do it differently. It doesn't take great genius to get arrested.
To win you need to be strong, skillful or lucky. When you are none of these things you are wasting your time seeking confrontation.
David won against goliath because he was skillful.
I think that following your advice would lead to no one, ever, fighting against oppression. Because the oppressor is always more powerful and better equipped. But, without a few people having the courage to fight in the beginning, those who are afraid will never feel empowered to join.
It is also useful to know that this kind of action isn't generally subject to arrest. This is a simple "make a little noise, get asked to leave, leave" kinda of thing. It is clear that even this minor act of disobedience is being punished in this absurdly over the top way in order to keep people thinking like you: It's too risky, it's too confrontational.
So, I have to repeat: What would you suggest? You are saying this is foolish, you are saying it should be done differently. But, you don't offer any suggestions for what would indicate skill (and no one will ever be "strong" against a foe as powerful as the fossil fuels industry).
And, maybe these folks are just hoping for luck, in the face of overwhelming odds. If enough people take a spin, maybe somebody will hit the jackpot that turns this tide. Given the circumstances, and our seeming inevitable slide into the madness that is global climate change (which, I'll assume, you're familiar with and not one of the nutty right wing climate change deniers), I'd say we need more people taking that chance, not fewer.
But, if you have better ideas, I'm all ears.