The Misapprehension About Occupy

Occupy Poster by Rich Black

Interesting, interesting.

I've been following some of the do's and festivities outside the conventions via that exciting new feature of something known as "the Intertubes" that someone has dubbed "the Livestreams," and it's been both surprising and satisfying (in some ways) that the "Occupy" presence is relatively minor. It's not absent; Occupy is the base of operations, encampment, and Protest Services in a sense, and the Occupy interest in shaming the banking sector is always appropriate and on display -- especially in a place like Charlotte which is nothing but a Banking Sector.

I'm surprised at the relatively low number of participants in the demonstrations, however. Most of the demonstrations and marches I've seen so far in both Tampa and Charlotte attract numbers in the low hundreds, some far fewer. There have been a few that attract a thousand or even two thousand. But it is nothing at all like the numbers of protesters we became used to at previous political conventions. This seems to be a deliberate strategy, by the way, by having a protest presence at (or rather, relatively near) the conventions, but not making a big deal of protesting at the conventions.

Whether that strategy was developed at/by Occupy Tampa or Charlotte or anywhere else, I can't say; the strategic discussions I'm aware of tend to either be about Big Picture or about minutiae, and the only events being discussed among the groups I'm still involved in were/are the Occupy National Gathering and the upcoming S17 Anniversary.

The conventions don't figure in those discussions at all.

After the really outrageous behavior of the police and authority in general at the 2008 conventions in Denver and Minneapolis/St. Paul, it's no wonder. There were thousands of protesters and there were also mass arrests, pre-crime arrests, raids on participants, police attacks on peaceful protesters, massive police presence, and a general atmosphere of repression. Much of it was sickening. It was emblematic of how sick our political system had become by then, but for those in the midst of the repression, it wasn't emblematic of anything but the fact that they were being beat down, gassed, pummeled, arrested, and locked in cages for days.

The relatively low number of participating protesters in Tampa and Charlotte means that the massive police presence and their fancy Po-Po Troopers get ups looks -- and is -- silly. Oops. This was manifest in Tampa where formations of Po-Po Troopers marched hither and thither for some reason that nobody could figure out, and became an object of mockery and derision that went far beyond the usual choruses of the "Imperial Storm Troopers March" one hears whenever the RoboCop contingent appears.

When Po-Po Troopers by the hundreds protected the Westboro Baptist Church marchers (all eight of them) from the dozen or so Dirty Fucking Hippies (and the many dozen more camera people) in Tampa, the point of all this martial display was suddenly lost, and so far as I know, the the protective services at the Tampa convention never again dressed as if they were Going Off To War, and there were very few hostile confrontations with police afterwards. The most effective demonstration I saw via the live stream in Tampa was the Silent March Against Police Brutality during which there was a silent standoff with police at a blocked intersection, a confrontation that was resolved when the police backed down.

What? They backed down?

That's sure what it looked like. First time in a long time I've seen that at a major demonstration.

Most of the participants in the demonstrations at the conventions -- at least the participants in the demonstrations that have been covered by Nate and Tim, the two live streamers I've been following -- have appeared to be anarchists or their supporters. I'm sure there are many others involved in protests I haven't seen or have only seen bits and pieces of. Code Pink is there, Veterans for Peace is there, Planned Parenthood is there, immigrant rights groups and many, many other organizations are represented in the streets. Anarchists are featured in part because they have been crucial participants in Occupy from the outset, and partly because they seem to be the ones who are the most actively and consistently demonstrating.

But there are not -- and never have been -- a lot of them.

What they lack in numbers they make up for in energy, determination and enthusiasm. And don't forget the endless argument and dispute over which route to take now.

But so far as I can tell, the Occupy presence is generally quite small, and it appears to form something of a logistics hub. In its own way, this is consistent with the evolution of Occupy since the violent police raids and repression last year. This caused the dispersal of the "Occupy" idea and Movement far and wide, to the point where it is now pervasive, essentially everywhere. The creativity and innovation that characterized some of the encampments has now become an inspiration for alternative development, demonstration and idea generation in numberless low-key activist camps, squats, hostels, farms, and urban settings. It's everywhere. And no one can be unaware of the effect the Occupy Movement has had on our perceptions of the economic peril we all live under thanks to the renegade banks and the government that serves them. Names and faces have been put to that peril. Powerlessness is no longer an option, nor even an excuse any more.

The Peace Movement, the Immigrant Rights Movement, the Environmental Movement and the Worker Rights/Union Movement have all benefited from the efforts of Occupy to highlight their importance to the future of the country and of mankind. Occupy has been at the center of their resurgence.

 But strangely there are still those who expect Occupy to form some kind of political bloc and to press their case (for what?) in the political arena, and they won't do it. The whole point of Occupy from the beginning has been to defy that system, to work outside it, and to develop alternatives to it.

The idea of Occupy becoming a political bloc, then, is absurd.

But those inside the political system cannot imagine Occupy not doing it, and so they are still puzzled at what Occupy "wants".

It's not about "wants" -- it's about doing.

Envisioning That Better Future -- Seven: Liberty and Equality for All

Yes. Well. That's the crux of the struggle, still, isn't it?

What does it mean, this call for liberty and equality that most of us hearing all our lives? What are we talking about here?

I've written before about the contrasting liberationist and communitarian impulses of the rebellions of the 1960's -- both of them asserting liberty and equality as fundamental values, but each having a distinctive vision of what they meant and how they would be applied in the real world.

The Movement Liberationists were not on the whole inclined toward Community. The Movement Communitarians were not, on the whole, inclined toward rampant individualism.

"Liberty" means something different in a Communitarian context than it does in a Liberationist one.

"Equality" means something different to a Liberationist than it does to a Communitarian.

The underlying spark for the rebellions of the 1960's was the Civil Rights Movement that began in the 1950's (which in turn was an outgrowth of earlier civil rights and justice movements). The Civil Rights movement combined Liberationist and Communitarian impulses rather successfully, but in the translation to the mostly urban white campus environment of the 1960s, the two were disentwined and separated into distinct threads.

The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley was a strongly Liberationist movement that utilized little or nothing of a Communitarian nature. Individuals did come together of course -- there were thousands of students involved -- and the "community" was the campus itself, already present.

The Free Speech Movement did not seek to create a community, in other words. It grew out of the pre-existing campus community. It sought to liberate individuals in the community from the egregious strictures of the authorities of that community against political speech and activity on campus.

In this it was partially successful -- after a good deal of struggle. There was no attempt to fundamentally transform the campus community. That would come later.

Commmunitarianism did not really arise among the 1960's rebels until the advent of the Hippies, something that was not a campus phenomenon at all. The Hippies, instead, were an intentional community of like-minded strangers brought together in San Francisco in the famous Haight-Ashbury District who chose to live partially communally in an urban setting. Numbers of early communitarians quickly split off into sub-communities who established more or less self-sustaining rural communes, some of which are still in existence (most failed, of course; yes, "of course." It's very difficult to do communes successfully over time in this country).

The liberation the communitarians sought was liberation from social conformity and from interference by outside authority. Equality was a value within the commune.

On the other hand, Liberationists sought the liberation of the individual from the arbitrary imposition of authority, and from that impulse, liberationism developed a "group liberation" vision somewhat akin to the Civil Rights Movement, focused almost entirely on liberating various groups from the strictures of law and authority, but often leaving the individuals to fend for themselves once "liberated."

Most of this liberation was won -- sometimes after intense struggle -- but always at a cost. We don't often discuss the costs involved in "liberation," and it is not my point to discuss it extensively in this post, but we should be aware that "liberation" has in many cases been an unfair trade off.

"Equality" among Liberationists tended to be -- and still is -- a matter of legal status. One is equal before the law, or is supposed to be, or is in theory. That's the extent of it.

If we truly want a successful vision of the future, we're going to have to find some way to fuse to two again, and that's been a big part of the process of the Occupy Movement, perhaps its most important aspect to date.

My own impression has been that the core of the Occupations is always found in the attempt at forming temporary intentional communities. Every one of them to my knowledge -- and I've followed several dozen of the hundreds and hundreds that have been started -- have had the same initial goals: to set up and operate temporary communities of like minded and dedicated people on behalf of "the 99%" -- in other words, on behalf of the community as a whole.

It hasn't been entirely successful, in that most Americans have no experience with and no conception of this kind of intentional community building based on anarchic and democratic principles. It's all new and very unfamiliar to most Americans. And this sort of community-building is what is most threatening to the powers that be. Destroying these spontaneous communities -- and preventing their re-emergence -- has been one of the primary objectives of the anti-Occupy crackdowns by police forces all over the country.

Many Americans cannot grasp and are quite frightened by the prospect of these communities, filled as they are with so many of the discards and rejects of America, a fear that our rulers like to encourage.

And yet I think it is through the continued development of these communities that we'll find our future -- if one is to be found at all.

Is it a future of Liberty and Equality? Honestly? Not in the sense most of us have become accustomed to over the last several generations, no.

That's part of the difficulty so many Occupations have encountered. "Liberty" and "equality" mean something different in the context of an Occupation camp than they do in the context of the every-day legal and social processes of our society.

"Liberty" carries with it the burden of responsibility; one is not simply free to do as one pleases, in other words, and one is not able to do or be what one wants without consideration of the interests of everyone else in the community. This is the essence of the process of community-building from the ground up. It is not easy to do this; for some people, it is not even possible.

I was discussing some of these concepts with a fellow who has been active in intentional community development field for twenty years or more, and his initial statement was, "You people are trying to do something that's almost impossible." Yes, that's so, I acknowledged, now how do we do it?

"You're going to make a lot of mistakes," he said, "but that's the way you're going to learn." And so it has been.

The principles of horizontal organization and democratic authority seem to be more and more solidly established within the Occupy Movement as time goes on; these are the fundamentals of the Movement, and as people become more familiar with them, and more at ease with them, they seem more and more natural. The problem initially was the absence of any easily accessible guidelines to work from. Unfamiliarity with the processes involved and real discomfort with the results of some of the attempts led to lots and lots of mistakes, but that's how you learn.

"Be not afraid" became the motto flashed on the Verizon Building in Manhattan. ("Do not be afraid.")

"We are winning."

That's becoming more and more true every day. At least it seems to me, even though I have stepped back from day-to-day active participation in the Movement.

"Liberty" is tied directly with responsibility; "equality" is tied with interest and ability.

And all of it, in my view, is wrapped within conceptions of Dignity and Justice, Community and Peace that have been percolating for many long years.

It is the zeitgeist of the era.

The current ruling class is shuddering and facing irrelevancy in the midst of an unfamiliar yet oddly compelling global populist (not so much "popular") movement that can neither be suppressed nor absorbed. This is the Future, there's no way around it.

We will see a new era of Liberty and Equality for All. It won't be quite what we had in mind back in the Old Days, but that's probably for the best.

Nobody Expects the Paris Commune

A lot of the critical attention being paid to the Occupation movement has to do with its amorphousness and apparent absence of leadership. The lack of clearly articulated demands. Inability to appoint a spokesperson. And that sort of thing.

Etc.

Well, yes. It's true.

Ezra (Klein) did an interview with David Graeber today for the Washington Post that sort of documents how this thing originated. It's worth a close read. Because it is posted in its entirety at dKos, I will cheerfully repost it in its entirety here.

‘You’re creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature.'

David Graeber is an anthropologist at Goldsmiths, University of London, and author of ‘Direct Action: An Ethnography’ and 'Debt: The First 5000 Years.' He was also one of the initial organizers of the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protests. And he thinks the people asking for a list of demands are missing the point of the movement quite dramatically. We spoke this morning by phone.

Ezra Klein: So when did your involvement with these protests begin?

David Graeber: July 2nd. That was the first actual meeting. What happened was AdBusters put out this call for these protests. We had heard there was supposed to be a general assembly on July 2nd. So I just showed up. But it was a rally, not an assembly. Some traditional Marxist group had set up stages and megaphones and was making speeches and were planning a march. Acting as if they were already running the whole show. So we said we don’t need to do this. We pulled a small group together and decided to have a real assembly.

So we wandered over to another part of the area and began a meeting and people kept migrating over. But we had a problem because we only had six weeks. AdBusters had already advertised the date to 80,000 people. And their date was a Saturday. You can’t really shut down Wall Street on a Saturday. So we were working under some significant constraints. We assembled 80 or 100 people and formed working groups for outreach, process, so forth and so on. And we began meeting every week.

One thing that helped a lot was a smattering of people from Spain and Greece and Tunisia who had been doing this sort of thing more recently. They explained that the model that seemed to work was to take something that seemed to be public space, reclaim it, and build up an organization headquarters around that from which you can begin doing other things.

EK: This movement is organized rather differently than most protest movements. There isn’t really a list of demands, or goals, or even much of an identifiable leadership. But if I understand you correctly, that’s sort of the point.

DG: It’s very similar to the globalization movement. You see the same criticisms in the press. It’s a bunch of kids who don’t know economics and only know what they’re against. But there’s a reason for that. it’s pre-figurative, so to speak. You’re creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature. And it’s a way of juxtaposing yourself against these powerful, undemocratic forces you’re protesting. If you make demands, you’re saying, in a way, that you’re asking the people in power and the existing institutions to do something different. And one reason people have been hesitant to do that is they see these institutions as the problem.

EK: So if you say, for instance, that you want a tax on Wall Street and then you’ll be happy, you’re implicitly saying that you’re willing to be happy with a slightly modified version of the current system.

DG: Right. The tax on Wall Street will go to people controlled by Wall Street.

EK: By which you mean government.

DG: Yes. So we are keeping it open-ended. In a way, what we want is to create spaces where people can think about questions like that. In New York, according to law, any unpermitted assembly of more than 12 people is illegal in New York. Space itself is not an openly available resource. But the one resource that isn’t scarce is smart people with ideas. So we’re trying to reframe things away from the rhetoric of demands to a questions of visons and solutions. Now how that translates into actual social change is an interesting question. One way this has been done elsewhere is you have local initiatives that come out of the local assemblies.

EK: It also seems that the tradeoff here, from an organizational standpoint, is that if you say you want, say, a tax on Wall Street, then the people who aren’t interested in a tax on Wall Street stay home. So remaining vague on demands can make the tent bigger. But it also seems that, at some point, people are going to need to be working towards concrete goals and experiencing dicrete successes in order to sustain the energy of a movement like this.

GB: As the thing grows, new organizational forms will develop. At this point, the New York occupation has 30 different working groups for everything from handling sanitation to discussing labor issues and tax policy. So we’re trying to set up ways that people with different interests can plug into the movement. There’s even a newspaper. The ‘Occupied Wall Street Journal.’ Of course, this is nothing compared to what happened in Tahrir Square, where they even had dry cleaners.

EK: We’re also beginning to see “Occupy Wall Street” link up with with more traditional activist groups. Some members of the protest were speaking via videofeed at today’s big confab of liberal groups in Washington. MoveOn.org and organized labor are planning a march in support of the occupiers for Wednesday. How does that change what is, for now, a very decentralized movement?

DG: It is organically happening but there are definite problems that occur. We found this back in the days of the globalization movement. Unions were very supportive and provided resources but they’re very different organizations. The real difficulty is how to work with people who are top-down and have a funding base, as it means there are things they can say in public and things they can’t, and groups where people can say whatever they want and the whole idea is to be decentralized. One problem I’ve already heard of is that people are coming in and changing the tenor of the general assemblies to speeches, and that’s not really what it’s supposed to be about. So you have to balance the aspect where you’re trying to show what direct democracy could be like and the effort to link up with groups that have a form of organization we’ve rejected.

EK: The name of the group is “Occupy Wall Street,” but from what I can tell by listening to interviews with the protesters and reading messages at ‘We are the 99,’ it’s not just about Wall Street, it’s about the powerful in general, which include politicians and wealthy folks who don’t make their money in finance, and beyond that, it’s really about the less-powerful. The real running theme I’m hearing is hopelessness: that we did everything right and played by the rules and went to school or got a job and now we’re buried in debt and can’t make ends meet, while these folks at the top of the economy seem to just keep prospering and prospering.

DG: Right, and Wall Street is just a beautiful illustration of that. Here we have these guys who were just greedy crooks, who crashed the global economy and did terrible things to the lives of people all over the world. None of them have paid at all. There was a debate about whether their bonuses should be lowered. On the other hand, if people point out to vigorously that this has happened, they do get arrested. And that helps to point out the essential double standard of the system.

When you think about it, as many are doing right now, this is an extraordinarily revolutionary vision and the consequence of the vision is extraordinarily revolutionary action. Which we have been seeing spreading over Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, into Asia, and of course all over the United States now. It's an amazing and wonderful thing. 132 Occupations so far planned or taking place now in the United States, over two dozen internationally not counting the predecessor actions in Greece and Spain, Tunisia and Egypt and so many other places.

It is as fully a communitarian vision in action as I've ever seen, and it is quite different than those I knew and knew of in the Old Days. Those who insist it is nothing other that Dirty Fucking Hippies acting up once more before they die off simply have no idea. Or perhaps they're just too frightened of going through that era again.

Some of the occupiers no doubt are utopian visionaries, but most seem very firmly grounded in an almost Puritanical propriety. No drugs, no alcohol, no violence. Though it is not mentioned, one assumes: No sex, either. People participating in occupations continue to work at their jobs -- if they have them; they help one another on site and in their communities if they don't (or if they do, as well). The occupations, therefore, are far more ascetic than their critics are able to understand yet. In a sense, they're almost like monasteries -- without the overlay of hierarchical religion or a strictly political motivation or a pecuniary interest. They exist to be, to live, to share, to enjoy; they don't exist to have, to steal, to destroy.

Obviously, Authority in its global majesty does not know what to do with them, nor how to. The Occupiers are their sons, their daughters, their friends, their colleagues. The Occupiers in a very real sense are them, at least those among 99% who impose authority in exchange for a regular paycheck.

This is where the DFH analogies simply fall to pieces. The movements of the 1960's were consciously based on separation from the majority. The Hippies were trying to make a better world to be sure, but they were doing it by setting themselves consciously apart from the "straights" -- which is to say, the rest of Americans, the vast and silent majority Jerry Rubin mocks so cuttingly in his interview with Phil Donohue -- going so far as to actually ghettoize themselves in the context of San Francisco's Haight Ashbury. Shortly, the Hippie movement became a commercial product of the media. Which is why, at the end of the summer of 1967, the Diggers proclaimed the Death of the Hippie. In the sense of a genuine counter culture movement, it was over, while the commercial exploitation of the movement and the exploitation of naive and impressionable young people continued unabated for some years more.

What's going on now is something else again entirely, almost impossible to exploit commercially, ultimately far more "proper."

It's not the Paris Commune, but in some ways it may be even more revolutionary. It remains to be seen. I won't predict an outcome.

But there is very definitely something happening here.

The End of the Consumer-Demand Economy

Nobody really wants to admit it, but the Deficit Crisis Crisis Deal has sealed the End of the Consumer-Demand Economy in the United States.

The only way to revive it temporarily under the circumstances is through inflating another bubble, with plenty of profit-taking at the top and even more thoroughgoing misery everywhere else when the bubble inevitably pops.

That's it. Period. Done.

The Consumer-Demand economy that we Americans were used to all those years has now shifted to China and India and most of the rest of Asia, somewhat to Latin America and isolated parts of Africa.

Maybe Russia under the Oligarchs will provide a model of where we're headed, I don't know, but if it is, it is hard to imagine that the proles won't be restless. The way they manage popular discontent in Russia is interesting. Apparently, it's largely a matter of propaganda from the now-free-and-independent media, mocking and suppressing truth-telling dissident voices, and raking an Oligarch over the coals from time to time (including show trials) to prove that the Government is on the People's side. Yay.

Apparently Putin and his Mini-Me, Medvedev, are wildly popular among the suffering masses, too, because "They Care!" and "They Do What's Necessary!" Yaay.

The implosion of the Soviet Union was quite a spectacular thing, given the constant propaganda in this country about how Evil and Powerful it was. I doubt the United States is going to go through exactly that sequence of disillusion and dissolution, with a handful of predators scarfing up everything of value left by the State before its final collapse, all in a period measured in months. But you never know.

It could happen if it were in the interests of Our Nation's Owners to let it happen.

The implosion of the Soviet Union is also what enables the current rounds of Austerity (for Thee) Economics throughout the West. This is what happens when global governing theory is a monopole. When there is essentially no counterweight to one form of governance and economic activity then that One-ness will tend to consume itself into oblivion.

Leaving... what?

That remains to be seen, doesn't it?

Lots of people are putting together their picture of what the Future will look like, and it is all dark and dismal and dreary.

At least it is in the West.

What makes Krugman, et al, so livid about what is happening before our very eyes is that it doesn't have to be this way. Even with Peak Oil and Climate Change and all the other overriding conditions that are supposedly pushing this outcome on everyone.

No, it doesn't have to be this way at all. The ending of a consumer-demand economy implies its replacement with some adaptation of a subsistence economy -- which was basically what the Communitarian hippies were all about back in the day. (The Liberationist hippies, on the other hand, became hedge fund managers and corporate and plaintiff's attorneys!)

In other words, we -- well some of us -- have already been down this road, figured out how to work it pretty well, and have no problem returning to (if we ever left) a subsistence way of life.

For the urban masses, it's a difficult transition, but it's possible.

Jemez Hot Springs -- Excerpt from The Realist, Nov/Dec 1969

"We arrive at Jimez Springs about 4 o'clock in the morning vroom vroom one bus after another slipping into berth in its roadside parking lot... Now dig this, who should we come upon but these short haired sweet vanilla type Albuquerque College kids up on their first acid trip and here in the middle of nowhere comes the Ventura Freeway at 5 o'clock. "Are you God? Are you God?" they gurgled running around in this perpetual circle like candidates for pancake paint."

Clickage to embiggen and go to Realist site

And don't forget the Incomparable Wavy Gravy. An original then, and very much an original now.

Jerry Rubin Explains it All to Phil Donahue (Now With UPDATE!)

This is great.



There are several other segments from the program posted on YouTube. Check them all out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPRO5Lyjbz4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGnkJ7OCrSQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlLihajJhIM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSjX_yQ30WU

And what I'd like to know is whether watchers today can see any parallels with current events. I can see them. Does anyone else...?

==========================
UPDATE
And of course, the question arises: "Who Killed Jerry Rubin?"

The following article from The Realist, Summer 1995, explores the question.



Click to embiggen, etc, and go to the full article.

Things that make you go, hmmmmm...

The Last Letters of Ché Guevara

Click the image to embiggen it and go to the Realist site.


While researching Abbie Hoffman, I came across Ethan Persoff's site, which includes The Realist Archive Project, the purpose of which is to scan every issue of The Realist magazine/pamphlet (each issue was four pages, one fold) and post it online.

What fun.

Some of the ephemera of the 1960s is still around, particularly the psychedelic posters from the various concert venues, but most of it is just gone.

I haven't seen a copy of The Realist in decades, and I haven't thought about it either, having passed on to more substantial fare: Harpers, Salon and dKos, for example. It's fascinating to look at issues of The Realist online, and to recognize what Paul Krassner, et al, were doing back in the day, and see the striking parallels between this olde tyme underground publication that was relatively widely available if you knew where to look and how to get it -- and were interested in that kind of thing -- and today's Lefty Blogosphere. They're not the same, to be sure, because The Realist and other efforts like it came out of an atmosphere of rebellion and activism. There may be the abstract thought of rebellion in today's Lefty Blogosphere, but there is essentially no activism outside a very narrow range of approved political "action" -- phoning, faxing, writing the White House and your representatives in Congress assembled, sending money to approved candidates for office, writing for the blogs -- most of which is very private and individualized "action" that appears oddly coordinated and homogenized when it is seen by the public.

And there is all that jockeying for seats at the Big Table. To be taken seriously in other words by people who matter.

It's hard to imagine that was ever a goal or objective to those who came up with and persisted in publishing the underground samizdat in days gone by. In those days, the Underground was... well, Underground. There was a public face to it, sure, and there were characters like Abbie Hoffman and Krassner himself who were literally Underground stars, but they were agitators and monkeywrenchers par excellence, and that was risky. Very risky.

Arrests and political trials were relatively common. These days, you'd be hard pressed to find members of the Lefty Blogosphere putting themselves at that kind of risk under any circumstances, nor are they likely to defend people who do. They are far more likely to denounce and disparage any sort of Leftist "activism" that includes anything outside the approved norm.

That's partly due to a fairly standard petite bourgeois individualized shopkeeper mentality that pervades the blogosphere in general. This is how some blog proprietors make their living or want to make their living, and that is as serious as a heart attack to them. They are not going to put their livelihood or potential livelihood at risk in any way, certainly not in this economy. So they will adopt standard formulae that have proved themselves over the years, they will stick to the norms of the field, and they will discourage anything off that relatively known and narrow road. It is the nature of shopkeeping.

I've got my own little place here on blogtopia, but I'm not doing it to make a living. Blogging is not how I expect to make any income at all, it is -- for me -- a way to record and if anyone is interested, share some of my commentary on history and what's in the news, the various interests I have, travel notes, and what have you. In other words, Ché(What You Call Your)Pasa is a personal... weblog. What a concept.

I'm convinced my days as an activist are mostly over. Been there, done that. Which certainly doesn't mean that anything that needs doing is finished or completed. But there comes a time when you realize there is only so much you can do, and you only have so much time left on this Earth. Priorities. And there comes a time when you realize that your own small contribution to the Whole can probably be done better by someone else. That's a key realization that many Old Farts never make in any field.

There's a tendency in today's activist community to want to endlessly proliferate organizations, to endlessly reorganize existing ones, and to "professionalize" activism. In other words, turn movements into lobbying. As a way to make a living.

You have to constantly recruit. Induce new members to participate, donate, what have you. And divide and subdivide over and over again, to restart the process endlessly. Those who have never done it before, of course, are gratified to finally find something that will "make a difference"; those who have been down this road before are... tired. Well, many are, not all.

I was ruminating on the US Social Forum the other day, for example, and while I genuinely cheer it on, I realized that nearly everything they were set up for -- ie: information sharing and seminars on how to "do" activism itself -- were things I've already done, on a wide range of projects, and while I might be able to contribute some experiential anecdotes and provide some insight into how a Power Structure actually functions, where its weaknesses are, and what the risks are for activists going against it, I realized that I wasn't really keen to do it anymore.

If somebody wants to ask questions or hear me out on some aspect of "making a difference", fine. But otherwise, have at it, kids! Go forth and change the world! You can do it!

Yes, you can.

On Effective Resistance -- and Abbie Hoffman

I'm in a strange and contentious mood today. Maybe it's the extended heatwave. Maybe it's just my "time".

Today would be my father's 109th birthday if he were still alive. Of course he died many years ago in a hospital where he was finally taken at the last to perish of a cancer that is usually controllable or curable if treated early enough.

He refused treatment when it might have saved his life. By that time, he was refusing most every overture from the outside world. He lived his last few years as a virtual hermit, doing his best to withdraw into a shell. I had no contact with him by then since I was more than a thousand miles away on the one hand, and I was unable to get a response to letters or phone calls, on the other hand.

In fact, I found the letters I had sent to him stacked in a neat pile on a side table when I explored his house after he died. None had been opened. I had tried calling him numerous times, but he never answered the phone. Eventually, I called his sister who lived down the street from him to find out whether he was OK, and she said he was, but she hadn't seen or talked to him for over 6 months, maybe a year. She thought he was fine, he just didn't want to be bothered. He wouldn't even listen to her the last time she saw him. He just looked right past her. What could you do?

Yes. What can you do? I missed his funeral and burial due to a flight delay from California, but I did attend his wake at the home of his sister, and I left with my head reeling, revolted and disgusted at these shallow and self-centered Iowans, claiming as they did: "Well, you know, Ray committed suicide. He wouldn't take any help when it could have made a difference. When they finally got him to the hospital it was too late. It was his own fault. Did anybody send for a priest?" The best thing they could say about him was that he should have stayed in the military. He had a very promising career in the Air Force, and he would have been out of the mess that things became in his small town in Iowa. It would have been for the best for all concerned.

OK.

At the time, I was actively resisting military service -- which the rest of the assembly to "honor" my father knew -- and so I saw it as backhanded slap not just at my father (for being himself) but at me, too, for being a doGdamned Hippie. He had left the military to go home and defend his older brother who on trial for murder. A political trial, I might add, for the real killer was known to the prosecutor before he took the case to trial, and it ended with a directed verdict of acquittal. That was the "mess" that things became in small town Iowa.

I still rage about those people. Not that it ever did me the least bit of good.

But then, I didn't have to deal with them more than occasionally. What a relief.

This is a picture of my father's house as it looks today:


I think it was actually taken last year, and the house looked a good deal different when my father lived there. The sort of mismatched window on the first floor left front was a door, the main door to the house. The larger window on the left front was even larger, and it was put in by my father to please my mother who came out to Iowa from California and who found the house dark and dreary when she got there. The house was built in stages, starting in the 1840's or '50s with the two rooms in back (which became the kitchen and dining room when my father lived there.) The small wing on the left side was added as a lean to originally, in the late 1850's; it had two bedrooms and a bathroom when my father lived there. Not too long afterward, a second story was added over the four early rooms, and one of the rooms above still had a Gothic arched window that Grant Wood made famous:




The front was added in the 1870's, and included a parlor, a stair hall, and a large bedroom upstairs.

A wraparound porch was added at the same time.

My father had lived in the house for years, since the early 30's. It had belonged to his father from whom my father inherited it. This was one of several houses on the street my grandfather had owned. Once it was in my father's name, he "cleaned it up," as he said, removing all traces of its Victorian Era origins from the exterior, including the porch, and masking the Gothic window from the outside with siding and a new window. He had it painted white. He partially modernized the interior -- Late Moderne Era light fixtures, tropical figured wallpapers, plumbing updates and the like -- and overwrought Victorian furniture was replaced with simple '40's modern pieces. Linoleum and new appliances were installed in the kitchen and the coal fired furnace in the basement was updated.

By the time my father died, the house was pretty much of a wreck. He hadn't maintained it for years while he'd shut himself up in it like a hermit. He'd rented out the upstairs to some very strange people who pretty much trashed that part of the place, but they're the ones who finally got him to a hospital. Some attorney friends of his said they'd take care of his estate on contingency, and so they did. Of course, it was nothing but trouble getting the few things I wanted boxed up and sent to California, getting the house sold, the proceeds (such as they were) distributed, and ultimately gaining closure on the whole sorry affair.

But you can see by the way I write about it more than 40 years later, I'm still puzzled at all the unknown elements of my father's final years, and annoyed at the complete insensitivity to him and to others shown by his surviving friends and relations.

I mentioned that I was actively resisting military service at the time my father died. I was called up for the draft in October, 1967, during a time of intense protests at draft centers all over the country, including Oakland where I was ordered to appear. In fact, the Oakland Induction Center was shut down by the protests during the time I was in transit. There had been protests and shut downs and arrests all week. I thought that going for my physical as ordered could be quite an interesting experience, though I had no intention of becoming a troop.

And it was interesting to say the least. We were scheduled to arrive at the Induction Center at 10am, but because of the protests, we were held at Santa Rita until about 4pm, and needless to say, we tended to act up some while we waited. Anti-war chants were our favorite.

When we were finally delivered to the Center, the smell of teargas was very strong in the air and the protest was still going on. Protesters had been removed from the front entrance, but they were right behind the double line of Oakland police who formed a kind of gauntlet for us to literally run through from the bus to the front entrance of the Induction center. The crowd was chanting slogans, and some of us were chanting too and raising fists as we stumbled into the Induction Center.

I remember being surprised at how respectful and even gentle the staff was once we were inside. I expected something much rougher, and it wasn't that at all.

We could hear -- and if we were near a window, see -- the protests outside all through our not too excruciating ordeal inside, and I saw people being arrested and hauled away. Some of us inside made for the windows in our underwear and shouted our solidarity with those outside, but truthfully, most did not. Most were silent, enduring the various pokage and proddage that's part and parcel of the process and getting ourselves "evaluated" by the psych team. Some of it was very funny, like when we had to give a urine sample and the military fellow supervising this process had to keep very close (and eager) watch on us to make sure... well, not sure what, but he obviously loved his job!

Now and then, we could hear the pop of tear-gas outside amid all the chants, and soon enough the air would fill with that acrid aroma and we'd all start coughing and gagging. They gave us something for it, but I honestly don't remember what. It may have been just a wet cloth to hold over our noses and mouths. I can still feel the burn of teargas in the back of my throat from that day, and every time my eyes are irritated due to allergies, I'm reminded of it.

Eventually, they were done with us, and I was surprised it was over so fast. I had a handful of papers to take with me, and when we got back outside the crowds were gone and it was getting dark. There were a few police milling around and a lot of debris in the streets. Faint odor of teargas lingered. Got back on the bus and went back home.

Got a notice that I passed my physical, and the real struggle began. I was NOT going to be drafted. Period. There were maybe half a dozen of us from that induction cohort who had vowed we were not going to go, no matter what. And we said as much at the Induction Center, something that the staff said they were very used to hearing, and it was no skin off their nose one way or another. Some people, they knew, really didn't want to be drafted. Oh well.

I sent letters to my draft board saying, "No, I will not go, don't call me," and I remember they sent me one back saying they received my letter and would I please provide documentation that I was a conscientious objector. Hm. No, I would not, thank you very much, and I would not be drafted, either. This went on for several months as I recall, with the draft board periodically replying to my refusals with very polite requests for more information. I was actually expecting to be arrested at any minute.

I burned my draft card at a public ceremony at my college (I wasn't a student at the time, I had dropped out for a variety of reasons, and that was why I'd been called up for a physical). I protested at the Federal Building, marching and chanting and carrying signs against the war and the draft. While the police were always a threatening presence, they didn't bash my skull and they didn't arrest me, either. Much to my surprise.

Finally, the draft board sent me notice that I was classified 1-A and would be subject to induction into the military within a short time (30 or 60 days, I'm not sure). Of course they conveniently included a new draft card. Bless their hearts. The one I had burned was a 1-S student deferment, which was no longer valid anyway, since I was not a student any more.

So I expected to get a notice any day that I was drafted. And you know what? It never came. The same thing seems to have happened to all six of us who "Hell no, we won't go." After what seemed like a long time -- and many letters back and forth to the draft board, and for some of us but not all, medical opinions from sympathetic doctors that said we weren't "fit" for service -- we were all re-classified 1-Y, subject to induction only in a national emergency.

It was... over. We weren't going to be drafted. We wouldn't have to go to jail, and we wouldn't have to go to Canada. Deferments didn't matter any more. It was... over.

Of course, if the Viet Cong started crawling up the beaches of Santa Monica, all bets were off.

Some time later, toward the end of the draft, some of the draft board members were interviewed, and they said that from time to time, they would get letters from draft and war protesters, and they said they would not arbitrarily reject them. They considered each one carefully. They knew there were many, many Americans opposed to the war and the draft, and they didn't see it as their job to induct men who were simply going to resist. So, if the facts warranted, they would try to find a way for men who were genuinely opposed to the draft and the war to stay out of the military, because what use would they be inside?

This was the first time I'd really thought of the draft board members as human. Their reputation was something entirely different. And yet, apparently they found a way to keep us out of the military.

Who'd a thunk it?

So, in a very small way, and essentially without our understanding of what was happening, our resistance was effective. And I cannot go to the Vietnam Memorial downtown and read all the names of the men who died there, some of whom I knew, some of whom were drafted, and not burst into weeping rage. Why? Why? Why?

By 1968, my rage at what was going on was tempered somewhat by the knowledge that it wasn't just damned dirty hippies or dumb kids who were outraged. Far from it. The McCarthy campaign and then the Kennedy campaign demonstrated the depth and breadth of opposition to the horrors being inflicted on the suffering peoples overseas and at home. This was no fringe uprising. It was global. It was deeply felt at home. I was attracted to the Kennedy campaign, but I thought he was an opportunist just the same. I watched the primary results come in from California, and I went to bed before Kennedy gave his victory speech.

I felt a hand shaking me awake. "Kennedy's been shot."

Oh my god. Not again. Please. Not again. Martin Luther King had been shot in April, and the national upheaval was intense. Many, many people had been killed or wounded in the aftermath. Please, not again.

This time, there was only sorrow and resignation. The last, best hope extinguished... And yet, there was still Chicago.

If I could have, I would have gone. "Won't you please come to Chicago..." Yes, well.

But I was penniless, had no way to get there, and no chance of going. I watched the events of the Democratic convention unfold on television, more bloodshed and rioting and teargas. More anger, more misery, more outrage.

And the star of the show was Abbie Hoffman. There was no doubt that it was a show and he was an absolute star. Simply amazing.




And my doG he and those with him got a lot done. To say that protest and resistance and monkeywrenching, and yes, clowning when the situation calls for it, is "ineffective" -- after what Hoffman and others were able to do -- is so full of shit and ignorance the mind boggles with the breathtaking arrogance of it.

Hoffman was a character, no doubt about that, and he relished the spotlight. He was a liberationist, not a communitarian, and yet every cause he supported and everything he did seemed geared to "be of service" to far more than himself and his image and reputation.

Somehow too many Americans have lost that spirit, or maybe never knew it.

He was an organizer with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee; he was a committed anti-war activist; one of his stunts was organizing the "Levitation of the Pentagon;" he always encouraged others to get involved and he was very successful in motivating otherwise passive or apathetic individuals to get off their butts; he went to the New York Stock Exchange and threw fists full of dollars down on the trading floor making some of the traders scramble to get the money.

Of course his arrest and trial in Chicago for his participation in the Democratic Convention protests in 1968 is the stuff of legend, and while his trial with that of the other "Chicago 7" was going on, his antics in court were magnificent, appropriate for the political trial context, and utterly contemptuous. Where are those today who will so creatively and gleefully expose the corruption of justice that passes for our court system today?

His books -- like Steal this Book and Letters from the Underground -- are still inspirational.

He went underground when he was set up by police as a big cocaine dealer and ultimately skipped bail. But while underground, he remained active as an organizer and writer. When he eventually surrendered to authorities, he was given a light sentence and was released after four months, something that is almost impossible to conceive of given draconian sentencing these days.

Abbie Hoffman was one of those involved with the revelations about the CIA's illegal involvement in the "Contra" war against the Sandanistas in Nicaragua when, at trial after his arrest (along with many others) for protesting the CIA's recruitment at the University of Massachusetts, Daniel Ellsberg, Ramsey Clark, and Edgar Chamorro, among others testified to decades of illegal and violent activities by the CIA.

Hoffman is alleged to have committed suicide by ingesting over 150 Phenobarbital tablets on April 12, 1989, but many of those who knew him don't believe it was suicide. Instead, they suspect he was "suicided," though just how is a mystery. The "why" is obvious. He remained a very effective organizer of trouble and afflictions for the powerful and comfortable to his dying day, and if there was anyone in America at that time who "needed suiciding" by the Powers That Be more than Abbie, let's hear who.

Effective resistance is sometimes an accident, often an art. But effective resistance and protest to right the wrongs of our nation is a constant necessity.

'When our country is right, keep it right; but when it is wrong, right those wrongs.' -- Abbie Hoffman, 1987

Our call never ends.

On Appeals to Orwell

I haven't read Animal Farm or 1984 since high school, and I first encountered George Orwell's "Notes on Nationalism" in college. It was a long time ago.

I've only recently re-read "Notes on Nationalism" due to the embroglio over at Glenn's Place on the issue of "tribalism" -- which Glenn and others seem to believe is the same as Orwell's description of Nationalism. Which I dispute. Vigorously.

In fact, when I was in college, "Notes on Nationalism" was a powerful document that justified in my mind -- and the minds of many of my peers -- our fierce anti-war, anti-draft, anti-military, anti-authority and anti-establishment rage. After all, we were not like those who were so succeptible to the nationalist manipulations that underpinned the rulers who made the wars that destroyed the people at home and abroad.

Not us. We were better than that.

And at the time, I am reminded, I was a fierce individualist as well, for a time rebelling against practically everything and everyone, occasionally making more than a spectacle of my ostensibly independent self.

I think "notorious" is probably the correct word to describe my behavior in those days.

"Outrageous!" according to the straights and the fuddy-duddies.

"Provocative," I was deemed more than once.

"Hilarious!" from time to time.

"Get a job! Idiot!" well, there alway has to be a nay-sayer.

But that was then. Now, things are much calmer, quieter, far more conservative -- at least in the way I live my life. I never ceased fighting the straightjacket of middle class and Middle American expectations though, and I never entirely fit in to any large institutional environment, though I've been employed by or associated with -- or fought -- many of them.

When I read Orwell back in the day, and when I do now, I saw and see echoes of my own beliefs and perspectives. "How did he know?" Of course, he didn't. He was his own man who saw things the way he did, shared it as well as he could.

He's called a Socialist Libertarian, and which aspect of his politics you glom on to depends on your own special needs and desires. The combination of the two, however, is dissonant.

Socialism has taken a bad rap during the last generation, and it is widely considered the equivalent of Stalinism. On the other hand, libertarianism remains the same puerile nonsense and self-indulgence it's always been, but many, many libertarian economic and social ideals have become standard practice (while others, such as liberalized drug laws, have not.)

But Orwell's libertarianism was not the puerile nonsense that is bruited about today. It was, simply, personal liberty from overweening state control. Not license or self-indulgence, but privacy and autonomy. In other words, freedom to withdraw from the sociopolitical systems and be left alone.

That's quite a different thing than the common libertarian approach of constantly trying to impose one's own self-obsession on everyone else. As I have often put it, and will do so again, the Libertarian Motto is: "I demand the Liberty to impose My Authority on You."

The freedom to withdraw and be left alone that Orwell valued is nothing like that.

And the fact that he also admired Socialist values of common interest, purpose, and service -- just not the forced imposition of them -- is often ignored in the hagiographies of the libertarian cultists who see him as an accurate Foreshadower of the Future, and thus a Great Man. And a Libertarian.

So what I will try to do in future posts is explore some of the aspects of Orwell that have become distorted, explore some of his Future Vision, and I'll try to explore alternatives.

What Have We Learned?

We've learned from the WikiLeaks video of the slaughter of some dozen Iraqis from above that what we see is routine. That is how the Glorious War On Terror is conducted, that is how is has consistently been conducted for years upon years, that is the daily reality the Wogs face and have been facing since well before the Glory of our Expeditions Abroad was brought into focus by the public opening of the various fronts in our perpetual wars of aggression.

To the Wogs on the ground -- remember, they have no airplanes, no helicopters, no drones with which to defend themselves from the ceaseless slaughter -- the exterminations from above are entirely random, arbitrary, cruel, and extremely brutal. The Killers almost always take out entirely innocent civilian targets, who have no idea they are targets, but the survivors learn that any Wog at any time can -- and quite likely will -- become a target for the Killers From Above. Perhaps they are lucky that their faith provides a fatalist outlook on events so they if by random "luck" of the draw they are slaughtered by the Killers, they will accept their Fate with almost as much equanimity as their Killers deliver it.

We've learned that the military lies, constantly, and that lying is Doctrine,; even when they tell the truth, they are lying. They lie about everything, and they lie all the time. It is their way. It is who they are. It is the world in which they live; it is all a lie, a constant lie, and they want, nay demand, that we, civilian observers of their slaughters and their lies, believe their lies, or at the very least set aside our disbelief long enough for them to get on with their job. Which is the killing of Wogs.

Time and again, we heard the defenders of the Killers claim that the killing was justified because an RPG and AK-47s were found among the crushed and burned and separated remains of the Wogs who were exterminated from above that day. Indeed, from the video evidence, it appears that at least a couple of the Wogs are carrying rifles, but there is no sign of RPG weapons, despite the hysteric calling of the troops that they "see" one. No they don't, they see two cameras which they hysterically misidentify as RPGs and which misidentification they then use to justify opening fire on the Wogs. The rifles seen in the video are never aimed or used in any sort of threatening manner; they appear to be entirely defensive weapons. But weapons just the same.

But the RPG "presence" is the justification for the slaughter, not the rifles, and there is no RPG. No RPG is found. What is found are mangled and destroyed camera lenses which the hysterical declare to be "RPGs" and so it is still being reported that an RPG "round" was found among the dead and mutilated remains, because it is the central lie of the whole episode. The Killers must have this central lie believed.

We've learned that the Killers are hysterics, and they are terrified of Wogs, absolutely petrified with fear of Wogs and Woggery, and their sole response to their fear and their hysteria is to kill, kill, kill! The Killers appear to be so drugged up they can't tell what it is they see on their monitors, so they call it whatever they need to call it to justify the slaughter they are about to conduct, regardless of any reality outside their hysterical fear of the Wogs and what they will do. And we've learned that they will be backed up by their superiors, all the way up to the Pentagon and the White House without reservation.

We've learned that Our Rulers have no shame at this conduct. We've learned that our troops have no shame at this conduct. We've learned that Americans are almost entirely desensitized to this conduct -- or actively cheer it on. We've learned, or we should have learned, that Power, naked, raw and and cruel, is what this so-called War is about, and the application of Killing Power, arbitrary, random, and cruel, is how it is conducted.

Now that we know this, what shall we do? It is the endless conundrum. What shall we do?

There are those who defend the Killers because they're "just doing their jobs," and they should not be held to account for what they do. I've never understood or agreed with that viewpoint, because in fact, they are responsible for what they do, and they cross the line on their own volition. They can say no. There may be consequences for doing so, of course, but there are consequences (eventually) for the slaughters they conduct as well.

That does not relieve their officers and commanders all the way up to the Pentagon and the White House of their responsibility, but it is up to those on the ground and in the air over the so-called "battle zone" to say NO, loud and clear, and refuse to fire, refuse to believe a camera lens is an RPG, refuse to become hysterical killers for... what?

As much as we want to think that it was the protests at home that ultimately ended the Vietnam War, it was just as much the fact that the troops were refusing to continue killing gooks wildly to no discernible object, and that they were even killing their officers rather than continue the insane slaughter of the gooks.

Until the troops in our expeditionary forces take the initiative and refuse to continue the slaughter, it will go on. It is the first step. The command will, eventually, follow. They will have no choice.

The military is nowhere close to that point yet. And as Dan Froomkin points out, absolutely no one in Congress is the least interested in exploring the basis for what is shown in the WikiLeaks video. None. Not at all.

We learned a long time ago that Our Rulers do not listen to what those on the "Left" have to say about anything. It is not in their interests to bother with what the "Left" has to say. They are, on the other hand, more than happy to fret and worry right along with whatever the Rightists and other hysterics have to say, fearful always of what the Rightists might do. Which is one reason why the "Left" is ignored: they have demonstrated time and again they will do nothing, whatever, that Our Rulers need to pay attention to if they don't get their way. Whereas we know the Rightists love to kill people and blow shit up and are heavily funded by Rightist economic interests to hold that threat constantly over the Government and Our Rulers. So they often do get much more than a hearing, they get action to satisfy their demands.

Surprising how that still works, but it does.

The only thing we can be certain of is that the world of Our Rulers and their expeditionary forces is entirely divorced from that of the rest of us, and that we, The People, as it were, have more and more in common with the suffering (and often slaughtered) masses in the rest of the world than we have with those who rule us and seek ever greater levels of control over us.

Provided we learn the lesson of our global commonality with one another -- and our utter alienation from those who rule us -- we will have a way forward. Until then, the path is backwards.

Will we learn that lesson?

Here We Go Again

As everybody knows, the Teabaggers had -- and for the most part still have -- free rein in this country to upset and disrupt whatever and whomever they want, when and where they want. The police look the other way. They will not and have no intention of interfering, even when the Baggers are overt and threatening.

Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, the authorities are getting ready to protect and defend the G20 reps from any and all discommoding by the DFHs, to crush dissent, to gas, to bludgeon, to mass arrest with abandon.

Read this story:

Massive police buildup for Pittsburgh G20 summit
By Samuel Davidson
24 September 2009

A massive police buildup is well underway in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as thousands of police, National Guard, FBI, secret service and other law enforcement officials flood into the city in preparation for the G20 summit Thursday and Friday.



Sixty police departments from across Pennsylvania and the region have sent officers to the city. Pittsburgh officials have not revealed how many have actually come, but the city said it needed 4,000 police to provide security for the two-day event. Pittsburgh’s 900 police officers have been put on 12-hour shifts, and all vacation and leave have been canceled.

In addition to local police, 1,200 Pennsylvania state police and 2,500 National Guard troops have been mobilized and brought into the city.

The White House has declared the summit a National Special Security Event (NSSE), placing security under the control of the US Secret Service. For months, Secret Service agents have been in Pittsburgh planning for the event. Closed circuit television cameras have been placed throughout the city.

A bunker-command center has been set up at an undisclosed location, manned 24 hours a day; agents from the various departments monitor the television screens and coordinate the activities of the law enforcement agencies.

In addition to police, several thousand private security guards have come to the city. Some are providing security for the numerous delegations, while others have been hired by hotels and businesses to provide security.

Pittsburgh has taken on something of the appearance of a city in a war zone. Four-foot-high concrete barriers have been placed in front of most office buildings and on street corners to block off traffic.

And so on and so on and so on.

Let us ask why Americans permit this disparity of the imposition of authority.

How is it that armed and dangerous Teabaggers can do anything they want, anywhere, at any time, and there is no preventative police action at all, but the mere thought of the assembly of a few unarmed DFHs to protest anything, anywhere leads to massive police presence, lockdown, tear gas and batons?

Screwed up much?