The events in St. Louis overnight have been inspiring and moving as all get out. Rebelutionary_Z has been on the front lines, and I've been catching up with some of his archived video.
The first one I looked at was a march to and rally at St. Louis University. Thousands were there. They held their arms high in solidarity for four minutes of silence in the memory of Vonderrit Myers and Mike Brown -- and how many others who have been killed by police? Today's total looks like 1613 since May 1, 2013; at least 860 killed by police since January 1 of this year.
It was inspired for the march organizers to take over the plaza at St. Louis University for the rally, despite the objections of campus security. "Out of the dorms, into the streets!"
Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream
Next I watched the confrontation between the police -- who were beating their sticks on the pavement -- and the marchers on the way to the University. We've seen this scene so often not only during the confrontations in Ferguson and St. Louis but around the world it seems. The police, by killing so many, and by acting such fools delegitimize their authority. They just can't help themselves, I guess...
Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream
And so it goes.
Today's actions are dubbed "Moral Monday," something that's been ongoing in North Carolina for some time.
It's an idea whose time has come.
Solidarty.
Showing posts with label Moral Authority. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Moral Authority. Show all posts
Monday, October 13, 2014
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
What We Forget About Martin Luther King -- Stumbling Against the Future
I watched parts of the Inauguration yesterday, and because it was also MLK Day, there were plenty of references to the legacy of Martin Luther King and the long and difficult struggle for civil rights for all in this country -- a struggle that continues, of course. Many inspirational words were offered in tribute.
Well. I've pondered -- and participated in -- the civil rights struggle for many a long year, and I cannot for the life of me understand why, after all these years of struggle, civil rights are still in jeopardy, perhaps more now than at any time since the institution of Jim Crow. The success of the movement has led to what?
For many Americans, it means taking for granted the civil rights and liberties at the foundation of the nation as belonging to all of us, not simply a favored few (as they did at the foundation of the nation.) But we find that taking these rights and liberties for granted has meant that they are once more jeopardized as voting rights, especially, are more and more restricted, and rights to privacy, fair trials and due process and so forth evaporate before our very eyes.
During the controversies over "non-violence" within the Occupy movement, I pointed out that rigidly following King and Gandhi in today's environment is bound to fail and for a very simple reason: Our Rulers have learned many lessons since the days of Indian Independence and the American Civil Rights Movement. They will not ever allow that kind of movement and resistance to succeed again. What they will do instead is infiltrate, co-opt and destroy if they can't use the means and methods of the King/Gandhi non-violence principles against the movement directly.
When I pointed out that many of those who were advocating strict adherence to King/Gandhi "non-violence" were actually advocating for the interests of Our Rulers against the interests of the People (I like to use the example of the use of Non-violent Communications by Our Rulers as one of their ways to employ "nonviolence" against the People -- as I was trained in Non-Violent Communications when I was a government employee, and I know all too well how it works...) all hell would sometimes break loose.
The problem is not that the principles of non-violent resistance are necessarily wrong, it is that they no longer work in the context of modern, supposedly democratic, states, and when they are employed in People's Uprisings and Revolutions these days (and for quite a long time past when you think how long its been since the Soviet Union fell) they almost inevitably lead to a Neo-Con/Neo-Liberal victory.
And that is not what the People rose up to accomplish. Is it?
Both Gandhi and King understood that their use of nonviolent resistance was part of a larger strategy to undermine the power of and eventually force the capitulation of oppressive and intrinsically violent political systems. That overall strategy was not limited to nonviolent resistance campaigns by any means. In both India and the United States, sabotage and armed resistance were taking place simultaneously with non-violent campaigns. The eventual success of the non-violent campaigns was in part due to the presence of -- or the threat of -- violent revolutionary alternatives.
So often in the modern conception of 'non-violent resistance,' however, there is no alternative path; there is only The One, as codified not by Gandhi and King but by Gene Sharp, whose influence on the Color Revolutions of the '80's and '90's was significant. Their success, however, led -- in every case that I'm aware of -- to the establishment of a Neo-Con/Neo-Liberal regime which calls itself "Liberty."
"Liberty" for whom? To do what? This is something that Sharpian 'non-violence' advocates dast not answer, for many of them must know the truth: it leads to "liberty" for the predators to exploit and impoverish the masses.
Both Gandhi and King well understood that economic "liberty" as it was understood by the Ruling Class led directly to the impoverishment of the masses and enormous social destruction. They sought ways and means to counter that sort of "liberty" as they were pressing for independence in the case of India and civil rights and racial integration in the case of the United States.
Just being able to fly your own flag or to vote or to sit at a lunch counter was not enough. And they knew it.
Of course today there is little or no mention of the economic justice programs of Gandhi and King; after all, both were assassinated well before their campaigns for economic justice could even begin to overturn the corrupt and destructive systems they witnessed in their own time.
Gandhi's assassination may have had more to do with the political situation in newly independent India, but it seems clear enough that King's assassination was driven at least in part by his shift from a primary focus on civil and political rights to anti-war and economic justice campaigns that threatened the Powers That Be in ways they could not, at the time, accommodate.
King seemed to understand, too, that his shift of focus would further jeopardize his life.
The tragedy is that the legacies that might have been were violently cut short, and memories of what might have been have been suppressed, replaced with idealized images of what never really was.
King's final book was titled: "Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community?" published in 1967. In it, he acknowledged the progress that had been made in securing political rights for Negroes (the term used in those days) but he clearly focused his attention on the fact that political rights by themselves did not lead to paradise, not by a long shot, and that promise of America would only be secured through the establishment of economic justice.
Now more than ever, that clarion call from so long ago needs to be heard again, for every year, millions more Americans are forced into poverty, their hopes and dreams destroyed, their homes confiscated, their livelihoods vanished, their future gone. This is the cruel truth of the economic situation since the advent of the Perpetual Recession. The American poverty rate, once on the decline, has been skyrocketing, right along with homelessness and hunger, and for all intents and purposes, nothing is being done about it by the Government except to reinforce policies which ensure ever greater levels of poverty and suffering.
It doesn't have to be that way. It never had to be that way. The increasingly desperate situation so many Americans find themselves in could be reversed in a twinkling, too.
But we have a government that resists any policy solution to the increasing problem of poverty in America, that denies any positive ability to change things for the better, that no longer bothers even to talk a good line regarding the now seemingly permanent and scandalous unemployment problem, let alone providing any sort of household debt relief.
All of these issues could be addressed, should be addressed, and won't be addressed willingly by the Ruling Class -- which obviously is quite unbothered by the economic difficulties of the People, in fact, it seems to enjoy increasing the cruelties the People are made to suffer.
So long as that Ruling Class is lavished with the kinds of considerations, benefits, and literal welfare they receive (and believe is their right), and so long as their own debts are covered, why should they care about the sufferings of the masses? They don't and they won't.
Americans have not lived with this level of routine indifference to their plight by their representatives for generations, and it is not easy to grasp just how destructive current policies are.
King ultimately realized that social acceptance and political rights mean a great deal, but they can be eclipsed by failures to establish economic justice and by a perpetual war making machine. So it was near the end of his life, and so it is once again today.
It's a moral issue. It's the fundamental moral issue of our time.
As we stumble against the Future, we are called on to end the perpetual war making machine and establish economic justice for all.
Well. I've pondered -- and participated in -- the civil rights struggle for many a long year, and I cannot for the life of me understand why, after all these years of struggle, civil rights are still in jeopardy, perhaps more now than at any time since the institution of Jim Crow. The success of the movement has led to what?
For many Americans, it means taking for granted the civil rights and liberties at the foundation of the nation as belonging to all of us, not simply a favored few (as they did at the foundation of the nation.) But we find that taking these rights and liberties for granted has meant that they are once more jeopardized as voting rights, especially, are more and more restricted, and rights to privacy, fair trials and due process and so forth evaporate before our very eyes.
During the controversies over "non-violence" within the Occupy movement, I pointed out that rigidly following King and Gandhi in today's environment is bound to fail and for a very simple reason: Our Rulers have learned many lessons since the days of Indian Independence and the American Civil Rights Movement. They will not ever allow that kind of movement and resistance to succeed again. What they will do instead is infiltrate, co-opt and destroy if they can't use the means and methods of the King/Gandhi non-violence principles against the movement directly.
When I pointed out that many of those who were advocating strict adherence to King/Gandhi "non-violence" were actually advocating for the interests of Our Rulers against the interests of the People (I like to use the example of the use of Non-violent Communications by Our Rulers as one of their ways to employ "nonviolence" against the People -- as I was trained in Non-Violent Communications when I was a government employee, and I know all too well how it works...) all hell would sometimes break loose.
The problem is not that the principles of non-violent resistance are necessarily wrong, it is that they no longer work in the context of modern, supposedly democratic, states, and when they are employed in People's Uprisings and Revolutions these days (and for quite a long time past when you think how long its been since the Soviet Union fell) they almost inevitably lead to a Neo-Con/Neo-Liberal victory.
And that is not what the People rose up to accomplish. Is it?
Both Gandhi and King understood that their use of nonviolent resistance was part of a larger strategy to undermine the power of and eventually force the capitulation of oppressive and intrinsically violent political systems. That overall strategy was not limited to nonviolent resistance campaigns by any means. In both India and the United States, sabotage and armed resistance were taking place simultaneously with non-violent campaigns. The eventual success of the non-violent campaigns was in part due to the presence of -- or the threat of -- violent revolutionary alternatives.
So often in the modern conception of 'non-violent resistance,' however, there is no alternative path; there is only The One, as codified not by Gandhi and King but by Gene Sharp, whose influence on the Color Revolutions of the '80's and '90's was significant. Their success, however, led -- in every case that I'm aware of -- to the establishment of a Neo-Con/Neo-Liberal regime which calls itself "Liberty."
"Liberty" for whom? To do what? This is something that Sharpian 'non-violence' advocates dast not answer, for many of them must know the truth: it leads to "liberty" for the predators to exploit and impoverish the masses.
Both Gandhi and King well understood that economic "liberty" as it was understood by the Ruling Class led directly to the impoverishment of the masses and enormous social destruction. They sought ways and means to counter that sort of "liberty" as they were pressing for independence in the case of India and civil rights and racial integration in the case of the United States.
Just being able to fly your own flag or to vote or to sit at a lunch counter was not enough. And they knew it.
Of course today there is little or no mention of the economic justice programs of Gandhi and King; after all, both were assassinated well before their campaigns for economic justice could even begin to overturn the corrupt and destructive systems they witnessed in their own time.
Gandhi's assassination may have had more to do with the political situation in newly independent India, but it seems clear enough that King's assassination was driven at least in part by his shift from a primary focus on civil and political rights to anti-war and economic justice campaigns that threatened the Powers That Be in ways they could not, at the time, accommodate.
King seemed to understand, too, that his shift of focus would further jeopardize his life.
The tragedy is that the legacies that might have been were violently cut short, and memories of what might have been have been suppressed, replaced with idealized images of what never really was.
King's final book was titled: "Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community?" published in 1967. In it, he acknowledged the progress that had been made in securing political rights for Negroes (the term used in those days) but he clearly focused his attention on the fact that political rights by themselves did not lead to paradise, not by a long shot, and that promise of America would only be secured through the establishment of economic justice.
Now more than ever, that clarion call from so long ago needs to be heard again, for every year, millions more Americans are forced into poverty, their hopes and dreams destroyed, their homes confiscated, their livelihoods vanished, their future gone. This is the cruel truth of the economic situation since the advent of the Perpetual Recession. The American poverty rate, once on the decline, has been skyrocketing, right along with homelessness and hunger, and for all intents and purposes, nothing is being done about it by the Government except to reinforce policies which ensure ever greater levels of poverty and suffering.
It doesn't have to be that way. It never had to be that way. The increasingly desperate situation so many Americans find themselves in could be reversed in a twinkling, too.
But we have a government that resists any policy solution to the increasing problem of poverty in America, that denies any positive ability to change things for the better, that no longer bothers even to talk a good line regarding the now seemingly permanent and scandalous unemployment problem, let alone providing any sort of household debt relief.
All of these issues could be addressed, should be addressed, and won't be addressed willingly by the Ruling Class -- which obviously is quite unbothered by the economic difficulties of the People, in fact, it seems to enjoy increasing the cruelties the People are made to suffer.
So long as that Ruling Class is lavished with the kinds of considerations, benefits, and literal welfare they receive (and believe is their right), and so long as their own debts are covered, why should they care about the sufferings of the masses? They don't and they won't.
Americans have not lived with this level of routine indifference to their plight by their representatives for generations, and it is not easy to grasp just how destructive current policies are.
King ultimately realized that social acceptance and political rights mean a great deal, but they can be eclipsed by failures to establish economic justice and by a perpetual war making machine. So it was near the end of his life, and so it is once again today.
It's a moral issue. It's the fundamental moral issue of our time.
As we stumble against the Future, we are called on to end the perpetual war making machine and establish economic justice for all.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Po-Po Troopers Out and About in Anaheim
 |
| Scarfed from CNN TwitPics |
Yes, it was a big day in Anaheim yesterday as there was a regular Sunday protest at the Police Department Headquarters (The Robo-troopers above are in the parking lot behind the building and a brick wall and so they and their Machines are cut off from most people's view out in front of the Police Headquarters.) There was also a memorial for Manny Diaz.
I saw a bit of both via the Ustreamers and Global Rev's coverage on the Livestream (we still have these competing formats, but it appears that Ustream is far and away the more popular for streamers, with Global Revolution on Livestream often streaming Ustream coverage of Revolutionary doings hither and yon.)
I did not watch any teevee coverage -- if there was any, and I haven't checked so far this morning.
The Po-Po Troopers were Out and About, and they wanted everybody to see, oh my yes, Mister Gittes. (It's a reference from Chinatown. If you haven't seen it or haven't seen it lately, I recommend that you sit yourself down and watch that puppy till your eyes bleed if you want to know what makes the LA and the Southland tick. It's a nasty business...)
Tim Pool captured one arrest on video at the Police Headquarters, but not whatever "started" it -- assuming anything did. Tim was peering over the wall as Other Troopers (Orange County Sheriff's Deputies, I think he said) were marching about in the Parking Lot of Doom when a squadron of Po-Po in their everyday riot get ups took off after some poor sod (or...?) running across the front entrance drive of the building.
It was a somewhat disconcerting scene. Tim took off after them, recording what seemed at the time a Typical Arrest of a Random Demonstrator -- demonstrator thrown to the ground, big-butted police wrangling arms and legs, handcuffs applied, victim hoisted up by arms, paraded away -- but there was more than a little odd about it. As if it had been... what's the word... staged. I don't know that it was, but still it seemed distinctly odd for the context of the day's events and the protest involved, and it took place in the most obvious possible location. You can see the arrest and its immediate aftermath here:
You will note that the police are chasing one black-clad individual who is revealed to be a rather sturdy-looking (white) man who appears to be clean-cut and in his mid-thirties when fully trussed up, unmasked, and paraded away by his guards under orders of the horse police. He does not respond when members of the crowd shout "What's your name?!" -- which has become almost a routine ritual during protest arrests so as to be able to identify and find the arrestee in the labyrinth of the local penal systems.
But I watched and said, "Now wait just a darned minute."
Black Blocs have not been part of the Anaheim protests over police murders and police brutality, and one black clad individual does not a Black Bloc make by any means. OC and LA Occupies have provided logistical support for the protests and a few rather easily identifiable protestors (blue hair is sort of a give away), but that's about all. The protests are organized and conducted by members of the community, those who are being most directly affected in Anaheim and the surrounding communities, and the Sunday protests have been going on for years.
There were dozens of cameras on scene, and many of them surrounded the arrest-scene, which quickly turned ugly -- or was it "ugly?" The horse police -- who had been on the other side of the street I thought -- moved in rather quickly to block off the arrest from view from one side, and other officers including sheriff's deputies, formed a cordon sanitaire on the other sides, pointing their weapons at the crowd and the media and ordering them to "Get back!" A horse police officer orders the arresting officers to parade the suspect toward the police headquarters building, but what happens to the arrestee from that point is "not entirely clear" -- to use one of Tim's favorite phrases -- as the police cordon forms a protective line in front of the barricades that are blocking off the entrance to the police building. There is no paddy wagon on scene. So far as Tim can determine, nobody knows why Dude in Black was chased and arrested, and nobody knows what happened to him. Nor, apparently, does anybody know who he is.
Alrighty then.
Was this a classic "Wild West show"?
When I was a kid in LA, I would go to Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm, which had been there forever, rather often, and one of the highlights of these adventures was the "wild west shoot-em-up show" -- which was highly perfected at Knott's Berry Farm, cleansed and sanitized at Disneyland. There were also times when stars of the Movie and TeeVee Westerns would put on shows of their own, sometimes in the streets in Downtown Los Angeles, or at shopping center openings or what have you. I actually had a dream about Knott's Berry Farm overnight, and that's part of why I'm making the connection this morning.
Would they actually do something like this, stage an arrest of one of their own for the purpose of a) entertaining the media, b) intimidating the crowd of protestors? Of course they would! Youbetcha on stilts.
So I'm going out on a limb and suggesting that the dramatic arrest and the display of weapons that Tim caught on video yesterday in Anaheim was quite likely staged for the cameras and for the purpose of intimidating the crowd. I could, of course, be wrong, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Yesterday was a memorial day for Manny Diaz, and it was a day of protest of his killing and of the other killings by Anaheim police and of police repression and brutality in the Anaheim community that has been going on for many a long year.
The Po-Po saw it as another opportunity to display their weapons and their determination to suppress any protest that they didn't control, and to prevent the emergence of any protest movement in Anaheim that would threaten The Powers That Be in any way.
What's been going on in Anaheim since the police shooting and killing of Manny Diaz -- including the additional shootings since then -- has been a very dramatic (and unfortunately deadly) demonstration of what this ongoing struggle in America is about.
The other day, I pointed out that Manny Diaz's mother has essentially all the moral authority in Anaheim these days; the police and the civic officials have none. That's a very, very fraughtful situation.
American officials don't really know how to deal with it. The officials in Anaheim have chosen to further threaten, brutalize and intimidate protestors against their stupid and counterproductive policies, and they've decided to shoot -- and sometimes to kill -- more in the face of these protests. Every time they do that, they diminish their own authority, but they can't seem to help themselves.
The image of the police in Anaheim is almost surreal at this point. The armaments and transport and uniforms and weapons they got out yesterday for the weekly protest against police brutality, and the panoply of it all in a display against a few hundred protesters at most was literally ridiculous. It was laughed at by the crowds. "What are you so afraid of, pendejo?" They had all these horse police, all these weaponized and militarized forces with their APCs and their camo-suits, all these riot cops, all these "mutual aid forces," all these deputies in riot helmets with their sticks out, and there was a relatively small crowd of protestors, laughing at them, taunting them, telling them to "go away."
Eventually, they did. They sort of evaporated into Nowhere from whence they came.
And it got to me. They can kill all the Mexicans they want -- and there is no way around the fact that all this armament is on display, and the shootings are continuing because the Mexicans in Anaheim are "agitated" and it's highly racially charged -- but in the end, The Man is still going to take their pensions away. All their service to The Man is going to amount to nothing, and all the killing and brutality they engage in will ultimately win them nothing.
They -- the Po-Po -- are nothing, just as you and I are nothing, in the eyes of their Betters. It's all been on display in very stark terms in Anaheim this past week and more, and people who see it are revolted and disgusted.
In the end, once civic authority is shattered, who is left? What is left?
"Let's go to Disneyland!"
And then on Anna Street, the very moving memorial for Manny Diaz took place right next to the site where he was shot and killed. Hundreds of people formed a circle and celebrated their lives and his life, in a characteristically Mexican/Native American ceremonial for the dead that doesn't quite comport with Anglo custom, but so what?
At this point, who cares what Anglos think or Anglos want in Anaheim?
Let them go to Disneyland.
They no longer matter.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More coverage:
http://www.ocweekly.com/slideshow/anaheim-protests-sunday-july-29-37417884/
http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/anaheim_police_shooting_desmad/
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/anaheim-366053-group-peace.html
Friday, July 27, 2012
On the Transfer of Moral Authority
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| Police take aim in Anaheim |
Maybe I'm coming to this realization late, but it seems to me that after the incidents in Aurora and Anaheim, the institutions that once held moral authority in this country -- be they governmental or private sector -- have finally lost any moral authority they may once have been able to claim.
The Aurora Incident showed how essentially inert the police forces are in the face of mass slaughter by our very own and very exceptional "crazed gunmen." According to reports, police responded "within seconds" to 911 calls from the scene of the carnage at the movie theater as their police station was only two blocks away. But by the time they got there, the gunfire had stopped and the shooter was calmly sitting in his car awaiting arrest. More than 70 people were dead or wounded, however, so some sort of triage set up was necessary. What the police had to do with that though, no one has quite said.
Other institutional failures included that of the University of Colorado, which apparently had just turned the shooter loose for not doing well on his midterms. Clearly, despite the fact that the young man in question was trying to communicate with them through letters (that went 'unprocessed'), the University in its Majesty had neither time nor interest in this poor fellow whose academic decline, perhaps emotional and psychological decline as well, simply hadn't been noticed in the Press of Events all Great Universities prioritize.
It's similar in its own way to the administrative disinterest in the emotional/psychological decline of the boys who shot up Columbine High back in the day. That Incident was said to have been precipitated by intense and prolonged bullying that the school administrators tolerated or even encouraged as a means to keep the students in line. It was revealed after the Columbine Incident that many schools actively recruited student bullies to act as capos over the rest of the student body and rewarded them with a)impunity for their actions; b)various perks and privileges that other students did not have. Their role was to terrorize the rest of the student body into compliance with administrative demands.
Hm.
Sounds like Anaheim police on the rampage.
Now I should point out that when I write about police misconduct and police brutality I am not condemning all police (however, there is a caveat, and I'll get to that.) In fact, I've known plenty of officers, I've had to call on police in various instances of burglary and so forth, and I recently had a brief encounter in Kingman, AZ, when a police cruiser raced up to me while I was pumping gas, an officer jumped out with his hand on his gun (or was it his Taser, not sure right now) and started demanding this and that, including knowing whether I had anyone else in the van... (he later explained they'd just received a report of someone being held at gunpoint by someone in an "orange-ish van," and mine was close enough to the description they had that he felt it best to check it out, guns at the ready...)
Almost every police officer I've encountered (except one, who was clearly out of his league, but that's another story) has behaved in a professional and dignified manner. But I'm white, and now that I'm also old enough to sport a Santa beard, I'm hardly perceived as a "threat" by the Law Enforcement Community. Even when I was younger and more radical appearing, police encounters were not particularly difficult for me. And, too, they were rare.
For people of color, particularly brown and black men and adolescent boys, it's long been a different story. Not only do they encounter the police far more frequently than white folk, they are "suspect" simply because of their age, race and appearance. In other words, the entire category of black and brown men is considered by police to be a priori suspect of something.
That seems to have been the police modus operandi in Anaheim that led to the shooting death of Manny Diaz, and the next day to the shooting death of Joel Matthew Acevedo. And the same attitude seem to have led to the repeated indiscriminate firing of "less lethal" munitions into crowds protesting the police homicides of young men in their neighborhoods.
If you are black or brown, particularly if you are male, you are suspected of a crime. Period. And as a suspect you have no rights the police are obliged to respect, not even a right to life, let alone liberty or the pursuit of happiness.
According to witnesses, Manny Diaz was shot twice by police, both times in the back, once in the butt, and once in the back of the head. It was almost a classic "double tap." In other words, he was executed on the spot. The reason? He ran. The police say he was with a "suspicious" group standing by a car on the street when a police patrol car approached and officers demanded... well, we don't know, as the young men being approached all ran in various directions. According to police, Manny Diaz was seen "throwing objects" onto roofs of nearby apartment buildings as he ran. (That's quite a physical feat, but we'll leave it at that for the moment.) The police officer pursuing him finally trapped him in a fenced side yard of an apartment complex; the iron bar fence was high and essentially unscalable. What then transpired is unknown. The police union claims that The Suspect turned toward the officer and "reached for something in his waistband," and I will lay good money, that is the exact language that will appear in the report that will be issued in due time on the Incident. Of course anyone who has followed these Incidents for any length of time knows that in the routines surrounding these police shootings of Suspects, the justification is frequently "reaching for something in his waistband."
Further "justification" is garnered by the claim that the Suspect was a "gang member." In Anaheim, this has been elaborated with the claim that Manny Diaz was a "documented gang member." As was -- it is claimed -- Joel Matthew Acevedo. So far, they haven't pointed to the prison record of either man or their drug use, but they will. It almost always goes this way in the case of police shootings. No matter what actually happened, the reports will always focus on reaching for something in waistbands, gangs, drugs and previous prison time. As if this justifies what amounts to summary execution in the streets.
While I don't condemn all police for the actions of these killer cops, the entire force loses moral authority through consistent actions to rationalize or cover up the killings and beatings and harassment of people primarily of color who become the victims of the police, and to dismiss the concerns of the communities that are so profoundly affected by these actions.
In Anaheim, the police, like their dog, were simply out of control. They went on a rampage -- a police riot if you will -- killing two and injuring many (one count I saw was over a hundred), many of whom were women and children. This went on for days as community members continued to protest and denounce police actions in the streets of Anaheim.
And then it stopped.
Manny Diaz's mother appeared at the courthouse after filing a civil rights and wrongful death lawsuit, and she appealed for an end to the violence -- by police and by the crowd of protesters. The police chief and the mayor had been threatening the community with continued police violence, much as a warden might, if they continued protesting. But the protests continued, indeed had increased over the days since the first killing.
Manny Diaz's mother appealed to the better angels of the community -- including those of the police if they had any -- and the protests stopped. From appearances, the police did not stop harassing the community, but they stopped killing for now and they stopped firing their "less lethal" rounds, stopped roaming the streets with dogs as well.
Manny Diaz's mother had far more moral authority in this situation than any Anaheim institution.
Indeed, that's what's been happening all over as the pervasive institutional failure has been revealed, from the failure of the Catholic Church -- my how they flail these days! -- to the extraordinary moral collapse of police forces all over the country following their violent destruction of dozens of Occupy encampments, and their continued violence against Occupy and other protests.
Clearly, there's an existential issue involved for "authority" as a concept in the abstract and in the real world. If the only way our civic and private institutions can hold on to authority is through force and suppression/control of protest -- which is what's been happening -- then there is no moral grounding for any respect for authority. Without moral grounding, authority loses power, and the more suppression and violence there is in trying to enforce its authority, the more completely its moral authority evaporates.
In Aurora, the police and other authority were essentially bystanders as the horrible drama unfolded at the movie theater.
In Anaheim, the police and the civic policies they were carrying out were the precipitating cause of the collapse of their own moral authority. That collapse mirrored similar collapses of police and civic/administrative authority at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and spectacularly in the city of Oakland. To a somewhat lesser degree, it has also happened in the cities of Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. It's happening right now in San Francisco through grotesque spectacles involving the mayor, the board of supervisors, the sheriff, his wife and so forth that we needn't deal with here.
I asked in a previous post, "What are we coming to?" And this is it. As the moral authority of civil society collapses along with its institutions including the police, we are left outraged and bewildered, but also we are left on our own to figure out some sort of path forward.
In previous times, this collapse of moral authority would have been considered the prelude to revolution -- think ancien regime leading up to the storming of the Bastille and the March of the Fishwives. But we have our own examples leading up to 1776 as well, not to mention what the collapse of moral authority in Russia that actually began the day of Nicolas II's coronation when hundreds were killed at the public festivities arranged in his honor.
But now, I suspect we're well past the prelude phase and fully into the Revolutionary phase. In other words, the Revolution is taking place, and we are in the midst of it, but it is not like any Revolution of the past, so what's happening doesn't fully register as a Revolution-in-Progress. We see it instead as "difficulty." Yes, it is that, certainly. But the key to understanding the Revolutionary context is the continuing -- I would say accelerating -- collapse of moral authority that we could say began with Congress when it chose to impeach the President in 1996, continued with the judicial coup of 2000 that installed Bush the Lesser in the presidency in 2001 -- which led to disasters on an unprecedented and monumental scale, from the attack on the World Trade Center to the incredibly ill-advised wars of aggression to the drowning of New Orleans to the economic collapse of 2007/8.
The election of Obama was supposed to be something of a Redemption after all that misery, but it has turned out to be anything but that,or perhaps a "Lesser Redemption" than was called for.
And so we see the collapse all around us of the moral authority of institutions and especially of the moral authority of the police. I'm convinced that Obama was put on the Presidential Throne for the specific purpose of "managing the masses" as the predators and plunderers go after every shred of public good and public wealth there is, and so far, he has performed up to expectations if not beyond. But he's performing to the expectations of the Ruling Class, not the expectations of the People, and that has consequences that our blind, deaf and dumb rulers seem incapable of knowing.
Yesterday, there was a pretty insightful story of how our government really operates over at dKos. Some of us have long been aware of how much government, particularly in Washington, has become an insular palace culture (I've been writing about it for years, and have some experience at the local, state and federal levels myself), but this is perhaps the clearest description I've seen of it in years. It is a palace culture, and it is cut off from the plaints of the People, and it is deteriorating from a moral perspective.
I've long advocated paying close attention to what is really going on and strategizing from that basis rather than pretending that some formula is going to be satisfactory as we muddle through this increasingly difficult period.
Understanding how the government actually functions at every level is part of it.
Understanding that there has been a fundamental shift of moral authority is an increasingly important part as well.
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