The Power Structure of this country appears to be doing everything it can to prop up the unfortunate "election" of Donald Trump to the Presidency. It's quite a remarkable scene when you think about it.
Not only is he unsuited to the office, he's totally unprepared and obviously at sea as the reality of what he's in for engulfs him. I'd be laughing if it weren't such a dangerous situation for so many Americans and people around the world.
Truly, I don't think he expected to win the office and he was quite prepared to hector Hillary from the sidelines, probably from his own TeeVee show and network set up and run by his compadre Roger Ailes. That's what I believe they were going for and expected to do. It would make them lots of money and serve as a brake on a Hillary White House.
In other words, they expected to play the Opposition Game the way it's been played by the Right for decades -- and to profit from it handsomely.
Had that happened, there would be grumpiness and grumbling from Trump loyalists to be sure, but he would have been able to give them a whole alternate universe in which to lick their wounds and do virtual battle against The Hag -- until she was either driven from office or so tied up in knots her regime would be declared a failure. Blah blah blah. It seems to me the groundwork was already done for this enterprise, and all they needed was a Hillary victory to launch. Stars and dollar signs were in their eyes.
And then... the unthinkable happened. They were given the Presidency instead. Now there will be no launch. No dollar signs. No alt.universe for their Loyalists to play in. This is as real as it gets.
Jeebus dancing on a Ritz. Whose idea was this? Well, it is what it is, and I imagine I'll be exploring it for some time to come. I had little interest in the campaign and the candidates while that shit-show was going on, but we're here now, and my interest in what to do about it is pretty intense.
He was given the keys to the Kingdom, and he's obviously as stunned as everyone else is. The Caucasian Id has been unleashed -- to what object I don't know, but there it is. White folks running wild doing what they want to whoever they decide to Other. It's ugly now and getting uglier. The worst of it is falling on the children, the brown, the black, the differently abled, the suspected queer, the suspected Muslim, or anyone at all who doesn't fit the New Model (White) Conformity.
That id has largely been kept in check for generations, and now it's let loose again to prey at will on the different and the vulnerable. Whose idea is this? What is the freaking purpose?
The United States has long since ceased to be a 'White' country, unlike some of the revanchist nations of Europe which have been reclaiming their 'Whiteness' in the face of the brown hordes of refugees driven from their homes (by EuroAmerican Imperialist destruction) in the Middle East and North Africa.
Until 'this' happened, Americans seemed quite content not to be 'White' any more, and the election of Barack Obama (twice) was supposed to be redemptive proof. He's still a very popular president. The efforts to turn him into a caricature and to "Nigger-ize" him never worked. At least not that I ever saw, but then, I'm not keyed in to the alt.White universe. I don't know how those people think. I don't know what they believe. I don't even know who they are or where they are.
It's just alien to me.
At least from my point of view these people are simply fringe, free to believe whatever they want, but not free -- until now -- to act on it.
Now they feel they've been liberated, and their Champion is going into the White House.
America will be White and Right again! Yay!
Why would Our Betters want this to happen? Why would they allow it to happen? Why are they trying so hard to prop it up? What's the deal here?
Obama himself is part of this process of propping up the inconceivable. He's been going out of his way to be kind and generous and welcoming and helpful to the Incoming Inconceivable, extending his hand and opening his heart, yadda yadda, which is not only eye-popping, but is also deeply disturbing. WTF, Dude?
Whoa. Something's going on we don't know anything about. Things are not what they appear. But maybe we got a hint of it when Michelle Obama so warmly embraced War Criminal George W. Bush at the opening of the Museum of African American Culture a few months ago. That was really shocking to a lot of people who sincerely believe that man should be in the dock at The Hague. Until he is, he should be shunned. But no. The Obamas and the Bushes and the Clintons -- and the Trumps? -- are all very good friends. Well, maybe the Trumps will be brought into the Circle if they ever get their act together enough to warrant inclusion. They haven't done so yet, but they're being given every opportunity. Why?
And what do we do about it?
Always we're being told just to calm down, accept the inevitable, don't fight it, everything will be fine, "he's not as bad as you think," yadda yadda, and I'm sorry, no, we're not going to just roll over for Trump, not this time...
I'm so old that I've heard this same litany about rightists installed in office -- going back to Reagan's gubernatorial victory in California in 1966. Every time, the same litany has been repeated: "Just calm down, accept it, 'he's not as bad as you think', everything will be fine." And every time it gets worse.
Every fucking time.
Reagan's election in 1966 was considered catastrophic at the time. Many innocents would be hurt. And guess what? It was and they were. Almost exactly as predicted. And so it's gone with every subsequent reiteration of Rightist Rule, over and over and over again.
And now this.
No, not again. Not when it is so obvious that something is dreadfully wrong with our electoral process, and not when he himself has no inkling of what to do now or even, seemingly, how he got this prize.
WTF?
I despise what he did during the campaign, boosting White Supremacy, inciting violence, and conning so many people into believing his bullshit. That all has violent and destructive repercussions on the innocent playing out right now. What he did was release the Caucasian Id from any restraint, sowing the wind. He will reap the whirlwind, but in the meantime a lot of people who shouldn't be hurt will be.
That's happening right now.
He told his followers to "Stop it!" as one would tell a dog, but they're not stopping. Why should they? In their mind, their victims deserve it. They lost! Oh, jeebus.
So what do we do?
Among the examples to learn from are the Water Protectors now and for months facing down Authority run amok in North Dakota. Other examples include the rebels in Ireland who ultimately defeated the British. The independence movement in India which eventually led to the exit of the British Empire. Anti-colonialists everywhere, including our own 18th Century revolution. The Zapatistas. And on and on.
Examples not to follow include SYRIZA in Greece, bless their hearts. It appears the Socialists everywhere are simply exhausted and out of steam. They have nothing much to offer any more, and they are obviously too willing to concede to their opponents almost before the struggle is engaged. Does that sound like the Democratic Party as well? Of course it does.
But make no mistake, the Democrats are just as much captive to the neoLibeCon, aristocratic ruling clique as are the Republicans, as are nearly all ruling parties throughout the West and much of the rest of the world.
The struggle we must engage in now is ultimately against that entire ruling ideology. Though we have to take it one step at a time.
I cite the examples I do because each of them based their struggle on simple principles: sovereignty, self-worth and spiritual renewal. If you think about it, that's what many of the White Rightists after too, only they want what they want in order to harm others, not to lift them up.
In other words, while the struggle we must engage in may be similar to that of the White Right, the objectives are quite different.
Strategies and tactics of where we go from here are actually very well worked out long since, the rule book of how to do it is already written. We don't have to reinvent the wheel, but we have to resist efforts to divide us (Shut up, Democratic "helpers" -- you're not helping!) and we must be aware of and remain focused on the end game -- why we fight, in other words.
We will win, though probably not in my lifetime.
You never know, though. As we've seen, things can change in a twinkling.
Showing posts with label fight back. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fight back. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Sunday, November 13, 2016
Ugly and getting uglier
Kind of interesting from the view at 30,000 feet, but I don't know how much longer I'll bebe able to maintain my distance from the roiling unrest in the streets, nor do I have any real insight into how far it's going to spread.
There were said to be 100,000 in the streets of LA yesterday protesting the elevation of Trump to the Presidency. If it was reported that way, the number was probably quite a bit more given the media tendency to low-ball "leftist" crowd estimates.
Gee.
The protests in Portland have been called "riots" and the police have responded by firing into the crowds with "rubber projectiles," gas and smoke grenades and flash-bangs after assuring us that the protesters threw "objects" at them. A sniper apparently fired live ammunition at a protester, wounding him.
And so it goes.
On the other side, Trump partisans are either claiming the protests don't matter -- after all, the protesters are so few and they're just losers, whiners, and no accounts -- or they are Soros-funded attempts at a domestic "Color Revolution" -- and they don't matter, because Soros, and who cares, anyway?
Well, I'm not aware of any Color Revolution aspects -- yet. But the protests have been growing and spreading, and they are destabilizing wherever they pop up. There was a demonstration in Albuquerque the other day (I think it was Wednesday, I forget!) in which about 600 participated. A handful of what I assume were anarchists targeted a restaurant along the route for vandalism, and sure enough, that's what caught the local media eye (they are always on the lookout for protester "violence.") Another protest was apparently announced for Thursday night and all the mechanisms for suppression were marshaled by the authorities, but whoopsy! The protest didn't happen.
I have to say Albuquerque's local protest community is well experienced in psyching out authority, and apparently they've been doing that. Bless their hearts.
But what I'm seeing reported in the media about protests around the country should be starting to alarm Our Rulers. It's not a Color Revolution yet, but it could become one -- or something like one -- very quickly.
Personally, I wouldn't want that to happen, partly because the results where they have happened have not necessarily been what their participants intended -- sometimes they've been closer to the opposite. They tend to cause the institutionalization of a neo-liberal, exploitative and extractive power structure that acts against the interests of the People. We already have that, duh. But if a Color Revolution type general protest occurs in this country, Trump will be toast. I don't know of any target of a Color Revolution who has managed to survive the... um, process. I could be wrong, but it wouldn't look good for the survival of the current wildly corrupt and purposefully contrary power structure.
While that might be desirable in the abstract, what would take its place?
That's the problem. While there are many, many reasons to take to the streets over this appalling and outrageous (s)election, no one I know of is able to articulate an alternative. What are we supposed to do, and what sort of difference is supposed to be made?
Are we supposed to install Hillary instead of Trump? I don't see that as viable. First of all, she is saying -- along with the entire political class and the media -- to "accept" the results essentially without question and get used to Trump-the-President. The people in the streets refuse.
While Hillary has a widening popular vote lead, now estimated to top out at 2 million, but it might go to three or even four million by the time all the votes are counted, and if that happened, that would give her a clear majority in the popular vote, no one has yet looked closely at the "battleground" state totals that so surprisingly "flipped" from Clinton to Trump by a very narrow margin at the last minute -- giving him an Electoral College victory without the need for a popular vote plurality or majority.
Given all the talk about rigged elections and Putin's interference (OMG! Putin!) it's remarkable that after Trump's "shocking" "historic" "upset" no one said a word about rigging or interference again.
The Memory Hole sucked it right down.
How... interesting.
Clinton, for her part, is telling donors she "lost" because of Comey's interference. Wait. What about PUTIN????!!!!! No word.
Of course because Trump "won" he no longer has anything to say about "rigged elections," does he?
Jeebus.
They must think the Rabble are complete idiots. Well...
All right, I don't know what happened in the "battleground" states. The excuses I've heard for the "surprising" flip Clinton to Trump in those states -- and those states alone -- are that white women broke for Trump at the very last minute (because Comey -- that was Hillary's excuse) and there were all these hidden white rural voters who came out of the woods to vote for Trump, and what could you do, it was just enough to give him an EC victory, and that's it. Just accept it.
The people in the streets are saying, "No! Fuck No! Not. This. Time!"
We were told the same thing when Bush2 was handed the Presidency by a lawless Supreme Court. "Just accept it." And many did. A lot said "No," but that time, they were ignored. 60,000 or more protested Bush's inauguration in DC on the day, and there was almost no mention of it in the media. It went right down the Memory Hole too, and today hardly anybody knows it happened. "Get over it" was the constant refrain of the Busheviks, but many never did, and the outrages that Busheviks committed were so appalling and so destructive that today it's almost impossible to believe such a damaging regime was allowed to do what it did by the entire political class cheered on by a captive media. What were they thinking?
Millions took to the streets to protest the Iraq War, and they were ignored. But many, many others protested practically every aspect of the Bush Regime, and except for Cindy Sheehan sitting in her ditch in Crawford shaming Bush the Lesser, you practically wouldn't know there were any protests at all these days, because most of them were ignored at the time, and forgotten.
But they happened nonetheless and had the cumulative effect of destabilizing the regime. Not that it did any good, but it happened.
The horrors of the Bush2 Regime are not forgotten, despite the fact that the protests largely were, and I think part of the motivation of the current protests is a recognition that Trump is like Bush2 on steroids, raging and champing at the bit to commit even more mayhem to more people, faster and harder than the Busheviks did.
We will not willingly repeat that horror show.
Trump and his gang of thieves, mountebanks, torturers and warmongers have done nothing to assure us they won't engage in the kind of monstrousness the Busheviks did. In fact, they've been pretty clear they'd "finish the job" the Busheviks left undone by dismantling Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and any other remnants of a social safety net they can find, by deporting every brown person they can round up, building a higher wall to keep them Messicans out, by suppressing every aspect of dissent they can, by restricting the voting franchise to only People Who Matter, by dispensing favors to loyalists, denying them to everyone else, by going hog-wild with extraction and transport of fossil fuels (damn the Indians acting against the Dakota Access Pipeline, Trump himself stands to profit from it, get outta the way, ya damn savages!), restoring official torture programs, glassing any opposition to hegemony in the Middle East, by re-engaging in acts of war against Iran, by allying the United States with every rightwing/fascist regime on earth and on and on and on. That's the program Trump and his R cronies in Congress have been laying out, essentially daring anyone to do anything about it.
His defenders insist we must give him the benefit of the doubt because of all the Good Things he's going to do. Never mind the Bad. He's promising to increase infrastructure spending to create "jobs" -- for whom, doing what? Well, we don't know, do we? But not to worry, it will be Wonderful, and long overdue! He'll get rid of that Obamacare abomination, leaving -- perhaps -- the "prior conditions" denial of coverage provisions and offspring coverage on parents' policies until age 26 as remnant sops to the takers, losers, and whiners. But that's it. Nothing else. 20 some odd million to lose coverage, and wonder of wonders, to lose any ability to get coverage. Tough luck, suckers!
He won't start WWIII with Putin, so that's good, no? He will start a war with Iran and China and whoever else gets in his way or defies him, but they deserve it, right?
Gah. On and on.
"Give him a chance!" And more and more of the People say, "No. Not this time."
I don't know what will happen. I don't want to think the worst, but it's hard not to under the circumstances. This man and his cronies must not take office. Period.
God save us.
There were said to be 100,000 in the streets of LA yesterday protesting the elevation of Trump to the Presidency. If it was reported that way, the number was probably quite a bit more given the media tendency to low-ball "leftist" crowd estimates.
Gee.
The protests in Portland have been called "riots" and the police have responded by firing into the crowds with "rubber projectiles," gas and smoke grenades and flash-bangs after assuring us that the protesters threw "objects" at them. A sniper apparently fired live ammunition at a protester, wounding him.
And so it goes.
On the other side, Trump partisans are either claiming the protests don't matter -- after all, the protesters are so few and they're just losers, whiners, and no accounts -- or they are Soros-funded attempts at a domestic "Color Revolution" -- and they don't matter, because Soros, and who cares, anyway?
Well, I'm not aware of any Color Revolution aspects -- yet. But the protests have been growing and spreading, and they are destabilizing wherever they pop up. There was a demonstration in Albuquerque the other day (I think it was Wednesday, I forget!) in which about 600 participated. A handful of what I assume were anarchists targeted a restaurant along the route for vandalism, and sure enough, that's what caught the local media eye (they are always on the lookout for protester "violence.") Another protest was apparently announced for Thursday night and all the mechanisms for suppression were marshaled by the authorities, but whoopsy! The protest didn't happen.
I have to say Albuquerque's local protest community is well experienced in psyching out authority, and apparently they've been doing that. Bless their hearts.
But what I'm seeing reported in the media about protests around the country should be starting to alarm Our Rulers. It's not a Color Revolution yet, but it could become one -- or something like one -- very quickly.
Personally, I wouldn't want that to happen, partly because the results where they have happened have not necessarily been what their participants intended -- sometimes they've been closer to the opposite. They tend to cause the institutionalization of a neo-liberal, exploitative and extractive power structure that acts against the interests of the People. We already have that, duh. But if a Color Revolution type general protest occurs in this country, Trump will be toast. I don't know of any target of a Color Revolution who has managed to survive the... um, process. I could be wrong, but it wouldn't look good for the survival of the current wildly corrupt and purposefully contrary power structure.
While that might be desirable in the abstract, what would take its place?
That's the problem. While there are many, many reasons to take to the streets over this appalling and outrageous (s)election, no one I know of is able to articulate an alternative. What are we supposed to do, and what sort of difference is supposed to be made?
Are we supposed to install Hillary instead of Trump? I don't see that as viable. First of all, she is saying -- along with the entire political class and the media -- to "accept" the results essentially without question and get used to Trump-the-President. The people in the streets refuse.
While Hillary has a widening popular vote lead, now estimated to top out at 2 million, but it might go to three or even four million by the time all the votes are counted, and if that happened, that would give her a clear majority in the popular vote, no one has yet looked closely at the "battleground" state totals that so surprisingly "flipped" from Clinton to Trump by a very narrow margin at the last minute -- giving him an Electoral College victory without the need for a popular vote plurality or majority.
Given all the talk about rigged elections and Putin's interference (OMG! Putin!) it's remarkable that after Trump's "shocking" "historic" "upset" no one said a word about rigging or interference again.
The Memory Hole sucked it right down.
How... interesting.
Clinton, for her part, is telling donors she "lost" because of Comey's interference. Wait. What about PUTIN????!!!!! No word.
Of course because Trump "won" he no longer has anything to say about "rigged elections," does he?
Jeebus.
They must think the Rabble are complete idiots. Well...
All right, I don't know what happened in the "battleground" states. The excuses I've heard for the "surprising" flip Clinton to Trump in those states -- and those states alone -- are that white women broke for Trump at the very last minute (because Comey -- that was Hillary's excuse) and there were all these hidden white rural voters who came out of the woods to vote for Trump, and what could you do, it was just enough to give him an EC victory, and that's it. Just accept it.
The people in the streets are saying, "No! Fuck No! Not. This. Time!"
We were told the same thing when Bush2 was handed the Presidency by a lawless Supreme Court. "Just accept it." And many did. A lot said "No," but that time, they were ignored. 60,000 or more protested Bush's inauguration in DC on the day, and there was almost no mention of it in the media. It went right down the Memory Hole too, and today hardly anybody knows it happened. "Get over it" was the constant refrain of the Busheviks, but many never did, and the outrages that Busheviks committed were so appalling and so destructive that today it's almost impossible to believe such a damaging regime was allowed to do what it did by the entire political class cheered on by a captive media. What were they thinking?
Millions took to the streets to protest the Iraq War, and they were ignored. But many, many others protested practically every aspect of the Bush Regime, and except for Cindy Sheehan sitting in her ditch in Crawford shaming Bush the Lesser, you practically wouldn't know there were any protests at all these days, because most of them were ignored at the time, and forgotten.
But they happened nonetheless and had the cumulative effect of destabilizing the regime. Not that it did any good, but it happened.
The horrors of the Bush2 Regime are not forgotten, despite the fact that the protests largely were, and I think part of the motivation of the current protests is a recognition that Trump is like Bush2 on steroids, raging and champing at the bit to commit even more mayhem to more people, faster and harder than the Busheviks did.
We will not willingly repeat that horror show.
Trump and his gang of thieves, mountebanks, torturers and warmongers have done nothing to assure us they won't engage in the kind of monstrousness the Busheviks did. In fact, they've been pretty clear they'd "finish the job" the Busheviks left undone by dismantling Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and any other remnants of a social safety net they can find, by deporting every brown person they can round up, building a higher wall to keep them Messicans out, by suppressing every aspect of dissent they can, by restricting the voting franchise to only People Who Matter, by dispensing favors to loyalists, denying them to everyone else, by going hog-wild with extraction and transport of fossil fuels (damn the Indians acting against the Dakota Access Pipeline, Trump himself stands to profit from it, get outta the way, ya damn savages!), restoring official torture programs, glassing any opposition to hegemony in the Middle East, by re-engaging in acts of war against Iran, by allying the United States with every rightwing/fascist regime on earth and on and on and on. That's the program Trump and his R cronies in Congress have been laying out, essentially daring anyone to do anything about it.
His defenders insist we must give him the benefit of the doubt because of all the Good Things he's going to do. Never mind the Bad. He's promising to increase infrastructure spending to create "jobs" -- for whom, doing what? Well, we don't know, do we? But not to worry, it will be Wonderful, and long overdue! He'll get rid of that Obamacare abomination, leaving -- perhaps -- the "prior conditions" denial of coverage provisions and offspring coverage on parents' policies until age 26 as remnant sops to the takers, losers, and whiners. But that's it. Nothing else. 20 some odd million to lose coverage, and wonder of wonders, to lose any ability to get coverage. Tough luck, suckers!
He won't start WWIII with Putin, so that's good, no? He will start a war with Iran and China and whoever else gets in his way or defies him, but they deserve it, right?
Gah. On and on.
"Give him a chance!" And more and more of the People say, "No. Not this time."
I don't know what will happen. I don't want to think the worst, but it's hard not to under the circumstances. This man and his cronies must not take office. Period.
God save us.
Sunday, June 7, 2015
What the Actual F*ck??!!
This video has been making the rounds today. White cops in suburban Dallas going ape-shit on black pool-partiers, a particular example being that of the sergeant on duty, hurling a bikini-clad partier onto the ground, hauling her around by her arm, and kneeing her on the back until another cop comes along with handcuffs to truss her up.
Apparently the big-bellied fat fucks are plainclothes officers, though it's hard to say.
The story I've read is that a white female resident of the housing development objected to black pool partiers in her community pool. She got into a fight with a black girl -- who is apparently also a resident of the development -- when the white woman said the others should go back to the "projects". The white woman, according to what I've read, initiated the physical struggle. Another white woman intervened to break it up. Others called 911 claiming that there were all kinds of black people using the community's pool uninvited. Still others called saying there was a fight. A dozen police responded, the little pissant sergeant (now referred to as piss ant Police Supervisor Cpl Eric Casebolt).
Supposedly the pool party was advertised as "open to the public" on social media, and from what I've been able to glean, those who objected to the presence of black people in the pool were adult white people. From the video, it's not apparent that white kids have a problem with the presence of black people at the pool party.
The little pissant corporal, the one who savages the girl in the bikini, is out of control and he has to be restrained by his buddies when he pulls out his gun to threaten youngsters who come to help the girl he's thrown to the ground.
"Failure to obey" quickly and completely enough is the trigger for his actions -- at least so far as I can tell.
It's been pointed out that the police are only interested in the black kids. But the other issue -- which I think is a key -- is that they are responding to repeated 911 calls.
In too many situations, callers to 911 are a menace, as are dispatchers and responding officers. Something is dreadfully wrong with the flow charts that are used and the protocols of dispatch. Too many people are killed and injured and wrongly arrested/harassed by police sent in response to ambiguous or hostile calls to 911. Something has to be done. Further, police in this instance chose to escalate where there was no need. They did it because... they knew nothing else? I don't know. But what they did was wrong.
And too typical...
Apparently the big-bellied fat fucks are plainclothes officers, though it's hard to say.
The story I've read is that a white female resident of the housing development objected to black pool partiers in her community pool. She got into a fight with a black girl -- who is apparently also a resident of the development -- when the white woman said the others should go back to the "projects". The white woman, according to what I've read, initiated the physical struggle. Another white woman intervened to break it up. Others called 911 claiming that there were all kinds of black people using the community's pool uninvited. Still others called saying there was a fight. A dozen police responded, the little pissant sergeant (now referred to as piss ant Police Supervisor Cpl Eric Casebolt).
Supposedly the pool party was advertised as "open to the public" on social media, and from what I've been able to glean, those who objected to the presence of black people in the pool were adult white people. From the video, it's not apparent that white kids have a problem with the presence of black people at the pool party.
The little pissant corporal, the one who savages the girl in the bikini, is out of control and he has to be restrained by his buddies when he pulls out his gun to threaten youngsters who come to help the girl he's thrown to the ground.
"Failure to obey" quickly and completely enough is the trigger for his actions -- at least so far as I can tell.
It's been pointed out that the police are only interested in the black kids. But the other issue -- which I think is a key -- is that they are responding to repeated 911 calls.
In too many situations, callers to 911 are a menace, as are dispatchers and responding officers. Something is dreadfully wrong with the flow charts that are used and the protocols of dispatch. Too many people are killed and injured and wrongly arrested/harassed by police sent in response to ambiguous or hostile calls to 911. Something has to be done. Further, police in this instance chose to escalate where there was no need. They did it because... they knew nothing else? I don't know. But what they did was wrong.
And too typical...
Friday, December 5, 2014
Not Quite Ready
Saw some of the Shut It Down actions in New York via JamesFromTheInternet's livestream last night, and I was impressed by the size of the crowds -- estimated at 15,000 or more -- by the time I had to head to bed. This is good.
However.
The decision to hold off on Shutting Shit Down until after the workday ended for many/most New Yorkers is somewhat puzzling. The police themselves shut down the Brooklyn Bridge and other sites to prevent the protesters from doing so. And the police have adopted tactics that split the crowds of marchers and protesters into numerous rather easily controlled elements which they then lead either in circles or into dead ends, causing a kind of "natural dispersal."
NYPD is skilled at these tactics. They used them against Occupy as well. They work to dissipate the energy of crowds of protesters and limit the effectiveness of actions. So far, it appears that demonstrators in New York have not found successful countermeasures, though it's obvious that they are aware of the tactics used against them.
Meanwhile I was catching up on some of the actions in St. Louis and watched an archived video shot by Rebelutionary_Z at Webster University in Webster Groves. A contingent of students gathered and marched on campus (one I'm somewhat familiar with, though obviously it's changed in the last 30 years), police and campus security in the lead. This happened at St. Louis University one time too. All of a sudden the march stopped and confusion reigned. Something had happened. There were outbreaks of anger, police lines were formed to prevent resumption and progress of the march, and there was considerable tussling in the crowd as they attempted to find out/figure out what was going on.
Eventually, the cause of the disruption became known. Someone had been arrested at the back of the march. It was one of the banner-carriers, a banner that reads "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" -- a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. This banner has been used in a number of actions and demonstrations in the St. Louis area.
According to reports from witnesses, the arrest had been a "snatch and grab" -- another anti-protester tactic widely used by police these days, and often seen during G-20s and other Big Gatherings of the Mighty, as well as during Occupy's hey-day in the public eye. "Snatch and grabs" are a form of kidnapping in which putative leaders are targeted by police and removed suddenly, often dramatically dragged away by a phalanx of police. Other times, random protesters are similarly targeted and dragged away. Almost always, the only pretext for the arrest of these individuals is that they are strategically placed where the effect of their kidnapping/detention will have the greatest impact on the crowds. This is a link to a video of a similar kind of police action in San Francisco during the #Ferguson protests in which a man who vocally challenged an officer is suddenly grabbed and thrown down, arrested basically for mouthing off. It is a nasty and ought to be an illegal tactic, as charges against snatch and grab victims are rarely pursued. The point is to disrupt and discourage the protesters, and it often works.
It worked in Webster Groves in that the march on campus immediately stopped and the participants then spent twenty or thirty minutes wondering what was going on and/or arguing with police. Eventually, the police said that the man who had been arrested would be released on no bond, provided that the crowd abandoned the march and dispersed. They did so.
Whether the man was ever released, I don't know, but I read this morning about another incident that demonstrates the level of contempt police have for those who are engaged in protest against police violence, and the lengths they are prepared to go to stifle dissent.
Yesterday, a member of the Ferguson Commission who attended a meeting with the President at the White House on Tuesday was arrested by St. Louis Metropolitan Police and charged with assault for his participation in an action at St. Louis City Hall. This was clearly a targeted arrest aimed at intimidating the young man, Rasheen Aldridge, Jr. He's been very vocal about the issue of police abuse in St. Louis, and has participated in numerous demonstrations since the killing of Mike Brown in August. He's also received a lot of press and media coverage, especially after he was appointed to the Ferguson Commission.
His arrest comes on the heels of the failure of the St. Louis County Grand Jury to indict Darren Wilson for killing Mike Brown and the failure of the Staten Island Grand Jury to indict Daniel Pantaleo for killing Eric Garner in July. It's worth noting (again) that the man who recorded the video of Eric Garner's take-down and arrest, Ramsey Orta, the man who provided the video proof that Pantaleo used an unauthorized chokehold in the take-down, leading directly to Garner's death, was indicted by another Staten Island Grand Jury on unrelated weapons charges, and his wife was arrested shortly thereafter.
The issue here is the tactic of "making life miserable" for troublemakers. It's a tactic widely by police and Authority in general to silence dissent.
These are not random incidents or coincidences, these are dissent suppressing tactics on full display.
Even the appointment of commissions and meetings at the White House are strategic elements in a cynical campaign by Power to curb and disrupt dissent, protest, and uprisings of all kinds.
They work.
These tactics can be countered, and the disruption of protests and other actions can be thwarted, but it doesn't appear that the organizers of some of the current protests and actions are attempting to do so. I don't know whether it's a strategic choice to let events unfold as they will, or it is a lack of preparedness to counter the kinds of disruptions the police are engaging in.
My sense is that we are still in the "precursor" stage of a potential rebellion and revolution. Activists and Americans in general are not quite ready...
It could be decades before they are "ready." We won't know the day, the how, or the why until it comes.
However.
The decision to hold off on Shutting Shit Down until after the workday ended for many/most New Yorkers is somewhat puzzling. The police themselves shut down the Brooklyn Bridge and other sites to prevent the protesters from doing so. And the police have adopted tactics that split the crowds of marchers and protesters into numerous rather easily controlled elements which they then lead either in circles or into dead ends, causing a kind of "natural dispersal."
NYPD is skilled at these tactics. They used them against Occupy as well. They work to dissipate the energy of crowds of protesters and limit the effectiveness of actions. So far, it appears that demonstrators in New York have not found successful countermeasures, though it's obvious that they are aware of the tactics used against them.
Meanwhile I was catching up on some of the actions in St. Louis and watched an archived video shot by Rebelutionary_Z at Webster University in Webster Groves. A contingent of students gathered and marched on campus (one I'm somewhat familiar with, though obviously it's changed in the last 30 years), police and campus security in the lead. This happened at St. Louis University one time too. All of a sudden the march stopped and confusion reigned. Something had happened. There were outbreaks of anger, police lines were formed to prevent resumption and progress of the march, and there was considerable tussling in the crowd as they attempted to find out/figure out what was going on.
Eventually, the cause of the disruption became known. Someone had been arrested at the back of the march. It was one of the banner-carriers, a banner that reads "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" -- a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. This banner has been used in a number of actions and demonstrations in the St. Louis area.
According to reports from witnesses, the arrest had been a "snatch and grab" -- another anti-protester tactic widely used by police these days, and often seen during G-20s and other Big Gatherings of the Mighty, as well as during Occupy's hey-day in the public eye. "Snatch and grabs" are a form of kidnapping in which putative leaders are targeted by police and removed suddenly, often dramatically dragged away by a phalanx of police. Other times, random protesters are similarly targeted and dragged away. Almost always, the only pretext for the arrest of these individuals is that they are strategically placed where the effect of their kidnapping/detention will have the greatest impact on the crowds. This is a link to a video of a similar kind of police action in San Francisco during the #Ferguson protests in which a man who vocally challenged an officer is suddenly grabbed and thrown down, arrested basically for mouthing off. It is a nasty and ought to be an illegal tactic, as charges against snatch and grab victims are rarely pursued. The point is to disrupt and discourage the protesters, and it often works.
It worked in Webster Groves in that the march on campus immediately stopped and the participants then spent twenty or thirty minutes wondering what was going on and/or arguing with police. Eventually, the police said that the man who had been arrested would be released on no bond, provided that the crowd abandoned the march and dispersed. They did so.
Whether the man was ever released, I don't know, but I read this morning about another incident that demonstrates the level of contempt police have for those who are engaged in protest against police violence, and the lengths they are prepared to go to stifle dissent.
Yesterday, a member of the Ferguson Commission who attended a meeting with the President at the White House on Tuesday was arrested by St. Louis Metropolitan Police and charged with assault for his participation in an action at St. Louis City Hall. This was clearly a targeted arrest aimed at intimidating the young man, Rasheen Aldridge, Jr. He's been very vocal about the issue of police abuse in St. Louis, and has participated in numerous demonstrations since the killing of Mike Brown in August. He's also received a lot of press and media coverage, especially after he was appointed to the Ferguson Commission.
His arrest comes on the heels of the failure of the St. Louis County Grand Jury to indict Darren Wilson for killing Mike Brown and the failure of the Staten Island Grand Jury to indict Daniel Pantaleo for killing Eric Garner in July. It's worth noting (again) that the man who recorded the video of Eric Garner's take-down and arrest, Ramsey Orta, the man who provided the video proof that Pantaleo used an unauthorized chokehold in the take-down, leading directly to Garner's death, was indicted by another Staten Island Grand Jury on unrelated weapons charges, and his wife was arrested shortly thereafter.
The issue here is the tactic of "making life miserable" for troublemakers. It's a tactic widely by police and Authority in general to silence dissent.
These are not random incidents or coincidences, these are dissent suppressing tactics on full display.
Even the appointment of commissions and meetings at the White House are strategic elements in a cynical campaign by Power to curb and disrupt dissent, protest, and uprisings of all kinds.
They work.
These tactics can be countered, and the disruption of protests and other actions can be thwarted, but it doesn't appear that the organizers of some of the current protests and actions are attempting to do so. I don't know whether it's a strategic choice to let events unfold as they will, or it is a lack of preparedness to counter the kinds of disruptions the police are engaging in.
My sense is that we are still in the "precursor" stage of a potential rebellion and revolution. Activists and Americans in general are not quite ready...
It could be decades before they are "ready." We won't know the day, the how, or the why until it comes.
Monday, November 17, 2014
Declaration of War?
"No indictment of Darren Wilson will be a declaration of war..."
From the video prepared by HandsUpUnited
The governor of Missouri declared a state of emergency today and called out the National Guard. There has as yet been no announcement from the St. Louis County Grand Jury. Perhaps all the preparations for Teh Riots are not yet in place.
Demonstrations are planned throughout the country and in St. Louis and Ferguson no matter what the GJ's ruling is. Demonstrations have been going on in St. Louis and Ferguson nearly constantly since the killing of Michael Brown. And the killing continues, the count kept by Killed by Police is now up to 1729 since May 1, 2013, at least 975 since January 1, 2014.
Every day there are more.
Every day.
From the video prepared by HandsUpUnited
The governor of Missouri declared a state of emergency today and called out the National Guard. There has as yet been no announcement from the St. Louis County Grand Jury. Perhaps all the preparations for Teh Riots are not yet in place.
Demonstrations are planned throughout the country and in St. Louis and Ferguson no matter what the GJ's ruling is. Demonstrations have been going on in St. Louis and Ferguson nearly constantly since the killing of Michael Brown. And the killing continues, the count kept by Killed by Police is now up to 1729 since May 1, 2013, at least 975 since January 1, 2014.
Every day there are more.
Every day.
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