The radio is already playing Christmas carols, and Ferguson is still smoldering. And the head shaking about what happened in Ferguson is continuing. It’s sad to watch businesses that have been part of a neighborhood for years be destroyed. And I won’t lie–I’ve become an old, comfortable suburbanite, so the thought of civil unrest of any kind mainly makes me nervous. Yet even inside my middle-class bubble of safety, a question lingers…
If the protests had been completely peaceful, would anyone have cared? If not a single fire had been set, would anyone have noticed?
The news media pretty much gives us the answer. The peaceful protesters in Ferguson–and there was a large group of them–were mostly ignored by the cameras. The rioters and looters got all the attention. And the TV channels were waiting with their tongues out, panting for something “bad” to happen. That’s why it’s so galling now to see the CNN experts taking on a “tsk tsk tsk” finger wagging role. This is exactly what they wanted! Peaceful protest doesn’t make for very entertaining television.
We did have some protesters here in town who got media coverage, but only because they blocked the roads, resulting in furious rush hour drivers. And what if they had stayed out of the traffic? We have the answer to that question too. The night of the grand jury announcement itself, a group of activists gathered in front of the Justice Center downtown, chanting and singing songs. The local news anchor gave them about ten seconds of his attention before moving on to Timmy the tap dancing cat or whatever other human interest story he had lined up.
We like to tout the philosophy of non-violence, the example of leaders like Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr–who’s being quoted a lot these days–but how much respect do those who follow the non-violent way actually get? And does peaceful protest even work? I’ve been involved in a couple protest marches myself (I think you’re required to do that before you can get official Portland resident status). I was at one of the Bring Back Our Girls rallies, and couldn’t help thinking that being there was, more than anything, about making ourselves feel better. If the Boko Haram kidnappers could have seen us reading our poems about justice and sending our positive vibes out into the universe, they probably would have laughed their asses off. And, judging from at least one Youtube video, they did.
And this plays out on an even grander global scale. Vladimir Putin has been spending his free time making threatening military gestures. President Obama tried–at least at first–to establish a foreign policy of diplomacy and negotiation rather than war. Obama was dismissed as weak, whereas Putin was praised for being a super macho male, and the conservatives of the world are all but doodling little hearts on the snapshots of his bare-chested horse rides.
So is peace the way of the losers? This is an appropriate issue for me to ponder, especially as I get closer to celebrating the symbolic birth of my symbolic spiritual teacher, who preached about turning the other cheek and then got killed off by the powers that be. As a child of hippies, I would like to continue to believe in non-violence. But it’s very obvious to me which path the world I live in values more.
12/04/2014 at 2:49 pm
What were these Ferguson Grand Jury imbeciles thinking?
“Yes, it would be really nice to have some more riots. Even better if the blood was on my hands.”
I don’t think anybody was arguing the cop didn’t shoot an unarmed man. That alone should represent at least 90% of what it takes to send it to trial. Shit, the pigs have been locking up the closest Negro to a crime scene since -oh- the Civil War? Admitting you intentionally killed an unarmed man should at least result in a trial, even if you are a cop.
The mere fact that a cop-related shooting went as far as a Grand Jury says MORE than enough about potential guilt. Cops kill & maim innocent people every day and rarely get charged. Here’s just 3 fairly recent examples of Seattle pigs killing & maiming completely innocent people and getting defended by the system to the bitter end. I’m not sure if ANY of these pigs even got fired, never mind charged or convicted.
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/80988150/
And here’s how the same Seattle pigs treat “lippy” teenage girls (Is there any other kind?)
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-cl67FmVRjYs/15_year_old_girl_brutally_beat_by_cops_seattle_washington_police_overstepped_again/
There are hundreds of thousands of similar videos on the Intertubes, I just chose Seattle because it’s close to you and I used to watch their local news a lot.
So when the system itself initiates criminal proceedings against a cop, you KNOW it’s safe to assume there’s enough evidence to go to trial. So why didn’t these Ferguson Grand Jury nimrods just send it to a trial and let some other panel of patsies determine if it was murder? Is there an IQ test to get on a Grand Jury?
I say it’s time to ditch the duck & cover peaceful protest shit. Those motherfucking pigs need to figure out who signs their pay cheques. This is America, land of the 2nd Amendment. And, if anything, this is what it’s meant for!!! Doesn’t anybody have an AR15 anymore? How about an RPG? Or for the non-violent crowd, a rocket launcher to hit empty cop cars is the Ferguson PD parking lot? I’m sure Gandhi would be down wit dat!
Shit needs to get real, or this Prison Planet will only get worse.
12/04/2014 at 7:58 pm
Yeah, and the Portland police have their own problems. See James Chasse, Jr for more detail.
There should be plenty of weaponry available…I see pictures of protests by armed-to-the-teeth Tea Party groups all the time. I’m not ready for an AR-15 type of protest myself, thought. I don’t like them when they’re being done by the other political side, so…
12/05/2014 at 10:14 am
(Man, I post 3 links to videos and somehow only one didn’t embed. Totally random every fucking time!)
James Chasse Jr….Yeah, there is at least one of those (mentally ill folks beaten to death by cops) in every city, every year. Cops have only one way to deal with anyone who doesn’t understand, or can’t/won’t follow, their orders…and that’s to hit/shoot them until they stop moving. Surprisingly, this tactic often ends in death. This is basically their solution for every problem and it’s probably why the fans of the Military Industrial Spy Complex do everything they can to run cover for them. It’s a natural kinship.
You know, I REALLY wish I could beat a man to death while at work and just get suspended without pay for a couple weeks like those Portland Pigs did. If I could get away with that, this planet wouldn’t have an over-population problem and Climate Change would be history!
12/04/2014 at 8:55 pm
Ich liebe ihr feuer. I just sat down to carefully read your post and I was stunned. I had the exact conversation with a close friend just a few days before you posted this. I sent a link to your post, so we’ll see where the discussion goes after there. I’m not following the Ferguson issue on purpose because I’m a cynic. As such, it is my duty to predict that by May next year, someone or others will cash in on this tragedy with book deals. I think of the careers that’ll be made or fortified. It’s sickening.
12/05/2014 at 8:49 pm
Thank you for that! Let me know how the discussion with your friend goes (only if you wish to, of course!) My fire is burning, but I would prefer to stick to the peaceful/nonviolent way, if possible–it’s much closer to my heart and spirit. The above post is my continuing struggle with the suspicion that this preference makes me nothing but weak. I still haven’t resolved this question for myself…
12/05/2014 at 12:52 pm
To anyone with functioning eyeballs, the truth is becoming obvious. Police Departments everywhere have been converted into armies for the New World Order. Their job is to “Serve & Protect it”, not us.
After the 2010 Toronto G20
MeetingBeating, I lost ALL respect I ever had for the Police. With an official budget of 1 BILLION DOLLARS, Toronto was turned into a “Germany In The 30’s” theme park. Heavily armed Nazis were running wild through the streets beating people like pinatas in designated “free speech zones”, shooting rubber bullets at teenager, plain-clothed cops dragged people into unmarked vans which delivered them to cages in warehouses and entire blocks of citizens were “kettled” for hours for committing the heinous crime of “being outside on a Saturday”.http://www.sott.net/article/232157-Canada-Toronto-G20-a-year-later-its-shocking-how-easily-Canada-became-a-brutal-police-state
Hell, 3 hours away from the protests, they even jailed a couple of college kids for…wait for it…putting up posters promoting the upcoming G20 demonstrations! http://www.theobserver.ca/2010/06/19/arrest-of-peaceful-activists-proves-g20-paranoia-trumps-democratic-rights
I went to school in this town for a while. I know exactly where the posters went up. Every week, there are at least 10 new posters on those mailbox/telephone polls and they’re always covered in taggers’ spray paint. But NOBODY was ever charged before, or since, for it. And there is NO way they’d have been caught at poster 7 without cops having advance knowledge (aka spying) and probably even tailing them. They spent 20 hours in jail (and were taken to court) because the pigs wanted to “make sure they weren’t a threat to public safety”. HA! Motherfucking, HA! Then again, literally everything the Toronto PD (Pig Department) said during that time was a complete lie. And yet only ONE cop suffered minor consequences for their actions.
Put up posters for a 100% legal protest against the NWO? Go directly to jail! Meanwhile, kill unarmed, completely innocent, citizens and, if you got a badge, you’re probably not even going to get fired.
For those keeping score in the 2014 Police vs Citizens Death Match, here’s the body count update (via relevant Wikipedia links)
Cops: 107 on duty cops died. Now consider; of those 107, 27 were in car/motorcycle accidents, plus 3 in “hot pursuit” car crashes, 15 were due to heart attacks. And I’m sure every one of them were automatically declared “heroes” in the press and got parades in their honour, deservedly so, or not.
Citizens: The link didn’t have a running total and I couldn’t count that high. But November alone was higher than the entire year of cop deaths, once you took out car crashes & heart attacks. Yet, forget parades, precious few of these deaths even get reported in the local news, except as a way of hyping how “heroic” their killer was.
So, Cops win in a landslide of bodies!
12/05/2014 at 8:50 pm
Yeah, I remember some pretty awful police actions went down during the “Battle of Seattle” as well, back in…was it 1999? And then, during W’s administration and the anti-Iraq protests, my personal favorite…”free speech zones”! Since it’s not like we can be allowed to have free speech just anywhere…