In re: Kris Kotarski: This is completely fucked up. Rubber bullets... gas... rifles pointed at photo reporters...
The US looks like a third world banana republic right now...
Occupy Denver protesters face off with police – Saturday, October 29, 2011 Photos – Photos and Video |
B: If there is a clear and obvious design flaw in public assembly laws of western liberal democracies in general, we should acknowledge that problem and work to resolve it through usual legislative or novel means. If the usual legislative mechanisms are untrustworthy, they would require more than tents to fix.
However, if the preference is to complain about the predictable onslaught of projectiles, rather than to prevent or mitigate them, then the motives and reasoning need to be better explained.
tl;dr: How many supporters have tried to enact positive change, rather than simply complaining?
Kris Kotarski B I'm not sure that the main problem here is the "obvious design flaw in public assembly laws of western liberal democracies in general", although this too is a problem. The main problem is the creeping intolerance for mass dissent, and the almost-complete militarization of police forces in the name of "fighting terrorism" or other some such...
One wonders, have you been? Have you talked to the people there? Maybe you just missed the actions that are being taken on the ground to create change. Now, we can argue about their likely effectiveness, but to cast OWS as nothing but a bunch of layabouts is deeply cynical.
CH: And yes, of course the normal miscreants are there. The Black Block largely caused the big ruckus here in Denver yesterday, but they are, as always, a small minority, used as an excuse by the police to stomp everyone else. I've been shot at and tear gassed because of these assholes before, and have no love for them. But they are never core - just angry people who don't see healthy outlets for frustration.
B: +Kris Kotarski Intolerance for many things have been addressed (but not necessarily overcome) through explicit legislation protecting diversity, including diversity of political opinion. If there is a recognition, design, compliance, or enforcement problem with non-violent solutions, why consistently prefer the violent alternative?
+CH: My comments neither imply nor require all that elaboration.
If our goal is to live in a rules-based lawful society, the right to assemble, the right to dissent, and the right to contribute to the legislative process should be available to everyone. The vast majority of comments on social media, mailing lists, at meetings etc. are complaints about law enforcement actions and improvised responses to such actions, rather than ways to change the laws being enforced.
Municipal ordinances regulating by-law enforcement are surprisingly effective low-hanging fruit, in that a couple dozen people can get an ordinance to and through a municipal committee within a calendar year at most. An ordinance enabling peaceful assembly to override zoning, land use, and perhaps traffic by-laws would, shockingly, lower the risk of participation for everybody, not just for those experts in protesting.
The lack of attempts to protect local protest can only be attributed to an extremely unlikely cognitive gap (protestors and their supporters not knowing how laws can be changed), or a preference for the status quo of receiving violence at taxpayer expense.
Based on protest organisers' consistent and repeated calls made over years for onsite medics to respond to police actions, and distribution of literature about resisting crowd control tactics, I have to ask if and why legislative means to protect dissent have failed. And if they have failed, why are not the protests about such a far more crucial problem?
Could it be the case that if one's only tool is victimhood, every problem looks like suppression?
CH: B, my experience on municipal ordinances is a little different, although I certainly respect those who try to change the basic rules via the normal democratic route. But the ordinances I've seen pass, at least here in Colorado, are the ones that limit the use of space, not expand it. Anti-homeless ordinances are a local favorite, which are inevitably used against sign holders of all types. I was once threatened with arrest for holding an sign near a street corner, as a measure had been passed targeting pan-handlers, banning all sign holding and loitering near intersections.
More to the point, cops quite often disregard or ignore ordinances as they see fit. You can pass ordinances till you're blue in the face, but if police feel free to ignore them, they don't do the least bit of good. Sadly, most elected officials feel they can't be critical of such actions (or don't care), and many departments operate free from much interference from city hall.
Anyway, I still disagree with your main contention that the people at protests aren't the same ones agitating for changes in the law. Personal experience says this just isn't true, although the level of other activities varies with the target of the protest. During the Iraq war protests, no one (including myself) had much of an idea what else could be done without breaking the law. Some of my friends took that step, and blocked base entrances. Yet pro-marijuana legalization protests are full of people actively working on petitions and amendments (and being quite successful at it).
That street protest is suppressed in this country whenever possible does not mean that people should stop doing it until legal remedies have been brought to bear. That's not how one creates change. Your charge of victim-hood, to me, just shows you've not really been involved in rallies. Yes, there is a sense of victim-hood after being shot at and pepper sprayed - as there should be, as you've likely just been victimized. But except for the fringes, this is not what it brining people out. People come for community, and a hope that change is possible. Without those two things, protest fails. Indeed, the creation of victims via police violence can halt a movement in its tracks. Those who believe police violence makes a protest movement stronger (via media coverage, resentment, etc.) are full of shit, and that's something I think both you and I can agree on.
B: +CH:
I appreciate that you have experience in this area. I'm not sure where it is that you think we disagree.
I also disagree with the "main contention that the people at protests aren't the same ones agitating for changes in the law" since that was never my main contention. See: "vast majority of comments on social media, mailing lists, at meetings etc. are complaints about law enforcement", "extremely unlikely cognitive gap", "preference to complain... rather than to prevent or mitigate ... need to be better explained", and "legislative mechanisms are untrustworthy... require more than tents to fix."
I also do not see many pro-marijuana, pro-same-sex union, pro-disabled, and other successful movements being subject to the same kinds of crowd control as practiced in 2011. Time will tell if this generation's remake of sit-ins will succeed or flop.
You'll find my experiences and opinions of rallies on the public record. To summarise, I did not find the typical Western style of group protest (hours of yelling and counter-yelling without listening, multiplied by hundreds of people) to be a productive use of my time in terms of communication or policy development.
Having more recently worked on the other side of policy, community organisers who are the most effective with respect to securing policy or programming are also the most effective at simultaneously spinning both media and supportive crowds. Note that this does not necessarily imply that the crowds' policy demands are being met or even considered. We've seen this gap with some of those elected on social media and "grassroots" hope campaigns in the last four years.
That much existing ordinance is of the restrictive variety should not in itself prevent permissive ordinances from being contemplated or enacted. If there are quality management problems in enforcement, those should be highlighted and addressed using the standard or novel approaches as appropriate.
CH: I think this conversation would have gone much faster in person, as you're quite right, we are more or less in agreement, with a difference in emphasis.
My largest experience was in the build-up to the Iraq war, which was largely organized at a high level, with many attempts to mitigate police action, attempts that I saw fail multiple times when small numbers of people who did not wish to cooperate gave the police the excuse they wanted to fuck everyone over.
Movements with more main-stream positions are subjected to less repression, but their history shows this wasn't always so. The history of homosexual activism is a good example of where the perceived position of the protesters in society largely dictated police action, not the action of the protesters themselves. It's also a good example of where protest and social activism marched hand-in-hand.
But you're quite right, yelling endlessly is a useless exercise beyond awareness, and it has limits there too. Sometimes protest is just cathartic, and that's okay in my book. On a day-to-day basis, OWS isn't operating this way. Yes, there are marches, and that's mostly what gets covered in the media, and there is a segment who wants to fight the police as both symbolic and physical manifestations of authority, but good deal of the time people are sitting around, talking, discussing, and building. Like you, I'm having a hard time thinking it will directly lead to much, but there is little question it has opened up space for other activists to make change. The issues members of OWS commonly mention have gotten far more air time in the U.S. then I've ever in my lifetime, and public opinion seems to be swinging in favor of many of the policies that are natural reactions to the issues. I'll keep offering support to OWS as long as it seems to be creating that space.
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