Freedom Doesn't Live Here Anymore!

Freedom Doesn't Live Here Any More
by Mark E. Smith

Inspired by the Freedom Riders and others who braved hatred and violence to advance the cause of civil rights, activists have been calling upon people to demonstrate at the Democratic Party convention in Denver. They want to protest the war, the loss of habeus corpus, the infringements on civil rights, and all the other tragedies of the Bush administration that the Democratic Party has supported, including their refusal to impeach Bush and Cheney. They are courageous people and their cause is just. But they don't seem to have thought things through.

Congressional Democrats have about a 20% approval rating among Democratic voters. Many Democrats are so unhappy with their party's support for the Bush agenda that they don't even plan to vote. What is it about the Democratic Party's convention that makes activists think that it is important enough to be worth protesting?

I spoke with one of their organizers who was here in San Diego and I emailed the organizing group, but got no response. They're like people determined to vote. All their protest will do is recognize the authority of the system and invite more abuse. I believe that the convention should be boycotted and ignored except for stuff in the alternative media pointing out that it has no legitimacy. What if they held a convention and nobody thought it was important enough to protest? Instead they could fill the alternative media with criticism about why it is irrelevant.

A large planned protest gives Homeland Security and local law enforcement a chance to test out all their crowd control gear. They really need a way to justify all the money that has been spent on crowd control when there were no unruly crowds to control. Protesting the convention is like a battered wife saying, "I'm going to confront him and tell him not to hit me any more. I have rights," instead of going to a shelter and getting away from the batterer. It's asking for more brutality.

They want a repeat of old convention protests with much brutality and a lot of press coverage, and they'll get it. And spend the next few years in court trying to get compensation for injuries and false arrest for the ones who aren't killed. So sad. Such brave young people with such creative minds and they aren't open to doing things differently. They have all the right ideas about democracy, but they are still thinking in terms of violent revolution.

Of course the ones who get hurt won't be the wealthy organizers with bail money. They'll just get arrested to prove their authenticity so that nobody suspects that they're provocateurs. I've been around a long time, and I've seen this stuff before. The ones who get severely injured or killed will be the poor and the innocent, as usual. This isn't a revolution. It's an exercise in crowd control. It will give law enforcement the opportunity to use all their nets and tasers and tear gas and all the other gear they've been practicing with, and to justify buying more.

Do they really think that when ordinary Americans see them being beaten and maced and arrested on TV, see the pregnant woman being kicked in the stomach by the cops, see the elderly person in a wheelchair being tasered, they'll rush out of their homes and come to the defense of the protesters? That has happened in other countries, but the average American has long since been desensitized to violence and sees more brutality than that with a lot more blood in any single night of relaxing in front of the TV.

I don't watch TV but a neighbor told me that there's a popular program that features a loveable serial killer. He only kills bad guys, so there's nothing wrong with that. Of course the protesters will be labeled bad guys, just as the Afghans and Iraqis and all indigenous peoples everywhere have been labeled bad guys. We're all bad guys or terrorists or Communists or anarchists or rebels or potential rebel sympathizers. The only good guys are the wealthy elite and their cops, their armies, their mercenaries, and their death squads.

Do they think that if the President sees the bloodshed, he'll be moved, as President John F. Kennedy was, to send in the National Guard? Bush isn't Kennedy and the Guard is in Iraq. More likely he'll send in Blackwater with some serious assault weapons and some additional helicopters to mow down the protesters.

Do they think that if they have enough people and protest loudly enough, the Democrats will hear them? It was the Democrats who wanted the Denver "free speech zone" moved out of earshot.

What, exactly, apart from having a good time with their friends, are their potentially achievable goals?

The organizers have also been saying, "No in November," but they don't understand what it means. It doesn't mean recognizing the authority of this fascist regime and protesting it. It means refusing to recognize its authority, refusing to vote for it, withdrawing our consent and our mandate from it, and working towards the dream which the protesters share, of citizen-owned transparent participatory democracy ourselves, instead of asking a fascist tyranny for help or trying to persuade it to be more democratic.

I've heard some pretty wild rumors. In addition to the helicopters and the crowd control plans, a friend tells me there is talk of a 20-story underground prison at the Denver airport. Whether it exists or not, this protest will be a boon for the prison-industrial complex, clog the courts for a long time, and do nothing whatsoever to sway the Democrats, any more than the protest planned for the Republican convention will change the Republican agenda.

As I told that organizer, I don't understand how someone else going to jail makes me any more free.

So I'm not going to Denver. I'm not only a coward, I'm a person who likes to think things through, to have at least the possibility that any sacrifices I make might contribute towards a positive outcome, and I also consider myself a creative thinker. Maybe I'm wrong and I'm just a coward, but this isn't 1961 or 1968. We've been there and done that, and we've all got the t-shirts. Those who were in Miami to protest GATT and in Seattle to protest the GTO might stop and ask themselves what their valiant efforts have accomplished. I admire them, I respect them, but I'm not going to join them.

Those who are parents are familiar with how kids try to get their way. First they'll ask you sweetly. If you say no, they'll cry. If you still don't give in they might throw a tantrum. But when they grow up, they become independent and you can't make their decisions for them any more. They don't have to ask you for anything or throw a fit to get what they want. They work for it, earn it, and get it for themselves. I think it is time that we as a nation grew up.

Don't vote in rigged elections.

Don't delegate your power to those who have abused it.

And don't do Denver. It isn't going to help and it will justify more repression. Is that really our goal?

Here's how a non-protest works:

What if they spent a billion dollars on crowd control gear and training, had SWAT teams prepared to act as provocateurs, and then no crowds showed up?

MSM News: Only seven protesters showed up to demonstrate against the political convention. All were arrested, posted bail, and released. Independent news agencies photographed them leaving the police station and identified them as members of a local SWAT team. Tim Turtle, the spokesperson for a large peace group, said that since his group knew that there would be provocateurs at the convention, they had decided not to protest and that all the other local groups had agreed. Asked why they had arrested their own people, the local police chief had no comment. His department had gotten $3 million in crowd control gear in preparation for the convention and had no opportunity to use any of it. This could adversely impact their ability to obtain new homeland security anti-terrorist funding for subsequent years. Poopy Putter reporting for MSM News.