This column was supposed to be about the following:
In case our government and its various agencies and their local arms have forgotten; this country happened because an empirical government decided to do whatever they wanted and when the people complained said government dumped on them.
This caused the American Revolution. A few years later they had one just like it in France, brought on by the same kind of plutocratic disregard for the wants of the people. Of course the French version was just a little spicier, replete with guillotines and old ladies who knitted,
I mention this because we have reached a state in this country where any kind of civil complaint is met with storm troopers generated usually by local law enforcement, and when that fails anything else that the powers that be, can whip up, including rent-a- cops, with and without knowledge of what is legal and what is not.
Yeah, sure, I’m a product of the sixties and as such I have a better than working knowledge of the power of peaceful protest. We had lots of them then and some that were not so peaceful, but then and more so now, whenever those demonstrations move from peaceful to not so peaceful the fault seems to be not that of the demonstrators, but of those forces trying, without reason, to stop them from the legal expression of their disagreement with either local or national government.
The Obama administration has failed in many areas during the last six years but its failure has usually been due to obfuscation and interference by what is supposed to be a loyal opposition to act like one. In one area, though, it has failed all on its own and that is in its unveiled attempts at the crushing of dissent in a country that is supposed to be famous for its freedom of speech and opinion.
Of course, I’m speaking first about the Occupy Movement, which has been literally crushed and driven off the streets all over the country by Gestapo tactics employed by local and state police aided and abetted by grotesquely unconstitutional decision making by local courts encouraged by a lack of protection from above.
Obama’s chief incompetent in this situation, Attorney General Eric Holder , who can’t seem to get a conviction with jail time for any of the criminals from Wall Street, the Real Estate industry or the Banking Industry, who have collectively stolen trillions from the American public, goes after peaceful demonstrators with a vengeance that everyone except the Catholic Church reserves for child molesters.
In point of fact my information about demonstrations anywhere outside New York City is one hundred percent second hand but that second hand information has been photographed and certified by numbers of witnesses with far more integrity than anyone that the government can think of producing.
What I can speak to first hand is what happened in NYC, principally in Zuccotti Park and the streets around it where I saw cops bully, beat, pepper spray and molest peaceful demonstrators, young people who were demonstrating for the rights of the same cops who were attacking them as much as for their own rights.
More important, was the fact that the instigators in most of the illegal actions I witnessed were not the young cops but the older guys, mostly distinguished by the fact that they wore white shirts instead of the uniform of the streets.
But what’s important isn’t who led the attacks, what’s important is that they occurred at all. Why do our police departments feel that they must get rid of demonstrators? Why can’t they just let them do their demonstrating, make their point and go home? Why does the sight of someone trying to make a point that doesn’t necessarily agree with that of the government cause such blind fury in anyone connected with law enforcement? Such peaceful demonstrations are our constitutional right, they are in fact, the very reason we have a constitution at all, because the British government’s violent reaction to them is what caused our revolution to happen
But it isn’t just on the streets that government and the judicial system is failing the people. The courts are almost worse. In room 116 of the Manhattan Criminal Court, Judge Ronald A. Zweibel is currently presiding over the case of Cecily McMillan, a young woman accused of attacking a cop who, according to photographic records that Zweibel has prohibited from being show in court, was actually sexually molested by the cop who is the complainant. It seems that the cop came up behind Ms McMillan and grabbed her by the breast at which point she swung an elbow that hit him in he face.
Zwiebel has issued a gag order preventing Ms McMillan’s lawyers from speaking to the press and has generally acted like a surrogate for the police department instead of a judge at a trial. This blog has often commented that the law is often spoken of a great deal in our courts but that justice is rarely mentioned. It seems that Judge Zweibel is trying for a new record in this matter.
But he isn’t the only one. Demonstrators all over the country are being victimized by one of the oldest criminal court cons extant. They are arrested for any ridiculous charge that the arresting cop can think of, regardless of the truth or authenticity of the charge. The improvable charges, which are most of them, are dropped or reduced in court and the demonstrator is talked into pleading to what is left, the ADA using the carrot of no jail time for the plea bargain. This, of course, eliminates the need for a trial, which most of the young people involved cannot afford, but it also leaves the demonstrator with a criminal record which means he or she cannot vote, serve on a jury and will find it much harder to find work. Even more important those who get a long probation are prohibited from further activism.
For those who don’t want to plea out the options are very limited. Most are young people who, as stated, can’t afford the high cost of a lawyer and the court appointed lawyers, overloaded with enormous caseloads just don’t have the time to provide a proper defense. So what happens to our right of peaceful protest?
That’s the column I was going to write but then I look around and I see a bunch of dim wit gunners, rallying around a deadbeat fascist bigot in Nevada and getting away with it because Holder and his vast but useless operation can’t get off their asses. But that’s not the end of it. Out in the far west, where Cliven Bundy is surrounding himself with armed assholes and the Federal government is doing nothing, a new group of demonstrators has risen from the dust to run their ATVs through National Parkland, destroying archeological areas and for what? Simply to prove that they are too lazy to drag their fat asses through the forbidden trail on foot when they feel the need to exercise off a few pounds of blubber. This bunch of mentally challenged, cameo-garbed morons were not armed, but like any gang of eighth grade bullies the were fully fitted out in battle garb and looking for a fight.
So where were the authorities as they interfered with peaceful park use for others who were trying to legally make use of the facilities and as they ground as yet unrecovered artifacts under their overloaded wheels. The message was, we can do anything we like as long as it is done under the conservative banner of patriotic Americanism. We can violate any laws, we can destroy our national parks or point our guns at federal officials and nothing can happen as long as what we are demonstrating against doesn’t offend the barons of high finance.
If these fat bullies had been a bunch of college kids demonstrating about the digging of an oil well on public land they would have been quickly rounded up, pepper sprayed, beaten with clubs, arrested and charged with attempting to resist a face full of mace.
With all the complaints from the Right about too much government, it seems that our overbearing government is very much on their side when it comes to any kind of conflict. It also seems that if you bring a gun to a pepper spray fight you pretty much don’t get jailed, you pretty much get your way.
Is that what we want to teach our kids? Well, it seems like everyone from gun toting racists to the President himself is willing to let that be the message. Isn’t that great? Isn’t that just the message for us to project to the world. Especially when we’re always so busy telling everyone else how they should act.