wearestudentsnotcriminals
So... 7:30. Not much work done yet. It's a simple essay, I just don't have the patience for simplicity. I like tackling large, overbearing problems. I need to fix that.
Anyway, I've developed a fascination with student protests in the States. Canadian protests rarely demonstrate the same level of brutality, waiting for the protest to disperse naturally, as it 'must'. Arrest are typically made with persons who are a precieved danger to those around them. They're still not pretty, but they're not crazy.
In the States, however... expect tear gas and physical force on non-violent students.
Not even the CHINESE broke to this point during Tiananmen until the very end. Of course, the very end wasn't pretty at all.
So it seems to me that the police of America seem to have a proactive stance against peaceful protests, training their police to use minimal force tactics that we've only gotten to perfect in the last decade or so (read: choke holds, tear gas, etc.)
... Quite interesting.
Of course, it's also scary as fuck for the people involved. Here comes a cop, choking the guy next to you as you hold on to the guy, and you have no idea what they're doing. Besides which, you obviously don't feel this is justified.
Which it isn't... but the police are there to protect the system, not the individuals in it. A protest is a breakdown of the system, they can't stand for that. Perhaps individually, but that's not their job. (On the counterpoint, so is murder, rape, etc... but those ethically wrong, unlike protests, which are typically ethically correct)
A bunch of non-violent protestors, if left to continue (and they do not disperse), simply forces two choices: police action, to break it up... and changing the system.
Since we know the latter rarely happens (you don't think the British grumbled about Gandhi?), the former is the only eventual choice.
Let's face it. The cops would rather get it over with than let a protest sit. They can get more troublesome...
What bugs me then is... are we approaching a time when non-violent protest no longer works? Simply because the police are trained to deal with it? Do we need to move onto something new?
Or do we need to learn new ways to evolve our combative strategies inside of a protest? If they have a chokehold that can subdue a sitting protestor... what else can we do? Hand out handcuffs, and cuff everyone to each other? But they have keys. Some other form of bonding? We can't run... running is 'resisting arrest'.
I pitch this question to you. What can we do?
(a link, to video footage of some of my research material... Tent University Santa Cruz arrests)