Talked to A today, and she mentioned that she was in a facebook debate with someone over the UC Davis pepper-spraying of students. It really pisses me off to no end when I hear people my age saying things like, "The kids have a something-for-nothing attitude" and "the cops warned them and they didn't move."
First off, the students at UC Davis and colleges around the country and indeed the world are protesting recent and dramatic hikes in tuition. Some of them march under the banner of OWS but most of them just want to voice their distress over the fact that they may not graduate college based on the fact that it costs too damn much. That's not a "something for nothing" attitude you fucking douchenozzle. You have to live pretty far under a rock to not understand that college is cost-prohibitive to most people (including myself, who only paid through it thanks to one dead grandmother). Most students are looking at between 30 and 50 thousand bucks in loans; or more like $300,000 if you go to some of the top rated schools that my friends have gone to. Folks who graduated college 20 years ago are still paying off student loans, and that was during that magical time my generation remembers as the Clinton years, when all you needed to do for work was get an A+ certificate. So in a climate of deregulated loan practices and an SEC that quietly looks the other way when grievances are levied on behalf of borrowers, how exactly does the average student plan to pay that shit down? Yet, they're the unappreciative little shits who need to learn to sit back and take it like men, right?
Second, and more to the point, cops don't need to use nonlethal weapons on peaceful protesters. A nonlethal weapon is used for non-compliance, generally when a cop has already arrested or announced his/her intent to arrest. People to go peaceful demonstrations or group trespassing knowing full well they can be arrested and someones even counting on it - mass arrest is one of the most powerful tools the public has at their disposal. It clogs the legal system with thousands of trials-by-jury and forces the issues of the protesters to be addressed. What the cops at UC Davis and around the country have been saying is effectively, "We won't arrest you but we'll beat the piss out of you until you leave."
What the hell kind of country has that attitude? North Korea? China? South Africa? It subverts the First Amendment in the most sadistic of ways: through fear of exercising the rights it provides. Sure, we all have free speech, and nothing is stopping you from saying what you want, but if you, plan on getting maced. The idea here is to scare people into submission, yet still offer the option. So nobody is taking your rights away - you're just going to be in for a world of hurt if you choose to take advantage of them.
If the cops really wanted the world to hate their fucking guts, regardless of the good and often heroic things they do every day, this is the fastest way to do it. Acting as the tools of idiots like Bloomburg or this chancellor of UCD just makes them look like the black shirts of 1930s Italy. Oh, and kicking the shit out of Iraq war veterans doesn't help so much either.
Peaceful protest and mass arrest are how people get shit done. The true mark of a country that does not give a flying fuck about it's people, that treats the populace as a marketplace full of consumers instead of a community full of people, and holds up the facade of free speech with one hand while duct taping someone's mouth shut with the other, is responding to protest with violence. My fear is that the level and frequency of violence on part of the police will increase, but my hope is that, as it does, the level and frequency of violence among the protesters does not. When I was on the high school debate team, my teacher always told me to try to stay calm and look rational, if the opponent starts acting irrationally. Escalating police violence will only serve to highlight those who are truly out of line.
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