82nd United States Attorney General
Assumed office - February 3, 2009
Posted on 12/10/2014 5:11:08 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
I have been out of the country twice this year. The first time, I was in Mexico when protests broke out in Ferguson, Missouri, over the shooting death of Michael Brown; more recently, my two weeks in Argentina coincided with nationwide demonstrations against the lack of grand jury indictments in the cases of Brown and Eric Garner, the Staten Island police chokehold victim.
Witnessing a nascent anti-police brutality movement from a distance has given me a different perspective on it, because the novelty of getting out in the streets in America and demanding justice stands in stark contrast to the utter ubiquity of such actions in other parts of the world.
That doesn’t mean such actions always lead to success; in fact, challenging power often fails. But it is a tool in the public’s arsenal, as much as voting or any other civic effort. We have a long way to go in America to rediscover a daily regimen of mass public protest as an altogether normal – indeed, fundamental – component of the rights of citizenship.
Take Argentina, for example. I wasn’t going around looking for civil unrest in the federal capital of Buenos Aires last week. But I saw a large rally of transportation workers outside a gathering of economic leaders, complete with music and fireworks. A related transit strike shut down the efficient subway system during a busy weekday. I walked out of my hotel one morning to a leaflet drop, which demanded higher salaries and an end to corporate favors from government. I saw some street art featuring three patron saints: Jesus, tango singer Carlos Gardel and Che Guevara, a native son whose image is all over the capital. Virtually every large public square I walked through featured handmade banners full of slogans and pleas. None of this makes the papers, probably because it’s such a commonplace factor of daily life in the city.
I found a similar culture of protest in my last visit to the country 11 years earlier, including widespread opposition to the war in Iraq. Heck, one notable protest movement, 30 years in the making, appears in all the guidebooks: the Mothers of the Disappeared, relatives of those killed by the military junta in the so-called Dirty War of the late 1970s and early 1980s, demonstrate every Thursday at 3:30 in front of the presidential offices, seeking answers to the atrocities caused by the previous regime (“400 crazies fighting for the truth,” read one banner). In fact, the Mothers have achieved such respectful status in the country that they have adopted a more general commitment to social justice.
Protest movements in Argentina do not occur in association with electoral politics. Despite posters everywhere touting candidates for the next presidential election (which isn’t until December 2015), everyone I spoke with exhibited a broad disgust with practically every candidate and political party.
But the simple act of asserting rights in the public square can force a response from the political class. The government of President Cristina Fernández Kirchner announced last week that 800,000 poor workers making less than 35,000 pesos a year (roughly $4,100) would receive an exemption from income taxes, which labor leaders alternately praised and denounced as a pittance of what was needed to protect vulnerable citizens.
Some of this comes from larger union density in Argentina (about 40 percent of workers have labor representation). And the legacy of official corruption and even military repression has logically led the people to believe that their best efforts at change come from the street. But whatever the reason, in Argentina, part of the role of being an engaged citizen includes making your voice heard.
I found the same commitment to resistance in Mexico. We all know about the movement that has arisen in response to the deaths of 43 student protesters, a case of official corruption and collusion between federal authorities and drug cartels. But behind the headlines, back in August I saw a prominent town square in Jalisco state completely occupied by protesters, who had erected a tent city in opposition to what they called the despotism of the local government. The police had seemingly given up trying to dislodge it. The protesters held a dance party one night, handing out food and literature to the revelers.
We used to have this same belief in America, that street action mattered and needed to be nurtured. From the Boston Tea Party to the civil rights movement, from the Bonus Marchers to the Pullman strikers and many more, America has a rich tradition of uprising against a seemingly immovable political and social apparatus. The right to peaceably assemble is enshrined in the Constitution, even if it largely seems theoretical today.
But sometime between 1776 and now, mass engagement became separated from American political DNA. Like solar panel manufacturing, the United States invented the political protest and then let it wither away while other countries kept it alive. Modern-day demonstrations have evolved into media-friendly one-off events rather than a continuing struggle, a way for people to simply register their dissent without having to sustain it. We hear about the need for a national conversation on race, injustice, violence or economic suffering, but we actually need a daily conversation, an evolving and energizing force of public opposition that those in power cannot easily dismiss.
We’re starting to see this, like a long-dormant volcano sputtering back to life with initial plumes of ash and smoke. The movements in Ferguson and now across the country have become more organized and concentrated. Striking low-wage workers continue to demand the respect that accompanies a living wage and the right to organize. The Moral Monday movement in North Carolina has fused these two pillars of economic and social justice into a coherent whole. Smug intellectuals say that Occupy Wall Street left no legacy amid its demise, but these newer movements come directly out of that commitment to ongoing protest.
These movements have registered modest results, from minimum wage increases in major cities to incremental moves toward reforms to the criminal justice system. But we’re a long way from a time where protest is mundane, ordinary, part of how we engage with our politics. And we need to get there, because organized dissent has historically uplifted virtually every other facet of our civic culture.
I believe this revival of the culture of protest comes out of a belated realization, one that Latin America and other countries had already internalized. They understand that their vote can only go so far, that the entrenched interests who control the social and political infrastructure will only respond to a massive disruption to their smoothly functioning machine. We had a delusion in America that we were somehow exceptional, that we wouldn’t succumb to oligarchy or the control of an ossified elite. We preferred to look the other way when confronted with institutional racism or the rigidities of class. “We’ve gotten better,” we’d tell ourselves. And we gave up the struggle instead of redoubling efforts.
Maybe it took the financial crisis and its sluggish aftermath. Maybe it took a black kid getting shot by the cops to recognize the illegitimacy of the justice system. But there has been some small awakening that we’re not all that exceptional, that our democracy is prone to the same capture we see all around the world, and that we don’t have many options to fix that outside of getting in the street and shouting.
In Buenos Aires, I took a picture of some street graffiti, which read, “Cuando la tirania es ley, la revolucion es orden”: when tyranny is law, revolution is in order. We’re discovering in America the existence of the former, and finally easing up on our dismissal of the latter.
Dec. 10, 2014 - David Horowitz: The Left’s War Against Justice and Peace
"When rioters and “protesters” defend criminals and attack the police it is not a protest. It is an attack. When radicals and rioters defend the guilty and attempt to prosecute the innocent, it is not a protest. It is an attack. When they make race an issue when it is clearly not an issue, it is an attack. When whites are regarded as guilty before the fact and blacks guiltless even after the facts show they are guilty, it is not a protest; it is an attack. It is a calculated attack and the target is America, is us.
“No Justice, No Peace!” is the cry of modern lynch mobs. It means “Our Justice, Or Else” – or else we will burn your city down. Or else we will burn your system down. This is the agenda of the left in the streets and of their supporters in the White House and the Democratic Party:
“We are going to fundamentally transform the United States of America: your system of justice, your system of governance and your system of laws. If we can’t do that, we are going to burn it down.”
Conservatives need to stop dropping their jaws when progressives say “My mind is made up don’t confuse me with the facts” – and mean it. Conservatives need to recognize that the only facts that matter to progressives are the ones that justify their attacks. The mobs who have occupied our streets are not protesting injustice. They are a lynch mob demanding their due. They want officers of the law handcuffed and hung, and criminals (aka “political prisoners”) set free. They want honest juries disbanded, and racist judgments the rule.
Understand that our president and his chief civil rights officer, who are encouraging the “protests,” are racists, as is the Democratic Party which exerts monopoly control over every major inner city in America. Why else would Obama and Holder look to Al Sharpton, who is certainly the nation’s most prominent racist, as their chief adviser on race relations?"....................
If anything, they're very close to p*ssing off the rest of us AT them.
82nd United States Attorney General
Assumed office - February 3, 2009
To the contrary, these protests have been instigated by the communist agitator who is our president—in office through the vote.
Community activism is the best method he has learned to foment an admittedly-incremental revolution.
(The yahoo mob extremes in Latin America that Obama is carefully fostering here are the primary reason that the politics and economies of those countries are in such bad shape.)
Russell Simmons: America Has Not Seen Protests Like Those That Are Coming if Justice Doesn't Start to Come Down"Russell Simmons, co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, appeared on CNN last night on Out Front with Erin Burnett to warn there are more protests coming if "demands" are not met.
We are seeing the beginning of the end of police policing the police, he added.
"On Wednesday, we are going to ask for indictments and list of achievable demands." ("We" referring to high profile celebrities and athletes that share Simmons' beliefs.)
"And America has not seen protests like those that are coming if justice doesn't start to come down," warned Simmons.".....
A poster on another thread noted that the protests of the sixties led to the election of Richard Nixon, twice.
Obama is importing “refugees” from Mexico and Latin America who have been primed to relate to communism and “social justice.”
He must have missed the millions who gathered in protest of Obamacare, or the demands for impeachment on bridges in every state, the daily stand against abortion in cities across this land, millions of letters and emails and phone calls sent to corrupt elites in DC, and the last election.
Riots are not protests. They are anarchy. Protests seek to overcome injustice. Riots celebrate injustice.
We are a nation more deeply steeped in protest than any other. Perhaps the writer misses the truth because he is no fan of patriotism.
Bkmrk.
Argentina as a role model? Why not North Korea? That’s where it ends up.
I've heard about the Mexican protests against the 43 Mexican students' deaths.
Have there been any Mexican protests against the THOUSANDS of Mexican civilian and law enforcement deaths caused by Obama/Holder ILLEGALLY running guns to narcoterrorists in Mexico?
43 deaths is a tragedy. 2000 deaths is a statistic.
Russell Simmons is a wealthy exploiter of black rage. He has made millions producing/packaging/marketing gangsta rap. He has no moral ground on which to stand.
They’re “morals” are “...G-damn America.”
THEIR “morals” are “...G-damn America.”
How many were really at the D.C. protest rally on September 14, 2009?
This was a Tea Party - Anti-Obamacare rally.
"MSNBC reported, “thousands have turned out, some have said tens of thousands.” The Washington Post estimated “tens of thousands.” ABC figured between 60–70,000 protestors. The New York Times initially described it as a “sea” of people before stating, “The demonstrators numbered well into the tens of thousands, though the police declined to estimate the size of the crowd.”
"When rioters and “protesters†defend criminals and attack the police it is not a protest. It is an attack. When radicals and rioters defend the guilty and attempt to prosecute the innocent, it is not a protest. It is an attack. When they make race an issue when it is clearly not an issue, it is an attack. When whites are regarded as guilty before the fact and blacks guiltless even after the facts show they are guilty, it is not a protest; it is an attack. It is a calculated attack and the target is America, is us.
. . . death of Michael Brown for violently attacking a peace officer . . .
Eric Garner, the Staten Island police chokehold victim.
. . . Eric Garner, who resisted arrest by the Staten Island police until his overexertion and consequent asthmatic oxygen deprivation caused his own death.
But it is a tool in the public’s arsenal,
. . . peaceful assembly, not rioting which is criminal rooted in anarchy . . .
. . . and demanding justice . . .
. . . demanding justice outside the remedies of the administration of standing law.
We have a long way to go in America to rediscover a daily regimen of mass public protest as an altogether normal – indeed, fundamental – component of the rights of citizenship
We have a long way to go in America to rediscover lawful First Amendment peaceful assembly as an unusual but fundamental conduct of the rights of constitutional citizenship.
The right to peaceably assemble is enshrined in the Constitution, even if it largely seems theoretical today.
The procedure of unlawfully assembling and rioting to force government to follow mob rule is not permitted by our Constitution, even if ipolitical agitators urge it today.
* * *
etc., etc., etc.
This Dayen sounds to me like a lawless anarchist agitation for incendiary assemblies rather than using our system of representative legislation and judicial oversight to introduce, modify, or remove laws and lawful procedures to produce regulations acceptable to the community as a whole.
: )
but a commenter at Salon does:
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RoloTomassi - Global evolution of consciousness = global revolution for social justice.
Reply jonvaljon 1 day ago
@RoloTomassi - It's been a beautiful thing to watch. The world is waking up. With the internet we now have true global solidarity. Hope they got their LRAD's charged and ready, this isn't going away anytime soon.
Reply oncearepublican
@jonvaljon @RoloTomassi - I think we've all noticed that something has been "changing" in this country since 2008.....but unfortunately, the rich noticed it first.....and created the Tea Party to siphon off that "change" away from them onto the rest of us as hate.....
RoloTomassi @oncearepublican - This well beyond politics...well beyond one nation.
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