RNC Protesters Flunk the test
Kurt will attest to my radical credentials I'm sure. I was an organizer in my high school for the Moratorium to End the Vietnam War in October 1969. The Moratorium drew over 500,000 to the Mall in DC, and another 10 million people gathered in other cities across the country. In Connecticut there were 10,000 in Hartford, 5,000 in West Hartford, thousands more in every large town in the state. Even tiny little towns got dozens of folks to stand on the green at the designated hour and declare their opposition to the war. There wasn't a full-blown general strike, but most of the colleges shut down, the high schools experienced extremely high absenteeism from both students and faculty, and even the offices and factories had a significant number of folks call out in protest of the war. And the only folks arrested for the most part were those who participated in planned, non-violent acts of civil disobedience like burning draft cards or crossing the police line and pouring blood on the gates of the state's many defense plants.
We showed our faces. We didn't hide behind bandanas. We didn't destroy stuff. We didn't hurt anyone, or even try to. No throwing rocks and bricks, no smashing police cars. And we were heard. Six months later when US troops openly crossed the border into Cambodia the protests became mainstream. There was enough public support that we were able to organize a suspension of classes for part of a day and to replace the normal schoolwork with seminars and forums discussing the history and moral validity of US involvement in Nam.
That was the day I unfairly became known as a radical when I unknowingly and unwittingly created a near riot in the gym/auditorium. As a discussion assembly was being shut down early I left the building and went to the principal's office with a dozen others to wait for him so we could negotiate the format for a follow up all-school assembly when the older students back in the earlier assembly refused to leave and staged a sit-in. This panicked the teachers, who then began hustling the younger students out the back doors. That created pandemonium which the principal and assistant principal in the front of the auditorium mistook for a violent uprising and were about to call for the police and fire department before a more levelheaded teacher explained what was happening to them. Somehow my actions at the end of the assembly were understood to have called for that action by the other students. I never knew I was so persuasive!
So, back to the present. I know images can lie, and that the media is known for falsely depicting events, but whether it be corporate media video or an internet independent lens, everything I'm seeing of the RNC protests looks like a bunch of privileged whining folks who want to act out, and then are unwilling to accept the consequences for their actions. Check out the Star Tribune video of the kid who leaves the march line, pulls a construction barricade out of the ground, and throws it in the street, and then poses for the cameras as if to say "So there!" My 2 year old grandchild can throw that kind of tantrum! Or when people are arrested for grabbing the reins of the horses attempting to cause them to throw the mounted police the protesters chant "Let them go!" as if there was no reason for the arrest. Hey, you try to hurt someone you should be arrested.
I'm not calling for the RNC protesters to be good little boys and girls and not make a fuss. Protest marches are meant to create inconvenience for the community. They're meant to be in your face. But senseless destruction and trying to hurt others, and then whining and crying when you get arrested for it is not going to win any one over to your side. It looks more like the drunken celebrations in cities after sports teams win a championship than a political statement. The purpose of a mass gathering is to show those in the closet so to speak that there are many others sharing their views - to encourage them to speak out also and be heard as ones opposed to the war other government policies. It's to let the powers that be know that they will not go unchallenged. And it's meant to inconvenience the apathetic public in a way that reminds them that they too are choosing a side in this battle. To do nothing is to accept the status quo.
All I see are folks acting like they missed out on the "glory" days of the Nam protests. There was nothing glorious about those days. Yeah, the protests got US troops removed from the battlefield. But we were used by all kinds of unsavory people for their own ends -- our words and actions were twisted to serve the careers of unworthy folks, and we were incorrectly shown as supporting all kinds of ideas and political positions we heartily disagreed with. And we set the stage for a backlash that helped create the mess we're in now. The more things change, the more they stay the same. If we don't learn from the past we get to relive it.
We showed our faces. We didn't hide behind bandanas. We didn't destroy stuff. We didn't hurt anyone, or even try to. No throwing rocks and bricks, no smashing police cars. And we were heard. Six months later when US troops openly crossed the border into Cambodia the protests became mainstream. There was enough public support that we were able to organize a suspension of classes for part of a day and to replace the normal schoolwork with seminars and forums discussing the history and moral validity of US involvement in Nam.
That was the day I unfairly became known as a radical when I unknowingly and unwittingly created a near riot in the gym/auditorium. As a discussion assembly was being shut down early I left the building and went to the principal's office with a dozen others to wait for him so we could negotiate the format for a follow up all-school assembly when the older students back in the earlier assembly refused to leave and staged a sit-in. This panicked the teachers, who then began hustling the younger students out the back doors. That created pandemonium which the principal and assistant principal in the front of the auditorium mistook for a violent uprising and were about to call for the police and fire department before a more levelheaded teacher explained what was happening to them. Somehow my actions at the end of the assembly were understood to have called for that action by the other students. I never knew I was so persuasive!
So, back to the present. I know images can lie, and that the media is known for falsely depicting events, but whether it be corporate media video or an internet independent lens, everything I'm seeing of the RNC protests looks like a bunch of privileged whining folks who want to act out, and then are unwilling to accept the consequences for their actions. Check out the Star Tribune video of the kid who leaves the march line, pulls a construction barricade out of the ground, and throws it in the street, and then poses for the cameras as if to say "So there!" My 2 year old grandchild can throw that kind of tantrum! Or when people are arrested for grabbing the reins of the horses attempting to cause them to throw the mounted police the protesters chant "Let them go!" as if there was no reason for the arrest. Hey, you try to hurt someone you should be arrested.
I'm not calling for the RNC protesters to be good little boys and girls and not make a fuss. Protest marches are meant to create inconvenience for the community. They're meant to be in your face. But senseless destruction and trying to hurt others, and then whining and crying when you get arrested for it is not going to win any one over to your side. It looks more like the drunken celebrations in cities after sports teams win a championship than a political statement. The purpose of a mass gathering is to show those in the closet so to speak that there are many others sharing their views - to encourage them to speak out also and be heard as ones opposed to the war other government policies. It's to let the powers that be know that they will not go unchallenged. And it's meant to inconvenience the apathetic public in a way that reminds them that they too are choosing a side in this battle. To do nothing is to accept the status quo.
All I see are folks acting like they missed out on the "glory" days of the Nam protests. There was nothing glorious about those days. Yeah, the protests got US troops removed from the battlefield. But we were used by all kinds of unsavory people for their own ends -- our words and actions were twisted to serve the careers of unworthy folks, and we were incorrectly shown as supporting all kinds of ideas and political positions we heartily disagreed with. And we set the stage for a backlash that helped create the mess we're in now. The more things change, the more they stay the same. If we don't learn from the past we get to relive it.
posted by Wake of the Flood at 9:15 AM
2 Comments:
you have it exactly right when you raise the point about the "glory days"....
being 6 years younger than you, i can attest to that attitude and its effect. the first Dead shows i attended were way more mellow than those that came so close to the end. there was no longer a chill attitude among the concert goers; it had been replaced by the desire to just get blasted. Dead concerts had become just another excuse for excess instead of an experience.
so it is with the protesters at the convention today. because they have never learned the lessons from before and only know about Chicago from the archives of the bloody heads, they assume that is the norm.
don't worry, they'll be used far more than you were. and from both sides too.
Naw, they won't be enough of a factor to be used. This kind of protest is too much a copy-cat effect. Part trying to one up the sixties (or re-live it in the case of the old farts out there), and partly copying the tactics of the populist Left in the developing world. Can you imagine Nini thinking about joining them, or giving the girls her support if they did? Folks don't realize how important the civility in civil disobedience is. By choosing only to disobey patently unjust laws, and to be model citizens in mass protest the Civil Rights movement, and the anti-war movement that followed on its heels and imitated it, the leadership of these protests won over the average American. By 1969 Mom wasn't happy with me in a protest, but she supported it. By 1971 I think she'd have been in the streets if things hadn't already started to change.
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