Article 20

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(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Last fall something amazing happened here in the United States. For the first time in over forty years, Americans, fed up with corruption, fed up with the heartlessness at the core of unrestrained capitalism, and fed up with our cultural/economic dialogue being defined by the financial elites stood up to be heard. Sure the Tea Party movement pre-dated the Occupy one, but these people meant business. No getting bused to DC for the day to shout slogans for them, they hunkered down for the long haul, willing to take all the abuse the elements and authority wanted to dish out.

Dish it out they did, especially at times the authorities. Their betters in City Halls around the country would have none of it. They invoked sometimes arcane rules that are often ignored, they turned a blind eye to police brutality, and arbitrarily denied permits, where that was a possibility, to those who would camp overnight.

Authority hates being challenged. It would like to go about its business with as little question and interference as possible and will use every weapon in its arsenal to do just that. For this reason we must use every tool available to us to call it out. One of the best tools we have is the ability to peacefully assemble. Alone, most of us are very weak, together we are mighty. For many, the only power they will ever have is the shared strength of the person standing next to them at work, in school, in prison or at home.

Which is why we must stand together and demand our leaders make it easier, not harder for us to do so. I believe strongly in the second clause of this Article, that no one should be made to join an association, but I do also believe that unions are important and that we should make it easier, not harder, for them to recruit members. The barriers to gain permits for public activities should not be so onerous as to limit peaceful protest.

This is, of course, asking those whose power we seek to limit the power to do so. It is no surprise then, when even a supposedly liberal President turns a blind eye to police brutality, which is exactly the reason we must turn a blind eye to the rules, so long as we do so peacefully. We must get out, be heard and be visible. They can ignore me, and they can ignore you, but they cannot ignore you, me and the entire country.

Ahhhh… Priorities

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It is nice to see the right to free assembly finally respected. No pepper spray or beatings here. No targeting peaceful demonstrators. No bullying the free press. No wrangling groups of people like they are cattle until they have no where else to go. It is good to see some things are important enough for the authorities to give free voice to the people. Especially when they are allowed to y’know, shoot people and set cars on fire over a FUCKING BASKETBALL GAME!!!!

In the common internet parlance: America, I am disappoint. Through months of mostly peaceful protest Occupiers have been sprayed, they have been beaten, they have had their heads smashed into windows, been left for hours without food or bathroom facilities after arrest and generally bullied by the cops. During all this too much of the narrative in this country has been built around the idea that somehow these protesters have deserved this treatment. Agree or disagree with them as you want, but these protesters have been making sacrifices and putting themselves in harm’s way to make this country a better place, not just for themselves, but for you as well.

Maybe they have the wrong idea about what needs to be changed in this country though I am not inclined to believe so. Even if I did, how can we be happy living in a country where this can happen to people trying to do right but meanwhile mass destruction of property on a scale that dwarfs anything done by the handful of bad apples in the Occupy Movement and violence against other people to celebrate a game is treated with a collective yawn. Oh it made the news, where it was treated like a “boys will be boys” situation.

Through this new social and political awakening I have been, and remain, mostly optimistic about the direction our country is taking.  If we are going to keep this momentum though, we have to call our media and our authorities out on these little hypocrisies. I am glad that the cops did not cross any lines in Kentucky, I am, but really, this isn’t about them, it’s about us, and how we react to these two very different groups of people.

Article 3

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Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

It really does not get much simpler than this, does it? This is it. The basic of the basic, the one article that has the most in common with the defining statement of our own country’s founding (for my fellow ‘mericans.) TJ had it right, these truths are self-evident. No one should ever have to worry unduly for their life or suffer extraordinary burdens to their freedom to do what they please, so long as it does not infringe on another’s rights. No one should ever have to worry about being hurt by another human being. No brainer, right?

Yet we live in a world where health care, the most basic need to ensure the first and last rights in this article, is not considered a right, at least not in the US and much of the underdeveloped world. Here in my homeland, the land that proudly and accurately boasts being the inspiration for this article (I mean, sure, Locke said it first, but TJ made it famous) medicine is a commodity to be traded and if you cannot afford it tough luck. What is even more troubling is two-thirds of the rest of the world has it worse.

This makes liberty that much harder too. How free are you when you are beholden to an employer for fear of losing what health coverage you have. How free are you when you can lose everything you have worked for after a heart attack. What is really sad is some of the most blindly patriotic in this country, those who can recite the opening words of the Declaration of Independence reflexively, believe this is as it should be. Apparently the absolute liberty of the wealthy trumps the life and personal security of everyone else.

I don’t mean to paint such a bleak picture of America, really. There are places much worse than us, but how are we supposed to lead them by example when we don’t live up to our own high ideas? How are they going to take us seriously when such a large percentage of our citizens lives in fear of illness?  Why should respect the liberty of their people when our authorities engage in violent suppression of protest? We have not achieved Article 3 even inside our own borders, so it is no surprise when others follow suit.

It is not hopeless, however. The forge of change is busy. While our closest cousins the other side of the Atlantic actually talk about cutting back on their universal health care the dialogue has really begun here. Sure there are still a large number of reactionaries that scream “socialism” when ever single payer health care is brought up, but more and more people are yelling back “so what?” Yes the Occupy movement has been met with police brutality, but it is increasingly common that even those that disagree with them challenge that brutality. We’ve a long way yet to go, but I know longer find it so hard to see the destination on the horizon.

 

Police or Thugs?

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Does anyone here remember Officer Friendly? Do you remember how we were taught that the police are there to help us? Does the phrase “to protect and serve” still ring somewhere in your consciousness when you think of the cops? Is that how we still think of our “peace” officers or do we think of this, or this , or especially this? When we think of those incidents, what is our reaction?

I know for my part I am sickened. I do not understand the casual use of excessive force especially on the part of Lieutenant Pike. I also know that I am not alone. What has to happen in your head to make it OK to pepper spray peaceful protesters? Who would make a hero of such a person? At what point do we say, “well, she had it coming” to a child who has a less lethalweapon used against her? When did our admiration of the police turn into victim blaming supplication of their abuse of power?

One can blame 9/11 in part I suppose. The hero worship that poured out of that day for the brave (and sometimes foolish) actions of the police that day made us, as a culture, more ready to accept the legitimacy-no-matter-what attitude toward their actions. That alone does not explain it though. America’s love/hate relationship with the police swings on a pendulum, but that pendulum has been leaning wider toward worship over the course of my lifetime.

In my teen years we saw the cops worshiped, though not to this degree, as movie after movie praised maverick cops who laughed at politicians and liberals in their righteous war against (usually very dark skinned) drug lords. The cops were victims of bureaucracy in our collective eyes then, and during the Reagan years, mindless adulation of authority was the word of the day, as it had been through most of the fifties and the early sixties.

What really makes this strange though, this current cycle of apologists for police excess, is so many in this country have an increasingly anti-government attitude. Whether it is Occupy Protesters or Tea Party Marchers. I know that the Occupy Movement is not happy with the cops, but what about the Tea Party? Did they forget that the cops are part of the government? Or is it that their corporate backers make sure to instill a proper love for the police who, before all else, protect their property and privilege?

I know I’ve quoted Acton before, but here it goes again “power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” No where is this more obvious to me then the video of Officer Feldman, the first link above. I know Mike Feldman, I know him to be a good man, but he put on the badge and was given licence to enforce the law as he saw fit. He was told by our culture that he can do no wrong so when it became more expedient to spray chemicals into the face of a drunken but non-threatening individual, he did so, confident that he would not be questioned and confused when he was.

They are our servants, all of ours. They should not get their marching orders from the moneyed elite and we should not receive carte blanche approval of their actions. We allow them the power to harm and kill us in the name of keeping us safe. Because of this, we have a responsibility to ourselves to make sure they do not abuse that power, and to question every time they use it.

Giving Up The Caveman

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I would never pretend to not enjoy a good, old-fashioned, action flick. I love a well choreographed fight scene. I enjoy rough sports, rough housing and other stuff rough as well. Also, I understand that sometimes real violence is necessary. If physically threatened I would probably defend myself. If one of the children in my life were physically threatened you can be guaranteed I would not be passive in my response.

Why, though, is violence, or the threat of it, so often our first response? Why are we so ready to excuse violence, especially when it is the strong perpetrating it on the weak? Why are there people out there that believe it is OK for Chris Brown to hit Rhianna because she may have been “egging him on?” How can people justify the pepper spraying, beating and humiliation of  peaceful protesters?

It is not just these very public incidents either. How often do you hear someone claim they are going to kick someone’s ass over a slight? Yes it is true, the person rarely follows through, but for a moment it actually occurs to them to use violence over something very little. Once upon a time these outbursts were almost solely the province of men. Now you hear women engaged in this kind of behavior across race and class lines with greater regularity. So I suppose at least we are seeing some equality among the sexes.

Once upon a time we needed to be aggressive. To fall on the oft-overused Hobbes quote “life in the state of nature is nasty, brutish and short.” Our ancient ancestors had to be ready and able to fight. Needs have changed, though, over the millennia. We are creatures of abstract wants and needs now. We can paint Sistine Chapels, compose Swan Lake and paint Starry Nights. Even the poor among us now are capable of creating heartbreaking beauty with an online photo album. Our basic needs are increasingly easy to take care of with greater automation and efficiency. In short, we don’t have to kill to survive, but we have to create to live.

With a little patience, a little love, a little understanding we can become so much more than those early hominids with their simple tools and needs. We don’t have to be so willing to inflict pain and death. I know it is part of our biological software, but we can and should overcome it. We don’t have to be cavemen anymore.