The following image, showing protesters recently arrested in both Oakland and Moscow, has come to visually represent a growing sense of unease concerning America's anti-democratic, totalitarian-esk slide.
Below is the image in question:
Now, this image has not become viral due to some naive impression that a strange inversion is underfoot – that politically-motivated, large-scale and repressive police crackdowns now happen solely in the United States, and not in Russia.
That's not the argument this image is trying to make.
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Indeed, the Moscow protesters captured in the above picture were arrested a few days ago after participating in massive anti-Putin marches that were swiftly and violently crushed by riot police.
The protests, sparked by recent elections which all but struck opposition candidates from the ballots, are expected to expand tomorrow in Moscow. And Putin's response is expected to be bloody and severe.
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So if the Oakland vs. Moscow picture is not trying to set up a false dichotomy – if it's not trying to argue that state repression now only happens in America, what's the argument it's trying to make?
It's this: the repressive police tactics many Americans have come to expect from regimes such as Putin's are now showing up on our own public streets and in our public squares, and that fact is revelatory. That fact is undeniable. That fact is an argument for an awakening.
By threatening the corporate institutions controlling this country's political class, Occupy Wall Street has elicited the type of massive, institutional police crackdowns the likes of which my generation has never seen.
Nonviolent protesters are being arrested, beaten, tear gassed and abused in ways that are clear violations of their multitudinous rights as American citizens.
Journalists are being arrested, cordoned off, prevented from covering occupy evictions in clear First Amendment violations.
These facts are the argument. These facts are what the Oakland vs. Moscow image is attempting to encapsulate by setting up not a false dichotomy, but an unexpected one. And that element of the unexpected is where the image's call for an awakening is embedded.
And it's a call being answered. Not by boots on the ground, but by page views and shares, by "likes" and "stars."
Anecdotal? Yes. But so too are the growing body of abuses and unlawful police repressions that are at the heart of the image that has gone viral.
As politicians such as Bloomberg use their own armies to protect personal, corporate interests rather than the people who have elected them, an awareness of the corruption that is the root cause of most political evil in this country will grow.
Picture by picture. Blog by blog. Media story by media story.
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Author's Note:
I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention, as backdrop, the distressing deliberations happening right now in a secret conference committee concerning NDAA. Specifically, the potential for Congress to codify giving the military the authority to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens in America.
While this issue is not on the surface of the Oakland vs. Moscow image – and its going viral – it's no doubt bubbling beneath the surface.