All is not right in America. There is a nasty class war going on, one which amounts to a struggle between the status quo and a progressive and sustainable future. And the difference between those two things is enormous. All of humanity is hurtling toward a bad end, and our so-called leaders don't want to do anything substantive about it because they are blinded by greed and corruption. One thing that should be clear to everyone by now is that without massive change, we're all screwed.
Twenty years ago, Severn Suzuki had this to say to the delegates at the first World Summit:
We're a group of 12 and 13-year-olds trying to make a difference ... We've raised all the money to come here ourselves, to come 5,000 miles to tell you adults you must change your ways. Coming up here today, I have no hidden agenda. I am fighting for my future. Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stockmarket. I am here to speak for all generations to come. I am here to speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. I am here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet, because they have nowhere left to go. I am afraid to go out in the sun now, because of the holes in the ozone ...
Did you have to worry of these things when you were my age? All this is happening before our eyes, yet we act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions. I am only a child and don't have all the solutions. I want you to realise, neither do you... If you don't know how to fix it, please, stop breaking it.
from boatsie's excellent diary
If only she had been heard our circumstances might not be so dire. But she wasn't, and they are.
Our democracy is crumbling into a cesspool of corporate corruption, state secrets, militarized police, mercenary armies, private prisons, extrajudicial 'due process' by predator drone and high-tech government surveillance of each and every American citizen 24/7/365.25. The freedom we claim to cherish is all but gone forever. But who cares? As long as we have law and order, right? In the 60s we understood 'law and order' to be a euphemism for fascistic control from the top enforced by brutality and police violence. Well not much has changed - and those are hardly liberal values.
Don't look now, but it's happening again. Suddenly, or so it must seem to many, America is like Orwell's 1984 on steroids. From legislatures throughout the land comes an outpouring of new laws that restrict or outlaw what have long been cherished civil rights. It's the same trend we see at the Federal level. Habeas Corpus? What's that? 1st and 4th Amendments? Who needs 'em? Nuremberg Principles? Never heard of 'em. Anti-picket laws, papers on demand laws, draconian reversals of women's rights, obligatory body-cavity searches, free speech zones, no-fly lists for journalists and activists, organized police violence against peaceful protesters, all war all the time, never-ending tax cuts for billionaires and laws against feeding the hungry.
And now we witness the violent assault on peaceful protesters by heavily armed police, not just in Chicago but across the nation.
Please watch this video:
MSNBC on NYPD Police Brutality - No Conceivable Justification
As dotdot put it in her diary the other day:
Let me make this clear, I do not condone instigating violence against anyone, police or otherwise. It just find it odd, that a progressive community can be so quick to defend a justice system that has become so militarized, so discriminatory, and so unaccountable. Our right to assemble and our right to free speech has been under assault since 9/11. Police and the state have increasing power to detain us without telling us why. Hell, we can even now be strip searched for the smallest infraction.
On police violence
After more than forty years we still tolerate the beating of our children in the street. The brutal beating by heavily armed and organized police of (mostly) young people with the temerity to protest the madness and exercise their 1st Amendment rights. From My Lai to Kent State, from Sand Creek to Memphis, we've apparently learned nothing at all from our own tragic history.
What could be sadder than that?
Oakland Mayor Jean Quan let slip in an interview with the BBC that she had been on a conference call with the mayors of 18 cities about how to deal with the Occupy Wall Street movement. That is, municipal authorities appear to have been conspiring to deprive Americans of their first amendment rights to freedom of assembly and freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances
Likewise, A Homeland Security official let it slip in a phone interview that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security had been strategizing with cities on how to shut down OWS protests. The FBI is said to have advised using zoning ordinances and curfew regulations, and to stage the crackdown with massive police force at a time when the press was not around to cover the crackdown.
Wonkette suggests that the PATRIOT Act is implicated here, but I’m not sure how that works. Actually the techniques discussed are standard for US police forces in dealing with peaceful protests (the only routine technique missing is that of putting saboteurs among the protesters who cause destruction and create an image of them as violent.
What these two reports show is a high-level conspiracy to deprive Americans of their constitutional right to protest peacefully.
Police Crackdowns on OWS Coordinated among Mayors, FBI, DHS
And now the Security State wants to know who you're chatting with...and about what.
So be careful what you say.
And don't you dare be a dissident, or a protester, or a peacnik, or God forbid...a Quaker. You could find yourself in big trouble with a very mean and nasty organization...your own government - your own government in harness to an insane and evil 1% of the population. Yes, I said insane and evil. I can bury you in the evidence. You can bury yourself in the evidence if you never go anywhere but dailykos. Heroic people are working their asses off for nothing to bring it to you every day. And still, even here in this bastion of liberalism, if you dare say anything that is real you stir the hornets nest.
It's time to forswear the Stockholm syndrome. It's time to quit clinging to the status quo and the powers that be. They are not our salvation. They are the problem. In their greed and blindness they are driving humanity toward extinction. And they must be stopped.
It's time to quit being submissive and afraid. It's time to be resolved. It's time to take a stand.
There is a nasty class war going on in this country, right here and now, and it's as real as it gets. People are finally standing up to that insane and evil 1%. People are putting it all on the line to stop our descent into madness and ecocide. OWS and those who protest need and deserve our support. No one protecting the status quo is your friend or mine – for the status quo sucks. It pampers the rich, punishes the poor and is killing us all.
This is not a time to be confused about which side you're on.