The images out of Los Angeles of police and National Guardsmen in riot gear are meant to intimidate the rest of us. The quick and easy use of force by authorities against the public is also meant to scare people away from showing any resistance.
But despite what you see, the threat of violence for resisting state power is not an expression of strength. It is weakness. The use of force against a population that does not support injustice is weakess, not strength.
I am reminded of a quote by historian Howard Zinn:
“Those who possess enormous power are surprisingly nervous about their ability to hold on to that power. They react almost hysterically to what seem to be puny and unthreatening signs of opposition… Is it possible that people in authority know something that we don’t know? Perhaps they know their own ultimate weakness.”
Our power makes elites panic. Two days of protests against ICE in Los Angeles and President Trump calls in the US Marines. That's not power, that's fear. The establishment does not want these protests to catch on. President Trump does not want these protests spreading all over the place because he will be forced to back down.
Many believe, mistakenly, that public opinion doesn't matter. People say, "The establishment doesn't care what we think." But this is wrong. As Michael Parenti writes,
"That is not true. They care very much about what you think. In fact, that is the only thing about you that holds their attention and concern. They don't care if you go hungry, unemployed, sick, or homeless. But they do care when you are beginning to entertain resistant democratic thoughts... They get furiously concerned when you and millions like you are rejecting the pap that is served up by corporate media and establishment leaders."
Protest is powerful.
Protest is powerful because the public is powerful. Believe it or not your opinion is powerful.
A motivated public is terrifying to the establishment because a motivated public is far more powerful than the establishment. There are a lot more of us than them. Establishment power depends on our consent. It's right there in our founding document, the Declaration of Independence: "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."
When governments lose consent they lose their power.
Now, governments will always try to keep their power through use of force. The idea is that if the police or militia crush enough skulls the establishment can maintain control through fear. You might remember Grand Moff Tarkin outlining that as the Empire's strategy in the first Star Wars movie.
But the public wins concessions from the powerful all the time. This is done to keep the peace and keep the establishment in place. We have protests to thank for the 8 hour workday, weekends, the end of child labor, veterans' benefits, the right to unionize, voting rights for women and black folks, the end of the Vietnam war, the list goes on and on. This is what is known as class struggle. Class struggle wins concessions. Class struggle can make the establishment back down.
And don't forget that when the state dresses up a bunch of men in riot gear to intimidate you into silence, they are also hoping to use violence against protestors. This is intended to scare others away from protesting. John Lennon noticed this phenomenon. He said, "The establishment will irritate you -- pull your beard, flick your face -- to make you fight. Because once they've got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don't know how to handle is nonviolence and humor."
The state hopes to provoke protestors into violence in order to discredit protestors and play the victim. Use of violence against protestors discourages people from protesting. People have a natural aversion to being pepper sprayed and having their skulls caved in by police truncheons. People are less likely to bring children and the elderly when protests seem likely to break into violence. See how that discouragement works? It's a very old playbook. It's also very simple and easy to understand.
The best answer to that is to show up in such huge numbers that the police or national guard are afraid to use force. When crowds get too big, police give up trying to control them - especially through violence. It's possible to make authoritarians back down simply by showing up in large enough numbers.
Right now, the powerful are also actively looking for a pretext to put more repressive and unconstitutional measures into place. Suspending habeas corpus is a perfect example. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. Does today's manufactured migrant "crisis" rise to that level of danger to the republic? (On a similar note, Abraham Lincoln did not suspend elections in 1864 as a historic legacy that elections should go on even during the greatest crisis a country can face, a civil war). Habeas Corpus, a person's right to challenge their detention in court, predates the Magna Carta by a century. Habeas corpus is probably the single most important legal innovation that Western society has made to limit tyranny. And President Trump is taking it away. That's worth protesting.
Protest is powerful. Protest works. Don't be afraid to stand and be counted among the protestors. The public is powerful and we can win.
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Let’s make them pay.
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