Tag Archives: democracy

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Welcome to the Police State of America

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What I am about to speak about is not a conspiracy, it is not an exaggeration, and you might say the incidents are isolated anomalies, but there are a growing number of incidents that make me wonder if this isn’t more the reality than we are willing to believe.

Until you push, until you speak out against the current system, the image you see of our government’s use of physical force to carry out the laws seems appropriate. If you come from a middle or upper class neighborhood, your impression of the police is likely a positive one. They help enforce laws and keep people safe, and minus the occasional speeding ticket that you get, your happy to have their protection. Most feel the same way about the military of our country. Whether we agree or disagree with the war, we generally feel that the military feels it is doing it’s best to protect and care for the citizens of this free land. It’s a wonderful outlook and most of what we have experienced supports that reality.


It wasn’t until I began to question some of the decisions of our government and our current system, that I saw the ugly side of the system. My experience was primarily involved with preparation and involvement in protest during the G-8 in Brunswick Georgia in 2001. The G-8 is a gathering of 8 global world leaders who come together to discuss global issues. I could write pages on my experience there, but I’ll highlight some of the main points, and you’ll have to trust my experience.
First, in preparation for the protest we were involved with a number of other people from across the country and many in Brunswick to plan the gathering and the events. I heard first hand of the intimidation and oppression that some of the lead organizers were experiencing. This is not a conspiracy, this is literally things that happened: people’s phones were tapped, a SWAT Team entered the home of the mother of one of the organizers and took it over (this is shocking, but it is a ‘legal’ right under marshal law for the police to basically take over what ever they need to) and then set up a surveillance center to watch the organizers in the house across the street. I’m really not making these things up. Ordinance after ordinance was disallowed, permits for basic gatherings in parks and marches down streets were denied. This might not seem like a big deal, but what was happening was that basic rights as citizens were being denied and our opportunity to express our first amendment rights were taken before we could even express them.
Let me give you an idea of the magnitude of this. As the days led up to the G8 summit we read article after article about the 20,000 police and military were being trained to handle the protesters. That is were your tax dollars were going 20,000 officers specifically trained in riot training, and this was under the ‘Miami Model‘ (I’ll get to it later). These police were trained to use clubs, mace, rubber bullets, handcuffs and intimidation to confront the ‘violent protest’ they were planning on meeting. Let me address this briefly.
In my experience, what I have seen on video and with my own eyes, and every person I have talked to who have attended protests, I have never met a single person who had any intention of being violent (against a person). There are a few that enjoy provoking the police. There are a couple that desire to do harm to ‘the system’ by breaking windows and hindering consumerism, but this is a very small number of any protest. So, cops are trained to violently stop protests and in my experience they make little effort to distinguish between those peacefully protesting and those doing anything that might disturb the peace, break laws or be even close to considering anything a ‘riot.’
The Black BlocFinally, the G8 protest in Brunswick GA was attended by about 200 protesters at most. That’s nearly 100 riot cops and military for each of us protesters (a little absurd I know). Our experience was a positive one, and I’m happy to say I was not struck by a baton, rubber bullet or tear gas and the police were generally respectable. Starring at a line of riot cops standing in front of you with their giant shields, not flinching and not moving, and apparently there for nothing more then to intimidate the snot out of anyone was a disturbing experience. The reason there was only 200 protesters at this event is because of the gross injustice and violence that was experienced less then a year earlier at the Miami FTA Meetings. I found a video that is about 1.5 hours long that I think captures a lot of the violence that scared and intimidated people from coming to another event. Riot cops shot rubber bullets into crowds, sprayed mace at masses of people, and beat people with clubs when it was completely unnecessary.

What does this have to do with the discussion of democracy? You do not have to agree with those who protest, you don’t have to like them, in fact you might even think they are learning a lesson by being shot with rubber bullets. For me though, my experience and what I have seen has made me feel that I live in a police state and not in a democracy.

I would really strongly encourage you to watch this video in full.

It’s an hour and a half long but I really think every citizen needs to see this. But for those who won’t watch the whole thing here is a series of links to clips through out that you might want to see.

After looking I could only find one news article about the injustice of the protest and it was from the AFL-CIO:
Stopping the “Miami Model” in its Tracks: Defending Civil Liberties, Demanding Justice

The ACLU also wrote up a press release on some of the lawsuits that were filed:
Police Trampled Civil Rights During 2003 Free Trade Protests in Florida, ACLU Charges

and Znet writes:
Infamous ‘Miami Model’ of Protest Clampdown, Coming to a Town Near You

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What are the Boundaries of our ‘Democracy’?

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I peeked at some definitions of democracy just to see if I could get a basic understanding of what it meant. I’ve grown up thinking that we live in a democracy mainly because we get to vote for our president (and other folks as well). I think that’s a good thing, I like the idea of a government put in place by the people it governs.

Yet, recently I’ve been thinking about the fact that our tendency to think of our country as a democracy governed within some arbitrary boundaries that make up 50 different states is maybe not the most accurate. My thought is that it might be more accurate to think of the boundaries of our government and system as outlined not by the areas that our politicians govern, but were our military exerts it’s power. You see, ultimately I’m not ruled by the politicians (they make laws), I’m kept in line by the powers that enforce those rules, namely the military (and on our local level the police). So, it would seem that if we are going to be a true democracy we would allow citizenship and voting privileges for every person under or within our military presence. Otherwise, maybe it would be more accurate to say that we are part of the ruling class (all be it a large one) of an even larger empire that exerts it’s military rule over much of the rest of the world.

US Military Presence in The World
US Troops in the World

Chose Your Weapon (The Global Arms Trade)
Weapons

One more map of US military bases.

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If People Can’t Vote, It’s Not Democratic

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Note:The first part of this post is an announcement I gave trying to recruit volunteers from the Republican club meeting at my college in 2004 before the presidential elections.

I have a close friend, who I worked closely with in 2003 in Atlanta. Lester Mae Jackson is a little over 50, a strong Christian woman. She grew up in Chicago. A black woman struggling against racism and discrimination that engulfed her. She stood on the Mall in Washington and listened first hand to Martin Luther King Jr. give his famous I have a Dream speech. She was the first black woman to attend her college in a small Wisconsin town. She was very active in the civil rights movement in Chicago and Wisconsin. She became a nurse and worked for the Red Cross for a number of years. I worked alongside her as tutors in the Atlanta public school, for very little pay considering she was supporting herself, two daughters and a recent granddaughter. Lest you think I’m sharing a story of pity for a struggling citizen let me share with you something else. Lester Mae has her PHD; she by the standards we tend to hold here, has earned her respect. When Dr. Lester Mae Jackson speaks, everyone listens because she speaks from experience and wisdom. When she told me about the discrimination at the polls in the 2000 election that she had seen and experienced first hand, I did not explain it off as I might have if some other person has shared it with me, I listened. She talked about polls opening late, closing far too early, people being turned away who should have been able to vote. She acknowledged that whole communities in our country have a general feeling of helplessness at it relates to voting and our democracy; Communities that had been so frustrated by the injustices being done that ‘democracy’ had lost it’s meaning.

Fast forward a number of months. I saw an advertisement calling for volunteers to protect people’s right to vote and remembering Dr. Jackson’s words, I was compelled to sign-up. Election Protection is a non-partisan initiative to make sure every citizen of this country has a fair and equal opportunity to vote. Injustice exist.
I’m going to assume that you think politics and democracy is important. This election [2004 Presidential] is an opportunity to show the world that democracy works, that it empowers the people. If people are marginalized, discriminated against and kept from voting for wrong reasons, then our democracy has failed. Election Protection is an opportunity to show the world that the far left and the far right can still join together in a democracy to ensure that every voice is heard and every vote is counted.

I shared that and encouraged a room full of 50+ college republicans (and later to 15 college democrats) to spend their election day watching polls to make sure that all people had a chance to vote.  In other words, for our country to actually run as a democracy. Not one Republican came out and only one Democrat.  It made me realize we aren’t so much concerned about democracy as that “our side” wins.

There is a LOT of evidence and statistics that show that poor, working-class people are consistently marginalized during election time and their opportunity to vote is often unjustly taken. At what point do we acknowledge that we can’t really say we have a democracy when a large number of our societies voting members are denied that right. This is not just a series of mistakes, this is unjust, and I would venture to say, this is not a democracy.

The best place for a lot of info on what’s happened in past elections is Election Protection. Also, Voters Unite.
Here are two movie trailers also that are engaging and highlight some of the themes that have occurred:

How Ohio Pulled It Off

American Blackout

And specifically related to the 2004 election, Rolling Stone has a incredible article on the topic, Was the 2004 Election Stolen? by Robert F. Kennedy.

oh and a 2004 Voter Fraud