At three New York protests in the last two weeks, police used violence against protesters lying stock-still in the street; arrested onlookers who were doing nothing illegal; told arrestees they were being singled out for special [bad] treatment because of their political message; and detained them for longer than the legally-permitted 24 hours. In Oakland, police fired thick wooden bullets into a peaceful anti-war crowd, breaking skin and in some cases, breaking bones. New Yorkers wonder if we’re next.
Why would police repress dissent? Here’s a thought: $80 billion dollars will line the pockets of American companies supplying materials for the first three months of war. Billions more will be awarded in “rebuilding” contracts to powerful American companies. If Americans thought they were supporting a market rather than a liberation mission, might they be less enthusiastic about the war and those who led us into it? Protesters destabilize the war consensus. So label protesters ‘fringe,’ make dissent seem out there’ – and presto, a million protesters become an irrelevant focus group.
There’s more, though. Unless NYPD Commissioner Kelly ordered police to drag, kick and scream at protesters, cops have also been taking personal initiative in violence. They’re not getting any of that $80 billion, so what do they care? Perhaps it goes along with war-themed Easter baskets, now available at a store near you, which peddle toy machine guns next to chocolate eggs. Maybe war – the vision of Americans kicking the ass of the infidel – gets us into the authoritarian mood. We are enforcers. We don’t wait for attack, we’ll preempt you. You didn’t follow instructions? Watch out, now we’re mad. And he who has the firepower, or the handcuffs, rules the battlefield.
But the Constitution says otherwise. Police are simply not permitted to enforce political sentiment as law. They are not permitted to use their discretion in processing arrestees to “teach a lesson.” The Constitution forbids chilling of dissent. In spite of the Constitution, since 9/11 we have teetered between the idea of giving up our civil rights in the hope of protecting ourselves, and recognizing the sacred value of the rights America theoretically stands for. So it’s ironic – or maybe just awful – that as war purports to be spreading American freedom, American freedom is lost.
The injudiciousness of punitive policing goes far deeper even than legal concerns, to the core of the nation and our chances of ever recovering from war. The ability to dissent peacefully – without risking life and limb to do so – is the cornerstone of a peaceable society. When we can’t dissent peacefully, we will see violence. History tells us as much.
Who are these protesters, anyway? The bulk of anti-war protesters, contrary to the idea that only students take to the streets, are working adults who have been awakened by this crisis. They are people who take off of work, get a babysitter or dogwalker to take over for a day, and stand in the street for some fairly fundamental principles: among them, that we should not perpetrate violence against those who have not attacked, and that we should not be engaged in conquest. These are Americans, and although they come out to protest, they go back home to their lives. They are not prepared to graduate from peaceful protest to violence – although I know I couldn’t be the only one who feels, as I watch a cop kick a protester lying still on the ground, that I’d like to return the favor.
But in any movement are those who can be pushed to violence – especially as America changes in ways that feel like the end of democracy, and when dissenters find no avenue of non-violent resistance left open. When those who would rather continue peaceful protest can longer afford to venture into the street, if just being near a demonstration can get them arrested or hurt, resistance is left to those who are willing to risk violence.
That’s what American activist Rachel Corrie was trying to prevent when an Israeli army bulldozer ran her over in Gaza: not just the demolition of a civilian house, but the death of peaceful methods in a place where freedom to dissent is simply curtailed. It’s what Tom Hurdell, guiding children away from Israeli army snipers, was doing when an Israeli patrol shot him in the head in Rafah today. Rachel, Tom and their colleagues sought to preserve a place for non-violence by allowing protests to happen – with the protection of their privileged, non-Palestinian bodies – where nobody got killed. So that the next time Palestinian organizers planned a non-violent demonstration to give vent to frustrations which otherwise come out in suicide bombings, people could say “maybe I can come, since we survived the last one.” But what happens to dissent when it’s pushed underground? Does it disappear? Ask a Palestinian – or an Israeli.
The loss of freedoms threatens more than our individual right to go about our lives. It threatens our ability to dissent peacefully, to have major conversations about the future of our country and the world in public space. These conversations are the underpinnings of a non-violent society. And they are eroded with every wooden bullet, every false arrest, every police officer who tries to equate peaceful civil disobedience with violence, as if America owed nothing to activists who sat stubbornly in the street – labor organizers demanding an 8-hour day, Freedom Riders insisting on driving through a segregated town, AIDS activists demanding research be done on women and people of color – in pursuit of justice. The best way, the only way, to keep protest non-violent is to allow it. But perhaps some think it’s more useful, for the sake of that $80 billion and the surge of adrenaline our boys get when they lay into a crowd, to bring the war home.
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